their uncivilised methods they will probably reply: When our personal honour is attacked we fight to protect it, because honour is as dear as life. When your personal honour is attacked you hire a lot of lawyers, wash any amount of dirty linen in the courts, and sometimes get satisfaction in the shape of money. We don't care to measure our honour by a pecuniary standard.'

In all the crises and vicissitudes which occurred in connexion with the reconstruction of Austria and Hungary my heart was never more nearly in my mouth than on account of a duel. Hungary was confronted with financial ruin. The negotiations between the Allied Powers and within the Reparation Commission, upon which her fate rested, were at their most critical and delicate stage. If that stage could be successfully passed I felt fairly sure that a plan of reconstruction could be arranged, with the aid of the League of Nations, and an international loan floated. Just at that crisis Count Bethlen, the Prime Minister of Hungary, on whose personality depended, to an extraordinary degree, the success of the whole plan, both from an external and internal point of view, was challenged to a duel by a political opponent. I was as near despair as I have allowed myself to be in all my 'lost causes.' If the Prime Minister refused the challenge on the sensible and obvious grounds of the national emergency, I knew perfectly well that he would lose his influence at home. No man in Hungary, not even the Prime Minister, may decline such a challenge with political or social impunity. If he fought the duel he would lose his influence abroad because a refined outside world would say it was impossible to regard a country as civilised whose Prime Minister, at a moment of national peril, fought duels with his political opponents. Moreover, the internationl bankers would close their safes with a horrified bang. If the duel was fought and had a fatal result-the complications suggested by such a possibility were not altogether mitigated by assurances from various friends that in spite of his apparently frail physique Count Bethlen was a magnificent swordsman. Fortunately for Hungary it never became necessary to put that qualification to the test because, to my intense relief, a Court of Honour

found satisfaction for both opponents without recourse to arms.

In order to understand what has been happening during the last few years and what is likely to happen in Hungary, it is essential to know something about this Prime Minister who never even contemplated the advisability of not fighting the duel and who is now the senior Prime Minister in Europe. Count Bethlen's character and his hold over his people are perhaps best illustrated by what occurred early in 1923. He had just returned to Hungary from Paris, where his appeal to the Reparation Commission for permission to enlist the aid of the League of Nations in the reconstruction of Hungary had been rejected by the casting vote of France, and against the votes of the British and Italian delegates. Hungarian money was daily rushing down the hill of depreciation and prices were soaring. The State was faced with bankruptcy, and the people with individual ruin. Opposition newspapers declared that Count Bethlen had failed hopelessly, and in addition had dragged Hungary in the ashes of humiliation by agreeing to League of Nations control. At this crisis Count Bethlen made a speech at a great open-air meeting in Eastern Hungary. Most men in such a predicament could have been forgiven for putting the blame on France and the Succession States; few Prime Ministers could have resisted the temptation to fill the air with reassuring promises of foreign loans that were sure to come some day. Instead, this was the keynote of his speech:

"The regaining of our spiritual equilibrium must first be aimed at, by the aid of which we shall regain our economic balance. The war is ended: in place of war, after the conclusion of peace, there must be not only an economic but a spiritual solidarity. And I confidently trust that the time is not far distant when not only we proclaim this but also the great nations who lead European civilisation. For this time will we keep our powder dry-by which I do not mean gunpowder but our cultural and national spirit. For this time will we conserve our strength. For if our affair is successful before the forum of the great Powers of Europe, then will the time have come for which we are all striving, the time of economic equilibrium and social peace.'

To preach the gospel of spiritual solidarity at such a moment required rare courage. The fact that Count Bethlen had such courage is as much as anything responsible for the rapid recovery of Hungary. It also accounts for the fact that his position as Prime Minister in his own country is probably even safer than that of Mr Baldwin with his great majority. Count Bethlen is generally described as an astute and experienced politician, but although for many years a member of Parliament, with Liberal tendencies, he never held office in any Hungarian Government until in 1921 he became Prime Minister. Two years later he went, a complete stranger, to London, Paris, and Rome, on a desperate pilgrimage to beg the Allied Governments so to suspend the Reparation Sword of Damocles as to permit Hungary to remain alive. It was very largely due to the recognition of his transparent integrity and common-sense by the various Allied Foreign Ministers and their Cabinet colleagues, that Hungary succeeded in this appeal to the outside world. At home he was probably the only man who could have impelled the Hungarians, desperately proud as they are, to accept control by the League of Nations. He is middle-aged, slight of figure, rather delicate, but with untiring nerve strength and undiminished love of sport, puritanically simple in habits yet with a keen sense of humour. Like his ancestors, the Princes of Transylvania, who raised armies and fought in the cause of John Knox and religious freedom, Count Bethlen is a Calvinist. He is not yet so wellknown in England and outside Hungary as some other less important figures that flit evanescently, but with no little self-advertisement, on and off the stage of Continental politics. That is due to his own shyness and hatred of display. At Geneva, when the League Assembly gathers and when all the little statesmen scramble to find rooms in the hotels patronised by the big statesmen-the statesmen representing the Great Powers-Count Bethlen will not be in Geneva at all unless he has something really important to say, but, if there, invariably secluded in a little old-fashioned hotel across the Rhone praying that he may not have to attend any formal 'functions.'

A more picturesque figure in Hungary for such

journalists and foreign visitors as have only two or three days in which to 'do' the country, is Admiral Horthy, the Regent. It was inevitable and fitting that world interest should be attracted to a sailor who in 1919 pulled together, with a handful of men, the disorganised remnant of a defeated army, and restored order after the Bolshevist régime of Bela Kun and the Roumanian occupation. That was no small job, as the Americans say, and it was done with no light hand by a sailor who, true to type, regards the spirit of discipline in his ship as of more importance than the praise of kings or the blame of politicians. In the same spirit, when the late ex-Emperor Karl in face of Allied prohibition made two attempts to regain the Throne of Hungary for the House of Hapsburg, Admiral Horthy, in his capacity as Regent, was compelled to put his country before his King. Now, when the days of Bela Kun and armed 'putsches' to replace a Hapsburg on the Throne of St Stephen have passed, Admiral Horthy, with a sense of proportion that is as rare as it is commendable, contents himself with unostentatiously fulfilling the Constitutional duties of a Regent. From intimate experience of the executive I have good reason for knowing that there is not the slightest interference on the part of the Regent with the functions of representative Government. He has probably just as little to do with the governance of the country as the President of the Austrian Republic, whose name is scarcely ever remembered by Austrians themselves.

Exactly for whom Admiral Horthy is Regent is a question which some day or other will have to be answered. In the opinion of most level-headed Hungarians with any real influence, the later this question is settled the better for Hungary. Constitutionally there is now nothing to prevent the Hungarians from electing any one they fancy as king. Otto, the eldest son of the late Emperor Karl, is now only fourteen years old, and no one until sixteen years of age is eligible for election to the Throne, and then only under exceptional circumstances. The normal age for ascending to the Throne is eighteen. Meantime there are factions that support the claims of one or other of the Hapsburg Archdukes who, through intermarriage with Hungarians or by long

residential association, continue to have peculiarly close ties with this part of the former Dual Empire, despite the loss of a war, the creation of a Republic, the partition of a Kingdom, a Bolshevist régime, an occupation of the capital by foreign troops, a Regency, and control by the League of Nations. All these things have happened since 1918, but the Hungarian Archdukes and their families take much the same pleasant social part in the life of Hungary as they did in former times. There is an infinitesimal handful of people, mostly followers of Count Michael Károlyi, now more talked about abroad than in Hungary, who would again like to see a Republic, such as was formed in 1918, but which existed only a few months with Károlyi as President. It is safe to say there is not the slightest probability of Hungary becoming a Republic. The only serious contingency is how long she will remain under a Regency. If there were a plebiscite to-day, and if the Hungarians were told that they had to elect a king, and that the Allied Powers were indifferent as to whether Otto Hapsburg or anybody else were chosen, I think they would give a large majority for Otto as soon as he became of kingly age. There is a natural sentimental tenderness for the good-looking fatherless little boy now in exile in Spain, practically dependent upon the charity of a few loyal friends, and who by birth has the first hereditary right to the Crown of St Stephen. But at the moment, as I have said, it is not a matter of practical politics, although it is a European nut which may have to be cracked before many years have passed.

By their unnatural behaviour when their country was threatened with financial and economic ruin, Count Michael Károlyi and his little band of emigrés, who seven years ago set up the short-lived Republic which quickly graduated into Bolshevism, killed any slight hopes that remained of regaining prestige in Hungary. Their intrigues in America and elsewhere in 1924, and again in 1925 against the League of Nations scheme of reconstruction and the Hungarian loan by means of attacks in the foreign press-generally either quite unfounded or grotesquely exaggerated-sealed their political fate. This mistaken policy also weakened the position of the Socialists, who in a Parliament of 245