The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  On this we parted. I did not return to my office in the ministry but went straight to Vienna so as to be on my own.

  When I returned I handed in three copies of my report, which gave details of everything that had transpired in Geneva: one was for Horthy, one for the prime minister and the third for the ministry’s archive. I made a copy of this, leaving out only the most confidential aspects. I had decided to read this out in parliament, although I later abandoned the idea.

  I also withdrew from the appointment to Paris, even though my Agrément had already been accorded. It had so happened that Praznovsky had married a rich Frenchwoman and resigned from the diplomatic service, thereby leaving the Paris post unfilled just when we urgently needed an ambassador there. I did not yet feel strong enough for the job, and indeed Bethlen himself asked me to step down. I believe that he had been somewhat influenced by what had been spread around about me.

  As it turned out it was to be some time before the Paris post was filled. It was not until the end of January or the beginning of February that Frigyes Korányi arrived in Paris, by which time I was myself fit enough to do the job. So my withdrawal, made for the most selfless of reasons, had achieved nothing. I received a private message from the Quai d’Orsay saying that they would rather have had me than anyone else; but my decision had been taken on 14 December, at the same time as my resignation as foreign minister, so I was no longer in any position to revive the idea. I must also say that the campaign against me, which had been planned in some most influential circles, had soured any ambition I might still have had. Even my report about Geneva, which totally vindicated my actions there, was never read in the House and so received no publicity either then or later. It seemed as if everyone had agreed to maintain a profound silence about everything I had achieved while acting as minister for foreign affairs. They succeeded only too well.

  This was the end of my political career in Hungary. If I had wanted it, I could have obtained a seat in the parliamentary elections which were soon to follow; and, if I had set my mind to it, I would probably have acquired considerable influence, since I now had a wide knowledge of the inner secrets of quite a number of contemporary problems – always an advantage in dealing with current affairs. But I felt no desire to do so. I had been a member of parliament from 1901 to 1904 and again from 1910 to 1918, but I had then decided I was not really suited for a parliamentary career. Although I spoke easily in the House, I was never a first-rate speaker and had not striven to be so. On the contrary, I found myself filled with distaste for any form of oratory. Furthermore, I could not bind myself to the party in power, for I found myself opposed to too many things that the government either did or did not do. On the other hand, I did not want to join the opposition either as it would at once have been said of me that I had only done so out of wounded pride: in any case the opposition at that time was as lacking in ideas and firm policy as was the government – as they say in German: ‘Dasselbe in Grün.’ – ‘It’s just the same, only green.’ And so my part in directing Hungary’s foreign affairs finally ended there.

  All the same, I was twice called in later to give advice and help. On both occasions it concerned the ‘optans133’.

  This was caused by Romania’s manner of dealing with the reform of landownership, especially in the former Hungarian province of Transylvania, and caused no end of dust to rise in those days. It was to poison relations between Hungary and Romania for many years to come. Landowners of Hungarian nationality whose estates had been confiscated received only one per cent of their value in compensation, while it was further decreed that no one of foreign nationality could own land in Transylvania. This last prescription – the law concerning absentee landlords – was a direct violation of the terms of the Trianon Treaty, which specified that all those from the territories to be reallocated to the neighbouring states who opted to retain Hungarian nationality could retain their possessions. The second part of the question concerned the inequality of the land reform conditions as imposed in the Regat – the pre-war ‘Old Kingdom’ of Romania –and in the provinces now to be acquired from Hungary. While in the Regat owners were entitled to retain a minimum of three hundred hectares, in Transylvania it was reduced to three hundred acres: barely three fifths of the former. And not only that, for Romanian landowners in the Regat who owned several estates in different places were allowed to keep up to three hundred acres of each of their former possessions, while in Transylvania part of only one estate could be retained. All these new dispositions were in flagrant contradiction to the assurances of fair treatment made to the minorities as part of the agreement signed between Romania and the Great Powers. Of course, it had been done because, with very few exceptions, the estates in Transylvania had been held by families of Hungarian origin, and so these new laws had been directed effectively only against Hungarians.

  This matter had come up before for me towards the end of my term of office. On 16 August 1922 we put the whole question before the Council of Ambassadors, asking for their intervention to settle the matter according to Articles 53 and 64 of the Treaty of Trianon and Paragraph 3 of the contract affecting the treatment of minorities.

  We drew attention to the fact that Romania had based their new decrees on a law introduced in 1917 at Jassy by which all foreign ownership of landed estates had been prohibited. In December 1918 this had been extended to the whole kingdom. We pointed out that this argument was invalid, since Romania did not have the right to apply a law promulgated in 1918 to territory which at that time was not part of Romania, especially after signing the two international agreements by which these new territories were to be acquired. Any existing Romanian law should have been valid only to the extent that it did not contravene these agreements.

  The Council of Ambassadors recognized the legality and justice of our argument and at the end of August announced that the proper forum to hear our case was the League of Nations. They also told us what procedure to follow. This is as far as it had gone when I left office.

  My successor, in his petition to the League of Nations presented on 23 March 1923, omitted the legal basis for our complaint even though we had originally based our case upon it. He used only the violation of the contract regarding treatment of the minorities, referring to the paragraphs in the peace treaty concerning the optans and giving too much importance to the question of compensation, thus, in my opinion, weakening Hungary’s case. It seemed to me a mistake for us to insist that the major injustice of the treatment of the optans lay in the fact that many former Hungarians had been forced to leave their homes in the new Romania. Presented thus by our foreign office, our case was that the Romanian government first forced the optans to leave the country and then at the same time declared them to be absentees. This tempting notion was not correct and soon rebounded on us with a vengeance, since the new Romanian laws had failed to mention that the registration of absentees should not be effective until a year after the ratification of the peace treaty but had instead imposed a much earlier date; if I remember correctly it was either 1918 or 1919. And so our argument, that with one hand they had ejected Hungarian property-owners while confiscating their property with the other because they were absentees, did not hold water. Much stronger arguments could have been: firstly to recall that until the treaty had been ratified the frontiers had remained closed and guarded, and so Transylvanians who had been demobilized in Hungary had been unable to return home; and secondly that the many civil servants who were Hungarian-Transylvanians, owned property in Transylvania and had been expelled before the treaty terms had become valid should have their names removed from the absentee lists. This argument would at least have had the advantage of getting our case more quickly before the Joint Arbitration Tribunal. As it was, we obtained a hearing only after a lengthy and most disagreeable battle.

  The strongest part of our case, on which it would have been wiser to base our referral of the matter to the League of Nations, was that the designation of absentees had contravene
d the terms of the peace treaty as regards treatment of the minorities. We should also have emphasized the difference between the Romanian laws as applied in the Regat and those in Bukovina and Transylvania, which showed only too clearly how these were designed to penalize Hungarian landholders.

  Unfortunately, our government decided to concentrate on the issue of compensation.

  As I have just written, only the first application to the Council of Ambassadors had been made during my time in office. By the time the answer arrived at the end of August I had already left for Geneva, and so the matter was postponed until after I had returned. However, when I did return, I was not able to work for several months.

  I regret this still, because I am sure that if I had then been able to study this question closely, think deeply about it and weigh up all the political implications, and with the experience I had just had of the workings of the League of Nations, I would have been able to propose to our government a different argument and a different way of presenting it; and this would have pre-empted the long unhappy international dispute which followed and which was to make the situation of Hungarians in Transylvania so disagreeable and so difficult.

  I was to become involved once more in the problems of the optans, but only when I could have no further influence on how it should be handled. The Hungarian government’s petition was handed in on 15 March 1923. In mid-April the prime minister telephoned me about the question but not to discuss the strength of our case. Bethlen wanted me to accompany the new Hungarian delegate, György Lukács, to Geneva in a private capacity so that I could make his task easier, partly through my many connections there and partly because of my knowledge of procedure. This was because Lukács would not only be new to Geneva but also because he had had no previous diplomatic experience. My job would be to introduce him to people and help him in all the minor formalities that are so important in diplomatic negotiations. This would be necessary since both Lukács and his legal expert, Gajzágó, were complete novices. I willingly accepted this role of mentor, although I knew such a thing would always be a thankless task.

  I accepted willingly for two reasons. The first was that I have always felt strongly that it was my duty, even in small matters, to do whatever I could to serve my country, preserve its good name and promote its best interests. The second was that the mere fact I had been chosen for such a responsible, influential and educational task gave the lie to all those slanders and misrepresentations to which I had been subjected both before and after my resignation – but then unsuccessful Hungarians have always been at their most inventive when it comes to malicious rumour.

  I was happy to see again the lovely country beside Lac Léman. I had left in early autumn, desperately unwell; and now that I was well again I was to return in the full splendour of spring.

  Now I was to have much more free time. After I had introduced Lukács to all the important people with whom he would have to deal I had little more to do than see that all our missions’ courtesy letters were written in correct French. There was a real need for this, since neither of our delegates had an adequate acquaintance with foreign languages. As a result, I became a sort of house tutor, and after the first few days I found myself with little to do except draft official documents and letters in the evenings. This left me free to go where I liked during the daytime.

  I took the opportunity one day to pay a visit to Basle, where some of the most important of Holbein’s pictures were to be found in the City Art Gallery and also some fine works by the Swiss painters Böcklin and Hodler. I also recall going to Solothurn, home of the Maggi bouillon cube, where the Reinhardt brothers, owners of the factory, had undertaken the princely role of Maecenas. Everything had been built by them – town hall, sports arena, and covered swimming pool – as well as, for their workers, villa-type houses in gardens filled with flowers, where anyone would have been delighted to live. They founded and supported the most exemplary social institutions such as hospitals and what I believe were the first kindergartens in the world. I was particularly drawn to the picture gallery of this remote little town. Already two generations of Reinhardts had been picture-collectors, and the finest of their purchases were displayed in the public gallery they had built. Here were to be found superb works of the Barbizon school, as well as some the best pictures by Swiss painters.

  In their own house, freely open for all to see, there were not only paintings by Delacroix, Goya and Manet but also the excellent, yet almost unknown, works of Hodler. It gave me singular pleasure to find in egalitarian Switzerland patrons of art to rival the Medici, the kings of Saxony and Bavaria or, as in Hungary, the Eszterházys. It was indeed proof of a truly cultured people.

  Two valued old acquaintances from home were also in Geneva at that time. One was Benedek Jancsó, expert in all matters concerning the problems of minorities; while the other was my good friend and former colleague, Ilyesovics-Illyés, who, as he was originally from the foot of the Carpathians, was now concerned with laying before the League of Nations the complaints of the ethnic Ruthenians, who were being oppressed by the new government of Czechoslovakia.

  Although it does not really belong to my narrative, I feel must now include a little tale about these two because at the time it seemed so funny. They are both long deceased so I can tell it today.

  Jancsó and Ilyesovics-Illyés were like twins. They were never apart, lived together and went everywhere together. Jancsó had white hair and was short and fat, while his much thinner friend was deeply tanned and had black eyebrows as thick as a toothbrush. They lived sparingly, for they had very little money, and their principal amusement was to go for walks, which cost nothing.

  One day there was a charity collection in the town. Groups of pretty girls roamed the streets with collection boxes, stopping everyone they met and for each coin dropped in the box they handed out a paper cloverleaf which could be pinned on. For my two friends such contributions would have meant a heavy tax on their slender means. Illyés soon found a solution.

  As soon as the first girl approached him, he shouted at her; and with his flashing eyes, aggressive moustache, mouth opened wide in a menacing grimace and huge snapping teeth, he was a truly frightening sight. Even more alarming was the way he would roar out:

  ‘Je ne donne rien. Je suis Czechoslovak!’

  The girl nearly dropped dead with fright.

  Illyés repeated this with every girl who approached them on their walk and by this ruse not only saved their money but also made splendid anti-Czechoslovak propaganda.

  The same evening several Swiss friends came up to me and said: ‘How mean those Czechs are! They won’t give a sou to charity!’

  We laughed a lot about it.

  I was intensely curious to know what would happen at the first session of the Council that was to discuss the plight of the optans. Benedek Jancsó and I attended it together and found good places in the public seats, barely ten paces away from the side of the Council table. From there we had a good view of all the participants and were able to watch them closely. If I remember correctly it was Balfour who presided. Our delegates, Lukács and Gajzágó, sat with their backs to us, and Titulescu, who led the Romanian delegation, was directly facing us.

  He was an interesting, if strange-looking man. Clean-shaven, with wide cheekbones and slanting eyes, he had a marked Asiatic look. He had greying thick dark hair growing low over his curved forehead, as one sometimes sees in women. He was very tall with sloping shoulders, and when I met him for the first time he reminded me of the harem servants I had seen at the funeral of Effendi Ibrahim, the Sultan of Turkey’s heir. They too were all exceptionally tall, narrow-shouldered, with feminine-looking foreheads.

  All sorts of stories had been told about Titulescu, including that he had endured some accident while still adolescent. Personally I do not believe the rumours, for not only was he a married man, but such gossip was also belied by his tremendous vitality and the sparkling love of battle with which he defended his opinio
ns.

  He loved to argue and did it in the French legal manner, which to our eyes always seemed rather showy. He radiated indignation or sorrow or was moved to tears just as the occasion seemed to require. And as he spoke he gestured widely, just as Monnet-Sully used to when playing in Oedipus Rex, and from him poured a rush of words, gushing with pathos, roaring, menacing or imploring. That his presence of mind was extraordinary was shown by the way he could instantly exploit any failing in his opponent’s argument.

  First Lukács read our report. Then, after Titulescu had replied, there followed much argument between him and the Hungarian delegates. This was principally conducted on our side by Gajzágó, who found himself at some disadvantage because of his still faulty command of French. He uttered some awkward phrases, which Titulescu seized upon like a hawk. The whole exchange was like a glossy-skinned shark devouring two small fishes. It was pitiful to watch.

  However Titulescu’s eloquence was not able to change the predictable outcome. The Council, acting on the advice of the Italian delegate, Salandra, accorded the task of negotiating a compromise between Hungary and Romania to Adatoi, the head of the Japanese delegation.

  That was the most we could have hoped for at that stage.

  The fatal flaw in the constitution of the League of Nations was that it had no power to enforce its judgements. It could only negotiate and, where the terms of the peace treaties gave a clear direction, it could still only exert moral pressure. Even this depended on the attitude of the Council of Ambassadors simply because only that body was backed by the military force of the Great Powers. At this point it seemed that the question of the treatment of the optans was going in our favour. It should also have been to our advantage that a completely neutral judge had been appointed in the person of Adatoi, who, moreover, came from the Japanese delegation where I personally had found so much goodwill and friendly feelings a year and a half before.