In reality, Hungary is as polyglot as Austria. Exact statistics are not obtainable, since the Magyar census returns have long been deliberately falsified for "Magyar State" reasons. Roughly speaking, it may, however, be said that, in Hungary proper, i.e., exclusive of Croatia-Slavonia, where the population is almost entirely Serbo-Croatian, there are perhaps 8,500,000 Magyars, including nearly 1,000,000 professing and a large number of baptized Jews. Against this total there are more than 2,000,000 Germans, including the numerous colonies on the Austrian border, the Swabians of the south, and the Saxons of Transylvania; more than 2,000,000 Slovaks, who inhabit chiefly the northwestern counties; between three and four million Rumanes, living between the Theiss and the Eastern Carpathians; some 500,000 Ruthenes, or Little Russians, who inhabit the northeastern counties; some 600,000 Serbs and Croats in the central southern counties; 100,000 Slovenes along the borders of Styria and Carinthia; and some 200,000 other non-Magyars, including about 90,000 gypsies, who speak a language of their own. Taking the population of Hungary proper at 18,000,000, the Magyars are thus in a minority, which becomes more marked when Croatia-Slavonia with its population of 2,600,000 southern Slavs is added.
Distribution of Nationalities in Hungary.
It would have been possible for the Magyars, after the restoration of the Hungarian Constitution under the Dual Settlement of 1867, to have built up a strong and elastic Transleithan polity based on the recognition of race individualities and equality of political rights for all. The non-Magyars would have accepted Magyar leadership the more readily in that they had been dragooned and oppressed by Austria during the period of reaction after 1849 as ruthlessly as the Magyars themselves. Deák and Eötvös, who were the last prominent Magyar public men with a Hungarian, as distinguished from a narrowly Magyar, conception of the future of their country, pleaded indeed for fair treatment of the non-Magyars, and trusted to the attractive force of the strong Magyar nucleus to settle automatically the question of precedence in the State. But in 1875, when Koloman Tisza, the father of Count Stephen Tisza, took office, these wise counsels were finally and definitely rejected in favor of what Baron Bánffy afterward defined as "national Chauvinism." Magyarization became the watchword of the State and persecution its means of action. Koloman Tisza concluded with the monarch a tacit pact under which the Magyar Government was to be left free to deal as it pleased with the non-Magyars as long as it supplied without wincing the recruits and the money required for the joint army. The Magyar Parliament became almost exclusively representative of the Magyar minority of the people. Out of the 413 constituencies of Hungary proper more than 400 were compelled, by pressure, bribery, and gerrymandering, to return Magyar or Jewish Deputies. The press and the banks fell entirely into Jewish hands, and the Magyarized Jews became the most vociferous of the "national Chauvinists."
Nothing like it has been seen before or since—save the Turkish revolution of 1908, when the Young Turks, under Jewish influence, broke away from the relatively tolerant methods of the old régime and adopted the system of forcible "Turkification" that led to the Albanian insurrections of 1910-12, to the formation of the Balkan League, and to the overthrow of Turkey in Europe.
The bitter fruits of the policy of Magyarization are now ripening. The oppressed Rumanes look not toward Austria, as in the old days when their great Bishop Siaguna made them a stanch prop of the Hapsburg dynasty, but across the Carpathians to Bucharest; the Serbo-Croatians of Hungary, Croatia-Slavonia, and Dalmatia, whose economic and political development the Magyars have deliberately hampered, turn their eyes no longer, as in the days of Jellatchich, toward Vienna, but await wistfully the coming of the Serbian liberators; the Ruthenes of the northeast hear the tramp of the Russian armies; the Slovaks of the northwest watch with dull expectancy for the moment when, united with their Slovak kinsmen of Moravia and their cousins, the Czechs of Bohemia, they shall form part of an autonomous Slav province stretching from the Elbe to the Danube. For the Magyars, who have thrown to the winds the wisdom of the wisest men, fate may reserve the possession of the fertile and well-watered Central Hungarian plain. There they may thrive in modesty and rue at their leisure the folly of having sacrificed their chance of national greatness to the vain pursuit of the "Magyar State Idea" under the demoralizing influence of Austro-German imperialism.
The Watchers Of The Troad
By HARRY LYMAN KOOPMAN