Into the highceilinged, ornamental, gilt-walled hall of the Hungarian Parliament's Lower Chamber walked surefootedly one day last week a young, handsome aristocratic statesman exuding confidence. He was Count Stephan Csáky, Hungary's Foreign Minister; before him were 262 uniformed deputies, waiting expectantly to hear a scheduled speech on foreign relations.
The room in which Count Csáky stood represented only a small part of the detailed workmanship and great wealth that had been poured into Hungary's impressive Houses of Parliament. Standing on the Rudolph Quay in Pest (i.e., on the left bank of the Danube, the flat half of Budapest), this 19th-Century, Gothic-style building ranks as one of the largest legislative palaces of the world. It cost $8,000,000, covers four-and-one-half acres, has a dome 315 feet high. It was intended, when built, to show Hungary's importance, but after World War I, which reduced Hungary's population and territory by 70%, the country scarcely rated such an edifice. Few things of world-shaking importance have happened there in the past 20 years; it was left to the young Count to show that doings at Parliament Square, Budapest, could still be called significant.
Ever since the present war started, enlightened statesmen of the little States of southeastern Europe have believed that the Danubian countries must either hang together or be hanged separately. They urged the formation of a bloc of Danubian neutrals who would temporarily forget their sectional differences. Fortnight ago even Hungary, most intransigent of revision-seeking powers, was believed ready to join up. Then last week something happened: the big powers yanked their strongest strings, and Danubian federation was once more pulled asunder. The biggest string stretched was Count Csáky.
His speech had the blunt, threatening, direct, totalitarian touch so typical of the masters of Berchtesgaden and Rome, whom the Foreign Minister has several times visited. He hailed the "new era" that Nazi Germany had brought to Eastern Europe. He gloated over the "collapse of an artificially created Czechoslovakia." He sneered at onetime President Eduard Benes of Czecho-Slovakia and resented what he called M. Benes' renewed "propaganda and activities." As for neighbors:
> "Hungary's most intimate friend is Italy."
> "To Bulgaria we are tied by friendship and by the injustice of the treaties."
> "Relations with Yugoslavia are improving. There are no unsolvable problems between the two countries."
> "It is impossible to imagine a clash of interests between Hungary and Russia."
But when Count Csáky, in the course of his travelogue, arrived at the Rumanian border, his tone grew tough. That country, he said, was the chief stumbling block to a Danubian bloc of neutrals. Until Rumania decided to listen to the "voice of the new era"—i.e., hand back to Hungary Transylvania, which Rumania took at the end of World War I—Hungary would refuse to play ball. "It is up to Rumania to accept the ideas of modern times and thus cooperate in forming a new order on the Danube," threatened the Foreign Minister. "Otherwise history will lay its hands on her."