General Correspondence

Blackwell Family
Blackwell, Alice Stone
Karolyi, CatherinePost Graduate Hospital
New York.
January 24th 1925.

Dear Mrs. Blackwell, 

It is now only that I am able to answer both your letters, which gave me very great pleasure. It is a real satisfaction to feel to be understood, and that our cause is appreciated by the progressive and thinking elements in America.

The answer you wrote to the Christian Science Monitor about the Hungarian restoration plans shows how wonderfully well you have understood our problem, and I thank you with all my heart for having so valuably backed our cause. I am also very grateful to you for the article you write in the Christian Register, which also is a great help in clearing up many misunderstandings about the situation of our unfortunate country.

I want to profit by this occasion to tell you how very much I enjoyed my Boston meeting, by feeling the contact with a sympathetic and intelligent audience. It will always belong to one of my most valued remembrances. I only hope that I will soon be well enough to continue my lecture tour, and to find the same comprehension and to gain friends for our cause. But when this will be possible I really do not know, as I am at present still in the hospital. But if I could not continue this year, I will try to return in the fall, for I do hope to have the pleasure of meeting you then again, and to thank you personally for the support you have given me.

Very sincerely yours,
Catherine Karolyi (Karolyi)

Mrs. Alice Stone Blackwell,
3 Monadnock Street,
Boston 25,
Mass.

Count Karolyi's Record
To the Editor of The Herald:
Count Michael Karolyi deserves a warm welcome in America. He strongly opposed having Hungary enter the war on the side of the Central powers. In Parliament he protested against the submarine warfare. When it became clear that the war was lost, he tried to negotiate a separate peace for Hungary, to the great wrath of the German government. 

After the war, the people of Hungary called out for a republic, with Karolyi as president. The popular demand was so overwhelming that the revolution took place without bloodshed.

Karolyi had visited the United States and had been much impressed with what he saw there. His ideal was a republic along American lines. The Hugarian republic started out well, with universal suffrage, religious freedom, and equal rights before the law for all Hungarian citizens.

But Karolyi's plans for Hungary included also agrarian reform. Before the war, in a nation of 22,000,000 people, 2000 persons owned two-thirds of the land. Karolyi saw that the breaking up of the great feudal estates was essential to progress. As a beginning, he voluntarily turned over to the peasants his own vast estate, the largest but one in Hungary.

His program for the other nobles did not involve confiscation, as in Russia. The people were to be allowed to buy a part of the land, on easy terms. But the other Hungarian magnates were totally unwilling to part with any of their land or privileges. In her recent lecture in Boston, the Countess Karolyi said that the monarchists actually intrigued with the bolsheviki for the overthrow of the republic, because they knew that the other European powers would not allow a bolshevist government to last, whereas a democratic republic might have lasted. So the republican revolution was followed in six months by a bolshevist one, headed by Bela Kun, and the Karolyi's left the country. Hungary was overrun by the Humanian army, the communist government was driven out, and the o'd aristocratic regime was restored by force, under Admiral Horthy.

The present rulers of Hungary, who were pro-German during the war and wanted to fight it out to the bitter end, are exceedingly hostile to Karolyi and all his republican ideas. In his absence from the country, they have been trying him for high treason for his conduct during the war. They have refused to recognize his distribution of his estate, and have confiscated it.

They have severely restricted the suffrage and abolished the secrecy of the ballot in the rural districts, so that the peasants cannot vote against their landlords without exposing themselves to punishment. Various reports of atrocities in Hungary have found their way from time to time into the American press. The countess says that since Horthy came into power about 8000 innocent persons have been put to death for political or racial reasons.

It is most anomalous that a man of Count Michael's fine record should be forbidden to write or speak in public while in the United States, and forbidden at the request of the government so opposed to all the best American traditions as the present government of Hungary.

ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.
Dorchester, Feb. 24.

The Poet
Wilde must be the poet wander
To garnish his golden cells,
For in yesterday and in yonder
The secret of poesy dwells.

It is where the rainbow resteth,
And the gates of the sunset by,
And the star in the still pool nesteth,
And the moon-road lies on the sea.
-F.W. Bourdillon.

[*Boston Herald, Feb. 26, 1925.*]The Christian Register
January 15 1925] (11)

struction to become a taxi-driver, but found she could earn more by writing articles.

Even though he was out of Hungary, Karolyi's enemies dreaded his influence and popularity, and emissaries were sent to assassinate him. The attempt failed, and the Karolyis took refuge in England. There Count Michael soon obtained an excellent position, and he writes books in the intervals of his work. He was in bed with a broken leg when his wife reluctantly left him and their three small children to accept an invitation to lecture in America. (The Karolyis had named their eldest boy and girl Adam and Eve, believing that they were at the beginning of a new era.)

Countess Karoli received anonymous letters--very likely the work of the same spiteful woman-- warning her that she would never be allowed to enter the United States; and S. Stanwood Menken of the National Security League was made to believe that she was a Bolshevist, and to urge her deportation as a dangerous "red." But this absurd canard was soon disproved, and she was admitted to a country where she deserves a royal welcome.

The Countess did not tell us all these things in her lecture. For instance, she did not say that her husband had voluntarily given up his great estates. When reproached afterwards for not having mentioned it, she answered modestly, "It was not for me to speak of that." But she told many amusing things about the medieval ideas that still prevail in Hungarian "high society." As the stepdaughter of Count Julius Andrassy, the last foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, she was brought up in its most exclusive circles. She says the notes look upon themselves as infinitely above even the most learned and distinguished commoners. She once asked Count Esterhazy what he thought of Kellermann's book. He answered that it dealt with the love affairs of professional men and artists, and that he could not take any interest in such persons. Once a lady of the nobility met with an untitled man at a charity ball--the only place where she could have met him--and she saw, to her dismay, that in the evolutions of a general dance, she would be obliged to give him her hand for a moment. Quite flurried, she held out her hand, with her handkerchief in it. He was as much embarrassed as she. Instead of taking her hand, he took the handkerchief, wiped his nose with it, and returned it with a low bow. Rank and etiquette are stressed to an almost incredible extent.

Young girls, even of noble family, receive little education ; but they are carefully guarded. Before her marriage, the Countess was never allowed to cross the street without an attendant, or to read any book that her mother had not read first. If the mother thought anything in it unsuitable for a young girl, she blacked it out, or sewed the pages together. Many pages of "Nicholas Nickleby" were stitched together in this way. The mother was very busy. Sometimes months and even years passed without her finding time to prepare any books for her daughter, and the young girl had nothing new to read.

She was first awakened to the existence of anything outside the aristocracy by meeting some of the woman suffrage leaders and becoming interested in that movement. It was considered as shocking in Hungary, a few years back, as it was in this country seventy years ago. The suffragists were looked upon as "wild women," and she was called in derision "Red Catherine" by her aristocratic relatives.

When she married Count Michael Karolyi, the champion of the people's rights, she had to choose between the ideals of her father and those of her husband. She cast in her lot with her husband. "For I too believed in democracy," she said. She knew that those who have fought for Hungarian freedom have not always prospered. She recalled that Kossuth's mother was buried in Belgium in a pauper's grave. Yet, despite all it has cost them, the Countess said, "I can never be sorry that my husband took the side of the people."

The story of Count Michael Karolyi and his wife is one of the great stories of history. It was a rate treat to hear some of it from her own lips. She spoke in good English ; she is said to know most of the modern languages. She told it without affectation, without bitterness--though there might have been excuse for bitterness-- and with a simplicity that won her hearers' hearts. On the platform she looks merely a sweet-faced young girl. Seen more closely, she shows her twenty-nine years.

Her audience went away not only uplifted in spirit, but loving her personally. They were grieved to read soon after that she had been stricken with typhoid, and now lies ill in the Post Graduate Hospital in New York.

She says Hungary is at present ruled by those who "sold their country to the Germans" during the war--extreme militarists, whose policy makes Hungary a real danger to the peace of Europe, the crater of a volcano that may at any time break out.


"Is a Hungarian Restoration Imminent?"
To the Editor of The Christian Science Monitor:

In a recent editorial in the Monitor, entitled, "Is a Hungarian Restoration Imminent?" the writer asks: "If Hungary wants a king, why shouldn't it have one?" Under the present regime, the people of Hungary have been deprived of the power to say what they want.

The wife of Count Michael Karolyi lately gave an illuminating address in Boston on recent events in Hungary. As the step-daughter of Count Julius Andrassy and the wife of the first President of the Hungarian Republic, she knows whereof she speaks.

Along among the great Hungarian nobles, Karolyi opposed the entrance of Hungary into the war on the side of the central powers. He protested in Parliament against the submarine warfare. When it became clear that the war was lost, he tried, though in vain, to negotiate a separate peace for Hungary.

After the war, the people of Hungary called out for a republic, with Karolyi as President. The popular demand was so overwhelming that the revolution took place without bloodshed. Karoli had visited the United States and been much impressed by what he saw. His ideal was a republic along American lines. The Republic of Hungary started out well, with universal suffrage, religious liberty, and equal rights before the law for Hungarian citizens of all races.

But Karolyi's program included also agrarian reform. Before the war, in a nation of 20,000,000 people, 2000 persons owned two-thirds of all the land. Karoli knew that the breaking up of the great feudal estates was essential to progress; the people must have access to the land. As a beginning, he voluntarily turned over to the peasants his own immense estate, the largest but one in Hungary.

His program for the other nobles did not involve confiscation, as in Russia. The people were to be allowed to buy the land, on easy terms, and each great landowner was to retain 640 acres.

But the other nobles were not willing to give up an inch of their privileges. The Countess said: "The monarchists intrigued with the Bolsheviki for the overthrow of the Republic, because they knew the other powers would not allow a Bolshevist government to last, and then the aristocracy would come back; whereas a democratic republic could have lasted."

Owing to this double opposition, at the end of six months the republican revolution was followed by a Bolshevist one, a Communist government under Bela Kun succeeded the Republic, the Karolyi had to leave the country. Later the Rumanian army overran Hungary, the Communist Government was driven out, and the old feudal regime was restored by force. At the time when Horthy was proclaimed regent, the Parliament House was surrounded by his troops, and some of the soldiers had forced their way into the chamber, with their hands full of bombs.

A reign of terror followed. Some accounts of the atrocities of the Horthy regime have occasionally found their way into the American press. The Countess says 8000 innocent persons have been executed for political or racial reasons. The suffrage has been severely restricted, and the secrecy of the ballot abolished in the rural districts, so that if the peasants vote against the wishes of the nobles they can be punished.

The American press reported, sometime ago, that Horthy's Government refused to recognize Karoly's distribution of his great estate. They proposed to confiscate it and divide it among some of their own favorites. In his absence from the country, they have been trying him for high treason for his conduct during the war. Just after the Countess lectured in Boston a cablegram announced that the courts had confirmed the confiscation of his land.

A restoration of the Hapsburgs in Hungary would be as regrettable as a restoration of the Hohenzollerns in Germany. The great landowners may desire it; but the great landowners are not Hungary.

Dorchester, Mass. ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.

Jan. 16, 1925