Hungarian Problems

...A separate paper might be written on the Jewish question as it exists among them...

...Nor indeed was the fault wholly with the Hungarian nation...

...Others had an interest in keeping her disunited...

...But not one moment did he waste in speculation about possible future wars, nor even about possible appeals to the League of Nations, or rectification of treaties...

...But once more, the sudden clear view that Hungarian Catholics are gaining, that national organization is now imperative, must be enabled to take into itself too the evidence of what others think and have done...

...His mind went straight to the near-athand problem, and how to make sound and solid Catholic organization at home...

...I was sitting by the Danube when I talked over the possible organization of the national conference with a Transylvanian exiled layman, whose breadth of view, and above all whose courage, have long been my admiration...

...If more American publications could find their way into Hungary (by way of charity, if you will—I have no doubt that subscriptions will not be many in a land whose middle class earns about twelve shillings a month and can eat meat about once a week) and if those publications make it clear that Hungarian news will be welcomed along, of course, 'with news from all other countries, even those most hostile to her, international accord will be strengthened...

...November 18, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 43 deliberately extinguishing the Magyar language and culture which largely go hand in hand with the Catholic faith, and finally that Serbian Orthodoxy makes no disguise of its intention to become the leading church in eastern Europe (even if this involves converting its Orthodoxy into modernism of an unblushing sort) and actually provided a hierarchy for the fantastic Czech schism, you are bound to see that every disaster to Hungary has meant, and means, a disaster to the Catholic Church, as the engineers of those disasters very well know, and are glad to know...

...As it is, Hungary stands, in eastern Europe, like a Catholic island full of starving marooned sailors, even as the heroic Catholic minorities in the lands around her lead precarious existences once more like crews marooned on rocks...

...Therefore we must take the most friendly interest in the hopes of Hungarian Catholics...

...I was given the minutest information, and opportunities for personal inspection, by an intelligent police...

...Doubtless his hopes are that some day the Regnum Marianum, the Holy Crown, will be reconstituted...

...but it was kept suppressed for the most part, and constructive thought and plan were always offered by those whose business it was to devise...

...I was allowed to meet eminent ecclesiastics, and university professors, and to drink thin wine with peasants...

...I had many privileges, this and the last two years...

...Also upon the Protestant question in Hungary, less acute perhaps, but more puzzling than the former...

...We accept easily the confession made by Hungarians themselves that, had they been more alert to the situation long ago, and better organized, things would not be as distressing as they are...

...But to take the Catholic Church for granted and not to see that its equipment needs continual overhauling, is the danger of all hereditarily Catholic folk...

...With these minorities, I repeat, we have the keenest sympathy, and have often sought, and are now actually seeking, to make their necessities known and even to collect money for them...

...Everywhere it was the same...

...You could, if you were tactless enough to try, reach the level of a profound bitterness of resentment...

...But it is clear as daylight that if the tides (which seek but to rise) swamp Hungary, such an anti-Catholic belt will have been completed that it is incredible that the lesser groups will not themselves be drowned, even if this does not happen first...

...Their difficulties are immense...

...I was admitted into family life...