HUNGARY: Old Premier, New Salutes

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While the Rumanian Parliament last week interested itself in uniforms (see above), in Hungary legislators were concerned not only with uniforms but salutes. In Budapest eight years ago fashionable

Magyars spoke English with what they thought was an American accent, wined and danced to jazz bands in the Café New York, Café Boston or Café Philadelphia, and affected U. S. business suits and hornrimmed glasses. Today single-breasted coats with peak lapels have given way to snappy uniforms and shiny boots, and when the newly elected Kepviselohdz (Chamber of Deputies) convened last week in its wing of the six acres of Gothic magnificence that house the Hungarian Parliament, the scene was less like a meeting of a cornfed legislature than a kraut-eating military congress.

Deputies who were in the Army appeared in grey Hungarian campaign kit. Forty Nazi deputies, fresh from decorating Budapest's Cenotaph, rolled up to the House of Parliament in a parade of swastika-decked automobiles and clumped into the Chamber in high boots, black trousers and green shirts. Nazis who were outraged when a Jewish photographer took their picture were admonished by their leader that "propaganda comes before all." The Hungarian Life Party members, supporters of the Government, came dressed in all black uniforms. Sole mufti-clad deputy was outspoken Foreign Minister Count Stephen Csaky, who thinks the Government Party's funereal garb "outlandish."

The salutes were as varied as the uniforms. The Nazis gave the Nazi salute; the Army men made a military salute; Life Party members made a tentative gesture similar to that used to catch a waiter's eye; and Premier Count Paul Teleki, chief of the Hungarian Boy Scouts, gave the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. Chief business of the opening session: a speech by Count Teleki in which he announced that Deputies' rights to speak would be curtailed.