HUNGARY
Budapest, Tuesday, December 29th. I left Vienna at nine o’clock this morning and reached Budapest at two. I had tea with Mrs. Gerard, who is in Budapest visiting her sister, Countess Sigray. I called at the home of Count Albert Apponyi to leave my card and letters of introduction. I dined with Mrs. Gerard and the Count and Countess Sigray.
The great Hungarian plain, bounded by the Carpathians on the east and by the Danube and the Save on the south has been inhabited by the Hungarian people for more than a thousand years. The inhabitants of this plain number about sixteen millions at the present time. They pride themselves upon the fact that they have maintained their national entity since the Ninth Century, although they have stood alone and exposed in the middle of Europe, without any of the geographical advantages which accrue from a situation of insular isolation such as has been enjoyed by the English.
The world in general insists in thinking of Hungary as an Austrian province and in counting Austria-Hungary one country, whose name has been hyphenated with the sole purpose of inconveniencing conversation in foreign countries. As a matter of fact, Hungary and Austria are two distinct nations, inhabited by antagonistic races who speak different languages and hold different ideals. The Hungarians are of Magyar descent and speak a beautiful, musical language, while the Austrians are a mixture of many races whose common tongue is a borrowed, unclassical German. Each country has its own government, its own parliament, and its own cabinet officers. The Hungarian nobility regard the Austrian nobles as mere upstarts. Nothing is so displeasing to a Hungarian as to be called an Austrian, or to be told that Austrians and Hungarians are one and the same people.
Surrounded by three powerful enemies, the Turks, the Austrians, and the Slavs, they have not succeeded in continuously maintaining their liberty during the ten centuries of their existence as a nation. They came under the domination of the Turks during the sixteenth century, but under the leadership of Prince Eugene they with the assistance of Austria succeeded in liberating themselves in 1716. In 1848 they were subjugated by Austria assisted by Russia and ever since that time have looked forward with confident anticipation to the day when they may be strong enough to become again an independent nation. The diplomats, statesmen, and scholars of their noble families have labored so astutely and successfully towards this end, that the state of bondage which succeeded the conquest of 1848 has gradually and by successive moves been lightened, until today their relations with Austria may be approximated by the statement that Franz Josef, King of Hungary, happens to be at the same time Emperor of Austria, and that the two nations have a close defensive and offensive military alliance. In order to promote the efficiency of this alliance, their War and Foreign Relations ministries are united into single organizations. There is one Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, but there are separate Ministers of Education, Agriculture, etc. History shows that the salvation of Hungary has often depended upon the ability of her leaders to play their three powerful neighbors against one another.
In the present war they are making use of alliances with Austria and Turkey, the two most decadent of their three historic enemies, in order to stem the onrush of Russia, their third and most powerful antagonist. They are a people ever faithful to their alliances even to the point of unselfishness.
Thursday, December 31st. Budapest is one of the most beautiful cities I have seen. The great Danube, deep, magnificent, and rapid—500 yards wide—flows by, with Buda on its right bank and Pest on its left. Great hills sheer out of the water and on them are the government buildings and the Royal Palace. The humbler structures cluster in the valleys between the hills. Most of the architecture of the town is very good and the worst of it is better than the average elsewhere. The river, spanned by four handsome bridges, is skirted on either side by drives and official buildings; museums and expensive hotels face these drives. The city is in every way very modern, with broad avenues, excellent street-car systems, and clean, well-lit streets.
Friday, January 1, 1915. I spent today in sightseeing,—the first day in several weeks that I have been free from social engagements. I took a guide from the hotel in order to waste no time and miss no sights that one ought to enjoy. We went to the public market, the Industrial Museum, the Art Museum, the public park, and the Cathedral. My guide was a most convulsing person. He was supposed to speak “perfect English,” but achieved some extraordinary effects. Would you know what “sinkim pork” might mean? He said, “everyone eats it on New Year’s Day,” and so I perceived it to be “sucking pig.”
Some provisions have gone up in price; flour is doubled in value and the government has had to fix a maximum legal price. Meat and game are cheaper than usual, perhaps because many people are killing and selling their animals to save the grain which would otherwise have to be used to feed them.
The utter ignorance of the people concerning everything that is happening outside of Vienna and Budapest is amazing. The government has somehow convinced the people that everything in the war is going wonderfully well, and this in the face of the unsuppressible facts that there are at present no Austrians in Serbia and that the Russians hold all Galicia and have been through the Carpathians.
Saturday, January 2d. The German comic paper Simplicissimus recently made a cartoon comment on the Austro-Hungarian army and the whole issue was suppressed by the censor in Austria and Hungary. The drawing showed a group of three Austrians, a general, an officer, and a private. The soldier had a lion’s head, the officer an ass’s head, and the general had no head at all.
Austria and Germany have not as yet produced one “great man.” The Allies have two—Joffre and Kitchener and possibly a third in Delcassé.
The Austrian Emperor is a little man, slightly stooped, rather shriveled-up and possessed of a pair of keen, shrewd eyes. He is an able follower of the Emperor Ferdinand who once replied to the statement that a certain one of his subjects was a patriot by saying: “I don’t care if he’s patriotic for the country, but is he patriotic for me?” Franz Josef is cold, pitiless, and does not hesitate to ruin in a moment his most faithful servitor if he is at any time guilty of failure, or commits a blunder. Even when a minister or general is forced to carry out an order in spite of strong protests, he has relentlessly broken him if any catastrophe has resulted. A notable case is that of the general who commanded the Austrian armies in the battle of Sadowa.
Sunday, January 3d. I have managed to get in a good deal of reading on boats, trains, and at odd moments since I left Paris, and it has enlarged my comprehension of this war. I have carefully studied every book on the war and subjects related to it. I have read several times each the books of Bernhardi, Nietzsche, and Steed’s “Hapsburg Monarchy.”
Monday, January 4th. In Hungary there are few princes or dukes; the highest nobles are counts, whose titles retain something of the old significance of hereditary rulers of a “county.” The serfs have only recently been liberated and to all intents and purposes the feudal system still exists, in spirit if not in form. Among the counts in Hungary, several stand out conspicuously above the rest; among them are the Karolyis, the Apponyis, the Hunyadis, and the Wenkheims, all of whom are interconnected by marriage and close social relations. These people maintain themselves on their vast estates like rulers of small principalities.
At the request of the Countess X. I had written to her mother, the Countess W., before leaving Vienna, and found her answer awaiting me at the Consul’s office when I arrived in Budapest. I learn that she also communicated with Count Berchtold, the Prime Minister of the Empire, with Count Szecsen, ex-Ambassador to France, and with the Hungarian Premier, so that in case I missed her letters (she sent me one to Vienna and one to Budapest) these gentlemen would see to it that I went to visit her, as she wished to thank me personally for what I had been able to do for her daughter, and also to hear direct news of her grandchildren.
I left Budapest early this afternoon and arrived after dark at Békéscsaba, which is about half-way to Belgrade. I was met by a majordomo who appropriated my luggage and led me to a private car on a private railroad belonging to the Countess. We started immediately and ran in about twenty minutes to the gate of the estate where she usually resides. Here I was carefully transferred into a waiting carriage and was tenderly tucked into numerous fur rugs by two or three strong men. The two splendid horses turned through the gates for a ten-minute drive across a beautiful park to the castle—and such a castle! It is equal in size and charm to some of the famous French châteaux along the Loire which I studied last spring.
I was carefully unpacked again under a splendid porte-cochère and ushered by numerous flunkies into the presence of the Countess. She received me in a tremendous room with a lofty ceiling, and in a preliminary talk of an hour she took off the first keen edge of her appetite for news.
My bedroom is perfectly huge and has two ante-rooms—for the personal servants whom I do not possess. We dined at eight, there being at the table, besides the Countess, a daughter and her companion, a Frenchwoman. During dinner the Countess mentioned that the war necessitated frequent readjustments in the management of her estates; that the military authorities had recently taken another five hundred of her men for service in the army. She asked me if I enjoyed hunting and, upon receiving an affirmative answer, said that she would send me for an hour or two with the pheasants in the morning. She warned me that the shooting would be poor because no care had been taken of the preserves since her sons departed for the war.
Békéscsaba, Tuesday, January 5th. I was awakened at nine by a valet who came in, opened the blinds, shut the windows, brought the breakfast specified by me last night, and assisted me to bathe and dress.
At ten I paid my regards to the Countess and then the chasseur-en-chef who was to take me for the morning’s sport was presented to me. I climbed into a shooting wagon, which then drove across fields some twenty minutes to a woody country. I was provided with two beautiful little English “16-bore,” one of which was carried by a loader who walked always behind my right elbow. The game was pheasants, partridges, and hares, the latter perfectly enormous, being thirty inches long when held up by the feet. While hunting I was followed at a respectful distance by the shooting wagon in which I was expected to ride when going farther than fifty yards, and by another wagon which was to carry the game I was expected to kill. The game was all natural wild game, not the domesticated kind of the English system. The chasseur had with him a dozen peasant boys as beaters. I “walked up” and “flushed” game myself, except when there was a particularly good bit of cover; then I was conducted ahead with many bows to a well-selected spot, whereupon the beaters in a line began at a distance of a hundred yards and “worked through,” knocking their sticks together, a process that several times resulted in my being absolutely overrun by a burst of pheasants flushing from all directions, flying at all heights and angles and traveling like bullets. In two hours I killed seventy-three pheasants and partridges and twenty-three hares, and this in spite of the fact that my shooting was erratic. Thus at one spot I killed eight pheasants with as many shells without changing my feet (it was there that the loader was useful) and then a few minutes later missed five running.
At noon the young Countess drove out with her French companion to join me. She watched the shooting until half after twelve and then drove me home for luncheon. It is the custom for the men who start shooting early to be sought out and brought home to luncheon by the ladies, or to be joined by them for lunch in the woods in case of an all-day shoot. The game is shot only by the nobles and their guests and there seem to be no Robin Hoods among the devoted peasantry.
If this shooting to which I had been treated was considered by the Countess to need an apology, I was curious to ascertain what she called really good hunting, and so I propounded the question. She replied quite seriously that the best shooting to be had upon her estates was hare shooting and that on a good day five guns were usually expected to kill four thousand between the hours of ten and three.
To an American it is very extraordinary to see feudalism in full swing; to have every person whom one meets anywhere, stop, raise his hat, and make a deep obeisance; to have even the slightest word or request to anyone answered with a low bow and an instantly bared head. It is still more surprising to realize how sincere and devoted is all this homage. Everyone for miles around acts in this same way to the Countess, to her daughter, and, of course, to any of their guests. To an American it all seems several hundred years out of date.
Wednesday, January 6th. There were guests for dinner tonight, nobles from neighboring estates. One of the men is about to start on an automobile trip to the Serbian and Carpathian fronts. He is to be away some four or five days, leaving on Monday. He begged me to go with him but I resisted the temptation, for I am now forty-nine hours’ travel from London and must soon be turning my face westward.
I went to mass this morning in the little plaster church of a village near the castle. The acolytes were small peasant boys, and whenever they knelt down they turned toward the congregation prodigious boot-soles studded with a surprising array of shiny hobnails.
Thursday, January 7th. In bidding me good-bye last night, the Countess took my hand in both of hers and before the assembled dinner party thanked me for my services to her daughter and said she appreciated my having given her two days of my valuable time;—all of which she did in so gracious and charming a manner that I not only was not embarrassed, but felt it was reward enough for any two trips to the front.
Nearly all my conversations since entering Austria-Hungary have been carried on in French, since it is spoken by virtually everyone with whom I have come in contact. In Hungary all the people of consequence speak four languages, Hungarian, German, French, and English, but French is generally preferred to English by all except those to whom English is the native tongue.
I left Békéscsaba at nine this morning and arrived in Budapest early in the afternoon.
Budapest, Friday, January 8th. I lunched today with Consul-General Coffin and dined with Countess Sigray.
Saturday, January 9th. Yesterday on my arrival in Budapest I found awaiting me an invitation from Count Albert Apponyi to visit him at his castle at Eberhard, near Pozsony. I left Budapest at eight, reached Pozsony about eleven, and drove to Eberhard, where I was received by the Count.
I was extremely impressed on meeting Count Apponyi. I had anticipated something unusual, but he was quite beyond my expectations. He is about six feet three inches tall, has a splendidly erect carriage, and is a most impressively handsome man. He has a broad well-shaped forehead sloping back steeply, splendid blue-gray eyes, the biggest thinnest nose in the world, enormous nostrils, a strong sensitive mouth, and a grayish square-cut beard. The “grand old man of Hungary” looked up to his title.
He has been a member of the Hungarian Parliament for forty-two years and has several times held ministerial portfolios. His progressive ideas have usually landed him in the position of leader of the opposition. He has invariably been Hungary’s representative at all international meetings, peace conferences, and inter-parliamentary unions. He is a decade ahead of his day and generation, being probably the most progressive man in all Hungary. This, coupled with his blood, his magnificent appearance, and his wonderful education, make him an extraordinary power in the affairs of the kingdom. He has twice been in America. He has several times visited ex-President Roosevelt at the White House and at Sagamore Hill, and the Colonel has been a guest here at Eberhard. The Count also knows intimately such men as Lowell, Untermyer, Butler, and Taft, and appreciates their ideas,—“the American idea” as he calls it. It is no wonder that the other less advanced Hungarian nobles criticize his ideas and methods.
The Count’s French is exquisite, and he speaks English as I have seldom heard it spoken,—as the cultivated Frenchman speaks French,—with purpose, with science, as an art. His enunciation is wonderful and he instinctively picks out words to aid rhythm and enunciation. Of his native language, Hungarian, and of his German, I am not capable of judging.
I admired the Count’s library. Three sides of the big room were covered with filled shelves, which lapped over into the rooms on either side. Such a conglomeration of books;—leather bindings, cloth, paper, stacks of pamphlets, all jumbled together and yet in order. The books were indiscriminately in French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Italian, English, and Greek, all languages which the Count knows with great thoroughness. In reply to my admiring comment, he looked around the library a bit sadly, I thought, and said slowly: “Yes, it means much to me. It has grown out of my life.”
The Apponyi castle has stood in its present shape for over two hundred years. Like all contemporaneous residences of feudal chiefs, it was built primarily for defense and this determines its general structure. It is square with a great court in the center, in the middle of which is a well-house. The castle walls are of stone nearly three feet thick, plastered over with cement and painted white. It is two stories high with a steep ungabled roof and is virtually guiltless of architecture. The only entrance to the building is through an archway leading under the front face into the interior court. No outside windows existed in the original structure but many have since been cut into it. The castle reveals many signs of age. The floors in all the halls and rooms, except those of the salons, are of stone, and little uneven hollows on their surfaces show where the feet of many generations have left their mark. The libraries and salons, six or seven in number, were remodeled some time during the last century and are remarkably fine.
At present one side of the castle has been converted into a hospital and here some twenty-five wounded Hungarian soldiers are cared for.
At luncheon there were as guests the Count and Countess Karolyi Hunyadi and two of their sons, and the Countess Herberstein, whose husband is a general in the army.
Sunday, January 10th. I had the honor of a very interesting walk and talk with Count Apponyi this morning. Among other things he said: “I sometimes let my younger daughter (aged 12) play with the children of the peasants on the place. It gives her an understanding of life, and besides, there is no one of her own age and rank in this part of the country.” This for a Hungarian nobleman is an extremely democratic remark.
The mass in Count Albert’s private chapel was most interesting. The chapel is built into the castle as a part of it. The family assembled in a little oratory or balcony giving off the second-floor hall. From this oratory one looked down upon the service and upon the peasants crowded together below. It was glassed in so that one viewed the spectacle through windows, so to speak. These had two panes which could be opened if one desired to hear more clearly the service or sermon.
In a long conversation, Count Apponyi, in answer to my questions, made the following statements as to Hungary’s attitude in the war, which he defined as being a conflict between Orientalism and Occidentalism:
“You who live in America do not have to consider or define the differences between Occidentalism and Orientalism. You are geographically isolated from Orientalism and are so axiomatically Occidental that the issue is not yet a vital one for you. You do not have to search for concepts and definitions in this regard. The same would be true of the Chinese who are so extremely Oriental—who are so near the South Pole, so to speak—as to find thinking about the matter unnecessary. They take their Orientalism as a matter of course, as do you your Occidentalism.
“But we of Hungary who are on the geographical frontier of Occidentalism, who are, in these present centuries, Occidentalism’s contenders in the everlasting battle between East and West, and who find ourselves at death-grips with Russia, the present-day aggressive representative of Orientalism, we, I say, have need to consider such matters and to find concepts upon which to build.
“Thus I, as a Hungarian, have my definitions, my lines of demarcation between the two. My definitions of Occidentalism are four in number. Any nation which fails in one or more of them is on the Oriental side of the line. The four items are:
“(1) The distinction between spiritual and temporal power—the mutual independence of Religion and Government. The form of religion or the form of government does not and cannot decide the question. Thus in Russia the Greek Christian Church is Oriental because it makes itself one with the State and is used by the State as a club to keep the subjects of the State in political subjugation.
“(2) The recognition of the equal value of woman and man. Occidentalism feels that woman and man are different but does not feel that man is superior to woman. Discussions of the differences between man and woman sometimes occur in Occidental countries as was the case in the late disputes in England as to woman’s fitness for politics. There was no implication that man was an animal superior to woman. In Occidentalism woman and man are considered equal before the law and in the eyes of God, while in Orientalism women are often little better than slaves and in some eastern religions are not supposed after death to go to heaven.
“(3) The recognition of the rights of the individual. All individuals are considered equal before the law. The individual is not a means to some end—he is an end in himself. This is laid down in its spiritual aspect in Christianity and in every form of Christianity. The difference consists in this: that in Occidental Christianity it acted as a germ—as the principle of an evolution which led through a painful ascension of numberless steps to the idea of juridical and social equality. In Oriental Christianity the germ remained secluded in the spiritual sphere, without taking effect in the secular order.
“(4) The recognition of the dignity of labor. In Occidentalism there is none of the feeling that to labor is unworthy; there is none of the feeling that to labor is the part of slaves and lower creatures. Christ was a carpenter and the son of a carpenter; he chose his disciples from amongst fishermen and laborers and laid down the rule that labor enhances the dignity of man.
“These four items contain the elements of all progress and that is why Occidentalism alone is really progressive. Whatever progress is achieved by Orientals consists in adopting certain technical results of Occidental evolution. This does not mean that Oriental nations cannot be strong and powerful, for many of them have at times been powerful. While they are powerful, their policy is necessarily one of aggression, because their energy is not able to assert itself in internal progress and must, therefore, find an outlet in foreign aggression. Note Russia. In history you will find that the cessation of aggressiveness in an Oriental nation has always meant either the beginning of decay or, as was the case of Hungarians in the 11th century, of an evolution toward Occidentalism. In the 11th century the Hungarians were Oriental—now they are Occidental. That may follow in Russia too if she is defeated in the present war. Paradoxical as the statement seems, defeat contains brighter prospects for her than victory. For nations at large the victory of Russia would mean the advance of the inferior Eastern type of civilization at the expense of the superior Western one, a calamity not to be considered without shuddering.”
He continued: “Turkey is no longer an aggressive representative of Orientalism. She is even trying under the ‘Young Turks’ to become Occidental. Her ‘Young Turks’ are laboring for results which would include all my four definitions of Occidentalism. Her participation in the present war does not fall under the head of East versus West, but is inspired simply by consideration for her own safety as an Asiatic power and as the guardian of Constantinople. In a general sort of way, there is no formula that covers the whole ground of all the phenomena of any great action. There is always an intersection of motives. As between Russia and Austria-Hungary, the present war is a struggle of the East in its Russian form against the West, but two other forces are at work which, although they do not concern us in the least, combine with this one. These are the Anglo-German trade rivalry and the Franco-German race antipathy.”
Since I have been in the countries of the Dual Alliance I have been anxious to secure a clear and reasonable declaration of the motives which actuate the leading men in the nations comprising it. It was not possible to obtain such an explanation in Germany, because people either frankly admitted that Germany’s purpose was to become through military aggression the dominant power of the world, or they flew into such a rage at the mere question that nothing they said was either reasonable or consecutive. Even the carefully prepared literature of the Imperial Foreign Office failed to impress me as logical or sincere. It was, therefore, a pleasure to obtain from the Count a statement of what may be called the Hungarian point of view.
Somewhat later in the day I asked the Count what his answer was to the statement so often repeated by the Allies, that the sovereigns of the Dual Alliance forced war upon their people. He replied:
“The German, Austrian, and Hungarian people were not driven into the war by their sovereigns, and could not have been so driven. They approve the war because they realize its necessity as a defense. They wished to avoid it as did their sovereigns. They were all compelled to accept it as the only means of defense against an aggression cynically planned and carefully prepared.”
Monday, January 11th. I had intended to leave on an early train this morning, but when I broached the subject the Count would not permit it and insisted that I stay until tomorrow afternoon, when he is called to Budapest by government duties.
Tuesday, January 12th. After breakfast it snowed a few minutes. A little later it commenced to snow in earnest,—great, fat, lazy flakes falling out of a leaden sky. From one of the castle windows the Count and I watched them against the background of some fir trees in the garden below. “That is good,” said Count Apponyi. “That will be good for my wheat-fields just sprouting. It will cover them and keep them warm. I have now long been hoping for the snow, which is overdue.” Some moments later I said, “The falling snow is for me one of the most beautiful motions in nature.” He replied: “To me falling snow always suggests Patience. A flake of snow? Ce n’est rien! (with a gesture). But it falls and falls, never hurrying, each little flake a distinct entity, and at last it makes the world beautiful—and it also covers my wheat-fields.”
The Hungarian nobles receive an education very different from ours. If anything, it leads to greater individuality. From infancy they learn four languages—their native one, and German, French, and English. To this is added an elaborate knowledge of courtesy, custom, precedence, and manners which is taught them from childhood. The boys are also trained to ride and shoot. They are sent to school between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, where they learn Latin very thoroughly and get a smattering of other things. They almost unconsciously absorb the knowledge of managing the great estates which constitute their wealth. They have a taste for reading and prefer rather serious literature. With a perfect knowledge of Latin, English, German, and French, nearly all masters are open to them in the original. They miss only a few: Dante, Cervantes, and the ancient Greeks, although the more scholarly ones like Apponyi know Greek. Since they have much leisure, they often possess by the time they are thirty an extraordinarily interesting amount of knowledge. In Hungary everyone from peasants to counts is musical.
We took lunch today in the perfectly splendid old castle of the Karolyi Hunyadis at Ivanka. The other guests were the Countess Herberstein and an Austro-Hungarian General of Division, whose name I did not catch. Count Apponyi and I drove over together from Eberhard and after luncheon took the train from the neighboring station of Pozsony Ivanka. I was received with the most extravagant cordiality by the Hunyadis on account of services which I had been able to render to members of their family in the course of my work at the Embassy in Paris.
The Hunyadi castle was really as fine or finer than some of the smaller ones which I visited along the Loire last spring, and it was the more impressive because it was “alive”—inhabited—and furnished with the most magnificent appointments. The stair-hall particularly recalled some of those splendid old French ones, being in the same sort of yellow Caen stone.
While we were waiting for a train today, Count Apponyi informed me quite seriously that Hungary was not the least feudal, either in theory or practice.
The Hungarians harbor no animosity against Britain and France and really deserve the chivalrous friendship of these two nations. They are the only people in the present conflict who, in the heat and excitement of war, have on all occasions behaved like good sportsmen. When trains of Russian prisoners arrive at Hungarian stations, the people manifest no hostility, but greet them with kindness and sympathy and offer them food and flowers. The populace has not molested alien enemies, and their government has not indulged in wholesale internments of enemies’ subjects. In Hungary I found British horse trainers, English tutors, and French governesses going tranquilly about their peaceful occupations. English tailors advertised their business in the Hungarian newspapers, and their clients went to them as readily as they would have gone in peace time. French chefs and servants were, as a matter of course, retained in the employ of noble families, and were treated with unvarying consideration and sympathy by their Hungarian fellow-servants. This attitude has been steadfastly maintained in spite of the wholesale imprisonment by the Allies of such Hungarian subjects as were left within their territory at the opening of hostilities. Of the nations which I have studied Hungary is the only one involved in the present conflict which has not stooped to reprisal and retaliation.
It was a curious demonstration of the difference in the national temperament of the Teutonic and Magyar races to mark how diametrically opposed was the manner in which the two peoples regarded the efforts of the American Embassy in Paris to safeguard their respective subjects. As I, during the earlier weeks of the war, had been closely associated with these efforts, everyone I met had something to say to me upon the matter.
EBERHARD—ONE OF COUNT APPONYI’S VILLAGES
Throughout Germany there was universal complaint and criticism of the methods of treating the German subjects who, at the beginning of the war, had been interned in France. I was constantly obliged to hear accounts of how many people had been crowded into one building, how at first only straw was provided for bedding, and how scarce and poor was the food which was furnished. The censure was primarily for the French nation, but the comments conveyed no sense of obligation to our Embassy staff, who had worked so untiringly to alleviate these conditions, which, moreover, resulted from no mal-intent on the part of the French, but were simply the inevitable consequences of the sudden oncoming of war. Every national resource of the French Republic was devoted to quick mobilization, upon which the fate of the nation hung, and until that operation had been accomplished, little time or thought could be devoted to alien citizens.
On entering Hungary I braced myself to endure the same hostile attitude. To my intense surprise I was everywhere welcomed with great cordiality and received as a sincere friend and protector of the Hungarian people who had been interned in France. The great families of Hungary sent me invitations to visit them on their estates, they threw open their most exclusive clubs, offered me opportunities to view the fighting on the Russian front, and treated me like one of themselves. Of expressions of appreciation and gratitude there was no limit, and they greatly over-emphasized my services. Not only were the nobles thus demonstratively grateful, but in nearly every village and town to which I went I found inhabitants who had returned from internment in France to relate how helpful Monsieur Wood at the American Embassy had been to them. Often I remembered neither the individuals nor the incidents they so gratefully dwelt upon, but the general atmosphere of friendliness thus created was like springtime after frost.
In Germany, even after establishing my identity, I have by citizens or German Secret Service men been the object of grossly insulting remarks. In Hungary no one even asked what was my personal bias on the present war, but everyone remembered only the services which the Embassy of neutral America had in France rendered to any Hungarian subject who needed assistance. If the other nations of the Dual Alliance possessed the generosity and courtesy of the Hungarians, people outside the war would find it easier to be neutral in sentiment as well as in deed.