to imagine that those who really influence public opinion in Hungary harbour warlike intentions against their victorious neighbours. The catchword of irredentism, seen more often than heard throughout Hungary to-day, 'Nem, nem, soha' (No, no, never), which of course applies to the lost provinces, has a picturesque and sonorous appeal which frequently leads the foreign visitor to attach to it a realistic importance which is somewhat misleading. The Hungarian, with all his nationalism and patriotism, is, like most people sprung from the soil, pretty sensible, and as a general rule he has no delusion that a country with an army of only 35,000 can do anything against an encircling combination such as the Little Entente, which has a fully equipped army of about a million men and man-power strength for war of approximately four million. Every now and again one or other of the Little Entente States drags out the bogey of an impending return of the Hapsburgs or the peril of the Awakening Hungarians. With the Hapsburg question I have already dealt. The Awakening Hungarians are what might be described as the Fascist or extreme Right element. Like the Socialists, but for exactly opposite reasons, they are bitter critics of the Bethlen administration, but have only eight representatives in a National Assembly of 245. They are unlikely to increase appreciably their numbers so long as Hungary continues to have a Government which the Socialists denounce as reactionary. More far-sighted Hungarians, so far as I have ascertained, are inclined to believe that if they continue to prove their ability to maintain economic and political stability within such territory as has been left to them, and if their neighbours continue to treat Hungarian minorities inequitably, there will inevitably come a day when without resort to arms or without intervention on the part of Hungary, a reversion of territory and of people must occur automatically.

A more immediate problem which appears, in the preoccupation of Locarno and the Rhine, to have escaped the attention of British and other Allied statesmen, is the future foreign policy of Hungary. Her geographical position is peculiarly vulnerable but, in certain eventualities, might become of great importance to the rest

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of Europe. Now that there is no Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary is isolated with Czecho-Slovakia, Roumania, Yugo-Slavia, and the Austrian Republic on her frontiers. The first three States are in armed defensive alliance against her under the Little Entente Treaties; while the Austrian Republic is theoretically pledged to closer union with Germany. Assuming that the Anschluss with Germany became a fait accompli, Hungary would have to consider seriously the question of closer relations with Germany which, in those circumstances, would be in control of Hungary's principal market. Naturally enough there has never been any strong proGerman feeling in a country that fought so long to free herself from the German influence of Austria, and the alliance with Germany for the duration of the war does not appear to have altered this pre-war detachment. The vulnerability of a country thus situated, without an ally, disarmed, and with only 8 million inhabitants, is self-evident. On the other hand, Hungary lies on the flank of Roumania, Yugo-Slavia, and Czecho-Slovakia. What would happen in the event of Russia endeavouring by force of arms to retake Bessarabia? Would Yugo-Slavian troops be permitted to pass through Hungary in their hurry to help their Roumanian ally— assuming that Slav would really fight Slav? If so, and if Russia marched victorious over Roumania, what would be the vengeance when she reached the defenceless Hungarian frontier? Incidentally, there is no marked feeling either of enmity or friendship between Hungary and Russia as a nation. The Hungarians have never forgotten, however, that it was through the intervention of the Russian Army they failed to win complete independence from Austria in the last century. Against the Russian Soviet there is deep-seated repugnance, so much so that even Count Bethlen has so far been unable to get Parliament to ratify the commercial treaty he concluded months ago with the Soviet representatives. This, I believe, is his only failure, and it illustrates the tenacity with which the fear of Bolshevism survives and permeates the social and political life of Hungary, even when it involves material disadvantage. To revert, what would be the attitude of Hungary in case of any trouble between Yugo-Slavia and Italy, or between

Germany and Czecho-Slovakia? I put these questions, not because I think that any of these eventualities are impending or perhaps even probable, but because they serve to illustrate the difficulty of the problems connected with the foreign policy of Hungary and the potential importance to Europe of whatever policy she may pursue or, under force majeure, may be compelled to pursue. In so far as it is possible and under the leadership of Count Bethlen, Hungary is likely to maintain her present policy of friendly relations with all countries and alliances with none. A Hungarian politician said some time ago, with cynical realism, 'No one wants an ally that is poor and unarmed'; but Hungary is not so poor as when that was said, and her policy cannot be a matter of indifference to England or the rest of Europe.

Whatever the future may hold in store for Hungarians, I trust it will not deprive them of reward for the courage they have shown during the tempestuous happenings since the Armistice and during the reconstruction period. One can only write about people as one finds them; and during the three years I have had the privilege of trying to help Hungary onto her economic legs, I have found her people to possess, in addition to their frailties, most of the qualities which peculiarly appeal to British mentality. A high sense of honour, perhaps a little on the lines of the public schoolboy's code, loquacious, devoted to sport, hot-tempered, affectionate, alarmingly frank, horribly unpunctual, wonderfully hospitable, religiously apathetic, courageous, with a keen sense of humour and a childlike vanity in all national achievement-in short, intensely human and possessing character: that is the Hungarian as I know him,

WILLIAM GOODE.

Art. 9.-THE 'NEW' POETRY, 1911-1925: A SURVEY. It is now some fifteen years since the first faint beginnings of what at its height was called, without much elegance but not without a degree of accuracy, ‘the boom in poetry.' The wave which then raised its head has run up the shingle and seems to have retreated again, at least for the time. The present, therefore, seems to be a suitable moment for inquiring whether it has gone back into the ocean to return in full flood, or whether it was only one of those waves which some accident of wind or current selects for a delusive prominence out of a falling tide.

That the movement, whatever it was, should have been described as a 'boom' was not altogether the fault of the generation which produced it. Among the legacies which the Victorian age left to its successors there was one, in the sphere of literature, which has been an unqualified hindrance ever since. In that period literary creation and literary criticism began to develop a self-consciousness which they have not yet lost and show no signs of losing.

In previous ages the existence of great poets, no matter what interest or admiration they might arouse, was never the occasion of any twittering excitement; they were, so to speak, the sort of thing which it was natural to have about. It might, indeed, be held at any given moment that there were none; and that was an evil, an accident to be regretted, but not a thing to make any one despair of the race. It was like childlessness in a family; and in the same way the appearance of a poet caused the warm but unastonished gladness which in healthy times is caused by the birth of a child.

The vast and sudden material prosperity of the Victorian age produced a different point of view. It seemed necessary that among its glories there should be a poet great enough to be worthy of it, and, for the first time, the interested public looked for that poet with a lingering anxiety lest he should not be there to be found. He was in fact found and, by great good fortune, he bore a certain resemblance, freely recognised by himself, to the chief poet of the Augustan age of

Rome. But already the idea was abroad that great poets were a kind of creatures that existed in earlier times, but were not to be looked for now. Disraeli, writing of Tennyson to Carlyle, clearly implied this view: to him it was not possible to think that his own time should provide the equal of-one supposes-Byron. And when Tennyson died there ensued a feverish search for his successor which was as injurious to both poetry and all standards of criticism as anything could be; and the successor was not forthcoming. Morris and Swinburne were still alive and had been virtually enthroned; but neither was young and there seemed to be no young man acceptable even as a candidate for greatness. Mr Kipling, who alone inherited Tennyson's popular favour, fine poet though at his best he is, was not quite fitted for the position. Then, after the brief, unsuccessful burst which we generally call 'the Movement of the 'Nineties,' poetry fell for nearly twenty years into a greater neglect and contempt than it has ever known in all the history of English literature.

It was not that there were not good poets to uphold the honour of the art. It could indeed be argued that there have been periods of greater barrenness. But with each of the poets of that time there was something that stood in the way of public recognition, and led the critics to champion their favourites a shade too eagerly and too consciously. There were Francis Thompson and Herbert Trench. But Trench, at any rate in his more easily assimilable poems, was getting a good gleaning from Arnold's fields, and Thompson, though there is more to be said of him, is not unfairly described as a splendid anachronism. Mr Bridges, the spiritual heir of Thomas Campion, went on performing his chambermusic to a very small if delighted and intelligent audience. Among the poets of the 'nineties there were two of importance-John Davidson and Mr Yeats. But Davidson mixed up good and bad so inextricably that to this day no critic has seriously attempted the task of disentangling them, and Mr Yeats, the one poet of the 'nineties who in English carried that world-wide inspiration to the point of greatness, so firmly proclaimed himself to be essentially Irish that every one believed him.