HUNGARY: King Business

• Share

The report that an unknown assailant attempted to assassinate Regent Nicholas Horthy von Nagybanya (TIME, Feb. 9) proved to be untrue.

The false report and the recent publication of a reproduction of part of the late Emperor Karl's diary have to some extent revived in academic form the peculiar position of Hungary.

Hungary is still a kingdom—its old constitution is unchanged. In place of the King is a Regent, Admiral Horthy. His powers are limited mainly to exercising the royal functions without the effective power of vetoing legislation. Just for whom he is Regent is a problem that most Hungarians shirk; some say for himself; some say for Prince Otto, oldest son of Kaiser Karl; some say for a King who is yet to be elected. The problem is, however, satisfactorily settled for the time being by electing Yankee Jeremiah Smith as financial king—a Yankee at the Court of the Habsburgs or, in the parlance of jazz, a Yankee-doodle doing it.

But this state of affairs is only temporary. For 1,000 years, Hungary has been a monarchy. Until 1526, when the Turks won the all-important Battle of Mahacs, Hungary had had a national King, but in that year the inheritance was claimed by a Habsburg and Hungary was ruled as a part of the Austrian Empire until the Ausgleich of 1867, which set up the Dual Monarchy and gave the country once more a King of its own in the person of the same Habsburg Emperor of Austria. It was little more than a change of form.

For Emperor Karl there undoubtedly existed a warm national affection, but this availed him nothing at the end of the War. Almost without a blow, Hungary became for a few months a Republic under Count Michael Karolyi, although it would be truer to say that Budapest, the capital, became a Republic. Bolshevism succeeded Republicanism and was even shorter lived; for in August, 1919, after a harrowing Rumanian occupation, the Monarchists, led by Admiral Horthy, were once again in power. Horthy was elected Royal Governor, usually translated as Regent. He was invested with some of the royal powers, was empowered to enact the legislation of his Royal Hungarian Government—but for whom was he acting? When Karl was alive, Horthy publicly declared that he was keeping the throne warm for his Monarch. After Karl's death in 1922, both he and his Premier, Count Bethlen, were known to have expressed themselves privately in favor of "King" Otto. But Horthy's love of splendor, his occupation of the Royal Palaces, his insistence upon a regal etiquette, have combined to discredit his intentions.

Now from the late Emperor's Diary, published by Karl Werkmann, his private secretary, reproduced by the Italian Corriere della Sera of Milan and reproduced by The Living Age, comes a new story about Horthy's alleged perfidy.

The following is a conversation between Karl and Horthy which took place in 1921 at the Royal Palace in Budapest. The Emperor, who had not forgotten that he had failed to abdicate as the Apostolic King of Hungary, had previously signed a manifesto: