HUNGARY: Changed Circumstances

"Because of my ill health, and in view of changed circumstances, it has been necessary for the present Government to resign." With this brief announcement Count Stephen Bethlen de Bethlen, Prime Minister of Hungary, gave up the power he has wielded for ten years and prepared to sun his spare ribs on the shores of Margaret Island, play tennis and polo and otherwise enjoy himself. Admiral Nicholas Horthy, Regent of Hungary, accepted the resignation and immediately called grey-chinned Count Julius Karolyi to form another Cabinet. The air darkened with rumors.

All editors agreed last week that Hungary's financial plight, the closing of her banks at the time of the German crash, the government's emergency decrees to prevent the exporting of money, were the basis of Count Bethlen's troubles. Matters grew acute some weeks ago when Count Bethlen, faced by a growing opposition among the deputies, appointed, before Parliament adjourned, a committee of 33 to help him govern the country by decree.

Despite denials from Count Bethlen himself, the story persisted in Budapest that he had been forced out by the French.

Hungary had just been granted a new $25,000,000 international loan. The greater part of this came from Paris, and Budapest gossips kept repeating that France was demanding, first 11% on her money; second, the appointment of French officials as financial supervisors of Hungary; third, the leasing of the state railways; finally the resignation of Count Bethlen who has long been anti-French in policy, whose greatest coup was signing a virtual alliance with Benito Mussolini in 1927.

There was another story. The day after Bethlen's resignation, 18-year-old Archduke Otto of Hungary disappeared from Steenockerzeel Castle in Belgium. All night long excited Hungarian reporters were routing royalists out of bed to learn if Otto was attempting to seize Hungary's vacant throne. They received nothing but spluttering denials. Eventually Otto and his mother, the ex-Empress Zita, were discovered in Switzerland.

Czechoslovak papers, wise to Hungarian diplomacy, suspected trickery in Bethlen's resignation. They know that Bethlen and Karolyi almost invariably see eye to eye.

Prime Minister Karolyi scoured the avenues and the alleys but was unable to find a Minister of Finance. Count Bethlen grew highly excited and said that Count Karolyi must succeed in making a Cabinet, at least for a time. Count Karolyi dutifully tried again, finally succeeded by taking the thankless post of Finance Minister himself. Newspapers called his Cabinet a "shadowgraph" of Count Bethlen's Cabinet. Blase Prague expected to see the fluttering brown burgee of Bethlen's mustache leading another Hungarian Cabinet before long.

Stoop-shouldered, near-sighted Julius Karolyi was born in Nyir-Bator 60 years ago. He is a second cousin of stuttering Count Michael Karolyi whose ineffectual Republic was overthrown by the mon strous Bela Kun in 1919, who made U. S. headlines when the State Department denied him a visa to enter the country six years ago as a dangerous radical. Julius Karolyi is a very great noble. Two years ago he was elected one of the two Custodians of the Crown of St. Stephen, an honorary position. In December 1930 he turned in his little gold key to the crown to become Foreign' Minister in the Bethlen Cabinet.