The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  As Kánya had not told me about his intentions with regard to the Yugoslavian ambassador, so it was only later that I informed him of the solution we had agreed. Kánya said nothing and even appeared to approve, but I could tell he was deeply hurt. He did not dare to protest because he knew that Horthy had been angered to find that Kánya had put him in a situation unworthy of a head of state. Consequently, he said nothing – but from then on I knew he was my implacable enemy and would take his revenge as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

  All this made me reflect on something I had been thinking about for a long time: namely that, for two reasons, our ministry of foreign affairs was badly in need of fundamental reform.

  The first reason was that it needed to become more homogenous, more united. As it then was, it comprised various very different individuals who had been recruited in a haphazard day-to-day fashion when, in 1918, some sort of Foreign Ministry had hurriedly to be cobbled together. In the circumstances, it was natural that almost anyone with some sort of corresponding experience would be accepted without further enquiry. There were some who had served in the Dual Monarchy’s diplomatic corps, others in the consular service, and even several with no experience of foreign affairs who had transferred from some other ministry. The confusion was made even worse by the fact that in the first few months after the war very few suitable candidates – perhaps only three or four – were in Budapest and available for appointment. Kánya, Khuen-Héderváry and others with the right experience were still in Vienna, away in the country, still in the army or even absent as prisoners of war, and so only a few were able to return home when they were most needed. And those who had been recruited so hurriedly under the Friedrich government quickly busied themselves upgrading each other. The strange result had been that by the time the ministry once again became functional those at the top had obtained rank that in no way corresponded to their seniority or diplomatic experience.

  As a result of having been formed in such a haphazard fashion, the ministry at that time was made up of several opposing groups whose mutual hostility, however well it might be concealed, was none the less virulent. Side by side in the office were firstly those genuine diplomats with Ballplatz experience (forgetting for the moment those first-comers I have just described), then those from the consular service and finally the civil servants transplanted from other ministries. Some of these people had a little experience of other countries, perhaps due to an Austrian upbringing that had left them steeped in the spirit of the Dual Monarchy, some could even manage a few words of faulty Hungarian, while another group, brought up entirely at home with no notion of anything that transpired outside the country’s borders, had no notion of foreign affairs, spoke no language but their own except perhaps a word or two of French, and were completely lacking in any vestige of that solidarity and communal spirit that was the one good legacy of the Ballplatz. And many had none of the social graces that were essential in a diplomatic career abroad.

  The second reason why I considered the need for reform so urgent was that, in my view, it had to be made more wide-awake and more nationally minded. This might have been achieved if we could provide the right education and become more careful in the selection of candidates for a diplomatic career. It would also be necessary to make it easier for young men with promise and talent to live comfortably abroad while en poste, and this would mean offering from the start a modest but adequate pay structure. The old Ballplatz system of recruiting only rich young men who were able to exist without pay for the first few years was no longer possible for us since, following the king’s last putsch, the rich young aristocrats no longer came forward as they once had. This was a great loss because such young men, with their command of languages and elegant appearance, would have provided excellent material for a career in diplomacy. Instead they were apt to spend their time in drinking and making-merry. A few came from minor noble families, and those that did were mostly blanks with regard to speaking foreign languages. What we had were mainly the children of senior civil servants, and Kánya modelled the courses for budding diplomats after the Viennese school, but these now badly needed revising as they were no longer in any way adequate.

  We would need to find teachers with the skill to inspire the young with enthusiasm for their future career and not fill their heads with the dusty details of such long-forgotten matters as the Peace of Westphalia or the League of Cambrai. Practical knowledge of political science, modern social evolution, overseas commerce and the importance of, for example, cotton and oil were what a budding diplomat now needed to know rather than the petty happenings of the eighteenth century. We had a huge task before us.

  When I first accepted the portfolio of foreign affairs and started to become familiar with the machinery of the ministry I was sure I could make a start on these reforms. It did not think it would be so very difficult – until it slowly dawned on me that I would be obstructed in every way by my own colleagues. Success in this sort of venture can only be achieved with the good will of all concerned. This is how, as director-in-chief of the thoroughly demoralized National Opera House, I had managed completely to reform its organization. It is true that, apart from the purely musical side, I did do everything myself. I did all the day-to-day management, I arranged the programme, I drew the costume designs, acted as stage director, supervised the theatre’s finances, made contracts with the artists and personnel and defended the interests of the house and its six hundred employees against the onslaughts of the ministry. It had been a tremendous work, and two of my six years’ stint as director-in-chief had been spent in pulling the place together.

  But there I had been an absolute lord and master. Everyone seemed to want to go my way and, from the prima donna to the stagehands, did what I asked with a smile. I felt they were on my side, and it was characteristic of the atmosphere there that, ten years after I had left them, the chorus asked me for a photograph to put in their dressing room to remember me by122. It was indeed a pleasure to work under such conditions.

  In the Foreign Ministry things were very different. With only one or two exceptions, I was made to feel that, concealed by the mask of official respect with which I was treated, I was told nothing except what I had specifically asked for, and then only in the most sparing of terms. Everything else, if possible, was kept from me. Occasionally something would come to light of which I knew nothing and of which I had been told nothing. If I required something, of course it was agreed at once – but nothing was done, and when I checked up on the matter, all sorts of excuses would be trotted out. Everything I proposed was sabotaged from the start. It became quite obvious to me that, for the entire personnel of the ministry, the real chief was Kánya, and that I would always be told as little as possible. I tried to make up for this by working harder. Often I would be at my desk all day long and continued until late at night without stopping, ten hours a day or as much as sixteen if there was also a cabinet meeting. I myself composed all the diplomatic correspondence because my colleagues’ French was so faulty that it was the only way of ensuring that my meaning would not be distorted. Despite the tremendous amount of work all this involved it was still not enough. Unfortunately, dealing with the problems posed by the Burgenland crisis, the king’s attempted putsch and the Genoa Conference had meant that I had not been able to get down to starting on more domestic issues. And if I wanted make the foreign office work to my satisfaction, there were all sorts of trivial but still essential things that I had to decide myself. So it was inevitable that, between the great issues of national importance and the minor details of the daily struggle, I could find little time for the reform of the office and its staff.

  Many times I felt like losing my temper but, occupied as we were with coping with those great storms that kept breaking over our heads in my first year in office, it was hardly the moment to start wreaking havoc in the office by dismissing my colleagues and then finding replacements for them. This sort of thing could only be attempted when things were
calm; and things never were calm. In the spring of my second year I had to go to Genoa, and it would have been absurd to start reforming the ministry just when I was about to be absent. The replacement of ministry staff would have to be supervised personally by me, for it would entail a great deal of pouring oil on troubled waters to still the inevitable frictions and repair the inevitable rifts. Much time was lost because of Genoa and, as soon I got back, by the affair of the Yugoslav ambassador’s credentials.

  It now became quite clear to me that as long Kánya remained at my side I would be unable to initiate any reforms at the ministry. The section chiefs were all his men. Khuen-Héderváry was imbued with the Ballplatz mentality, and everyone else belonged to Kánya’s inner circle. I had two choices: I could either break openly with Kánya, explain the internal office problem to Bethlen and the head of state and arrange to have him pensioned off or I could resign my office.

  I could easily have had Kánya dismissed. Horthy was still very angry with him over the affair of Yugoslav ambassador’s credentials, while I was quite sure of Bethlen’s attachment to me as I was the only one of his friends in whom he had full confidence. The problem was that Kánya’s departure would still not have opened the way to reform of the ministry, for my own situation there would not have been changed. I was not sure that Khuen-Héderváry would have stayed on, although it was very possible since he was a well-meaning man with a strict sense of duty. But the other department heads, as well as their immediate juniors, were Kánya’s men one and all and so, even if he were to go, my position would remain essentially the same, if not worse, as they would all continue to run to him and take his orders on every little matter that arose. The inevitable result would be two very different wills trying to run the ministry: one mine as the official chief, and the other Kánya’s wherever he might be hiding. To achieve anything the section heads would all have to be changed, and who could replace them? Practically none of the more junior staff was sufficiently trained and experienced, but there seemed to be little point in replacing them with anyone new to the foreign office, for such people, however experienced in other ministries, would not be versed in diplomatic procedures which, although they might be only procedures, were still important to the smooth running of foreign relations. I myself was a beginner in such matters, so how could I instruct others? It would mean a tremendous workload if I chose that path; and, after a year and a half of serving my country as foreign minister, I was already tired and suffering from nervous exhaustion.

  The other choice was to resign and so avoid the strain of battle; and this is what I chose. I did not want to leave public service, but I wanted to find a field in which I could work in tranquillity. For this reason, I thought of the post of ambassador in Paris, which at that time was the most important one available for a diplomat. It was the time of Poincaré, and France then held the reins of Europe in her hands. For us, Paris was vitally important, and our ambassador there would have a most delicate task, for several enemies of Hungary were firmly ensconced at the Quai d’Orsay. Until then our Paris embassy had been directed only by a chargé d’affaires, as I had not been able to find anyone I thought really suited for the Paris job. I fancy I judge myself objectively when I write that I really was more suited to that post than anyone I knew. Since early childhood I had been brought up immersed in French culture, and no one understood the French way of thinking better than I. My dealings with Barthou were proof of this. Also I had a wide acquaintance in many different circles. The post would be especially interesting to me, since the guardian of the peace treaty terms, the Council of Ambassadors, was based in Paris. The European department of the League of Nations was directed from there, as indeed was everything else that was going on in Europe.

  So that was my plan. I told Bethlen what I wanted to do, and he was very reluctant to let me go. Finally he agreed on condition that I should first complete the arrangements for Hungary’s admission into the League of Nations and only go to Paris when this had been accomplished. I suggested Daruváry as my successor at the foreign office. He had been chef du cabinet to Franz Joseph for many years, and he was then serving as minister of justice. With his lifelong experience at the centre of affairs and long connection with the Foreign Ministry, he seemed to me the best man for the job. Bethlen accepted him at once.

  The fact that I would not be able to take up my new post until sometime in October posed a problem as regards our representation in Paris, for the Quai d’Orsay had for some time been pressing us to name a fully-fledged ambassador, and we could not delay much longer. I found the somewhat unsatisfactory solution of naming Praznovsky, who was already chargé d’affaires there, to take over for the few months until I could replace him.

  Praznovsky was one of those who had managed to promote himself at the time of the Friedrich government. Now he held the rank of counsellor, which was higher than was justified by his length of service. However, he was a clever intelligent man, and so I had no objections to appointing him ambassador.

  I then sent for him and told him of my plan to name him as ambassador to Paris immediately, provided he agreed, as soon as Hungary had been accepted into the League of Nations, to be moved to Prague. This would in no way be a demotion, since he would retain his new rank as ambassador, which in itself was an unheard-of promotion. It was true that, with so little experience, he would carry no weight in Paris and have very little real responsibility, but I looked upon the move as only a temporary arrangement, as did Khuen-Héderváry and Kánya. Praznosvsky accepted my proposition with visible joy and readily agreed to the terms I had outlined. Then we talked of other matters. We had already been thinking of buying a house in Paris, a small private townhouse in the Rue de Berry. We talked about this and about its conversion into an embassy and the costs involved. I promised to come from Geneva to visit Paris and see to all the details myself. We parted in such a friendly fashion that it never occurred to me that Praznovsky would go behind my back to prevent the exchange of posts I had proposed.

  Soon after this I found myself preoccupied with all the work needed to prepare for our admittance to the League of Nations.

  I held it to be highly desirable that all the formalities should be effected as smoothly and peacefully as possible for our acceptance would in itself symbolize the recognition that Hungary was once again a respectable European nation and was no longer thought of in the pariah role of war criminal, outside the law, which had been so evident at the time of the king’s putsch.

  At that time the prestige of the League of Nations was still without a blemish. Its very foundation had been an immense step forward in international law, the first really important advance since the establishment of the International Court at The Hague. Of course, there were still many drawbacks, and most of these stemmed from the fact that from its inception it was primarily an association of the Victorious Powers, who used it to distribute what had belonged to Germany in the form of colonial mandates to the victors and to spread their authority over the territories of the former Turkish Empire. Through the League of Nations, the Victorious Powers legalized the cruel conditions of the various treaties of Versailles: for example, the artificial independence of Danzig, the rape of the Saar and the occupation of the Ruhr123. But in other matters, such as the question of Vilna, the League could offer no protection to a small nation when its interests conflicted with those of one of the Great Powers124. Its organic fault, as it were, was that it always had to give way to power, and if a Great Power objected then the League could not force the issue. It seemed that its ability to arbitrate was limited to enforcing the terms of the peace treaties – and the question of redrawing our frontiers fell into that category.

  Nevertheless, it was an important organization.

  The presence of the neutral countries, and even more that of the South American states with their growing importance, greatly contributed to reducing tension between the victors and the vanquished, and even in some small matters removing it completely. It was a
lso much to the general good that the Great Powers, now that everything they did was in full view of world opinion, found themselves forced to find benign reasons for some of their less commendable objectives. In those days the prestige of the League of Nations had not yet been destroyed, as it was later to be by its helplessness when faced with Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia and Japan’s aggression against China.

  Much to the advantage of the smaller nations was the fact that the League of Nations then acted much as radio stations were shortly to do. Through it the whole world got to know what was going on. The rights of the minorities were still very uncertain, for the conditions laid down in the peace treaties were so vague and unspecific as to bind no one. Almost the only exception concerned the schedule of rights accorded to the Jews of Poland. All the same, if we brought some minority matter to the attention of the League of Nations, we could sometimes manage to get what we wanted, since the new states did not take kindly to being so publicly called to account for their actions. They did not care to have the eyes of the world upon them. It was possible, by bringing matters up either in the General Assembly or before the Minorities Commission, to find support in the world’s press and so, thanks to the pressure of public opinion, arrive at an equitable solution. It was for all these reasons that our formal acceptance as a full member was of such vital importance to us.

  At that time there were two matters of outstanding importance that had to be decided as soon as possible. These were the appeals to the international frontier commissions to revise our borders: firstly with Austria and secondly with Yugoslavia. Another matter, although not so important, was to provide an answer to many of the accusations included in the denunciation of Hungary by the Alliance Israelite.