Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/398

 is extremely difficult to secure. Order is maintained with great energy by the Roumanians.

All the factories in Budapest are idle; they have neither raw material nor coal nor even machinery. The Roumanians grabbed everything that could be moved. Nothing is left of the factories but the walls. Even the metal roofs were taken down and sent off to Roumania, in payment of damages for destruction done during the war by the Magyars. Only a few flour mills are grinding grain and so strictly are they controlled by the Roumanians that not a pound of flour is unaccounted for. President Bacher of the biggest flour mill company, a millionaire, told us that he cannot get a single kilogram of flour for himself.

The saddest sight in all Budapest is begging, caused by war and by the destruction of economic life of the country as a result of the bolshevist episode. The streets are full of war invalids, clad in rags and barefooted, begging for something to eat. There are also thousands of children, terribly neglected, appealing to your mercy. Even the educated classes have to resort to beggary, and you will see former state officials and ex-army officers openly beg alms on the streets. Nobody is ashamed of begging; it has become a matter of course.

Roumanian field kitchens are besieged all day by crowds of all classes who beg for scraps of food; similar crowds are found around the Roumanian barracks.

The office of our diplomatic representative in Budapest, Mr. Hodža, is filled all day long with applicants for passports to our republic and with petitioners for help of all kind. Most of them are Jews, and that presents a serious problem to us. Jews from Hungary flock in thousands into our state. The cause of migration is to be sought in pogroms which have lately occured in all Magyarland against the Jews. In Ostřihom a few days ago several Jews were killed, and the pogrom was suppressdsuppressed [sic] by the Roumanians with much difficulty. In other places the Roumanians themselves started a pogrom or incited the people to it. The people feel very bitter toward the Jews, looking upon them as the organizers of bolshevism and the authors of the present Magyar misery.

The Jews realize their dangerous position and besiege our legation with requests for passports so as to get into our republic. They get priests to baptize them, carry baptismal certificates with them and produce them on every occasion. Christenings are done in a wholesale manner, and it is a startling sight to watch the ceremony performed in a Catholic church on large numbers of young and old Jews. As soon as they get passports, they go straight north to our territory. In one day, August 30, 600 Jews crossed the bridge at Komárno, to the great displeasure of the Komárno Jews who did not care to be swamped by their kinsmen from Budapest.

Our government will have to pay attention to this migration. These Jews are no friends of the Czechoslovak epublicRepublic [sic]. They were for the most part bolsheviks during the reign of Bela Kuhn, the more energetic ones were people’s commissaries; they led the invasion into Slovakia in June, they counterfeited our stamped money, they are stirring up the Slovaks against the Czechs, they bribe, corrupt and demoralize. Our legation is bothered with them terribly.

Not merely Jews, but all kinds of people go to the Czechoslovak legation, and Hodža is today one of the biggest persons in Budapest. His influence is immense and his word goes far. They look on him as the representative of one of the Great Powers, and many speak of him as the boss of Hungary.

Nobody pays attention to politics; there is general apathy toward all political questions. Roumanians made themselves at home in Budapest. Aristocrats and clericals are glad of their presence, but the rest of the people would like to see them go back to Bucharest. They maintain strict order, and I feel positive that as soon as they leave, there will be at once new bolshevik outbreaks and another revolution.

In a recent interview President Masaryk said: “We can never agree to anything like the Danube federation, which would be old Austria without the emperor. Czechoslovakia must preserve its absolute political and economical independence. Our form of government will tend to approach the American form of government. Even now we are halfway between a ministerial, parliamentary government, and a government of strong men headed by a president with a cabinet, and perhaps the Czechoslovak president will later be vested with more power.”

Recent census of Slovakia uncovered the gross falsifications of the former Magyar statistics. The important city of Košice (Kaschau) had according to the census of 1900 only 23.50% of Slovaks, and in 1910 this proportion was further decreased to 14.89%. With the Magyar pressure removed the number of people who declared themselves Slovaks jumped nearly four times. The enumeration just completed shows that Slovaks in Košice number 22,808 or 49.38,% Magyars 17,470 or 37.83%, Germans 2251 or 4.88%, others 3568 or 7.91%.

In the county of Šaryš, north of Košice, recent census gave the following figures as compared with the census of 1900: Slovaks increased from 115,042 to 148,424, Rusins decreased from 33,988 to 9202, Germans decreased from 10,886 to 2401, and Magyars decreased from 10,926 to 6309. The total population of the county decreased in 19 years by 4200.