Threats

The Royal Government of Hungary will withdraw from the League of Nations, next September, if the League Council persists in refusing to adjudicate the 6-year-old Transylvanian land dispute (TIME, Dec. 19) between Hungary and Rumania.

Such was the substance of a threatening press communique issued, last week, by the Hungarian Dictator, stern, cold, relentless Count Stephen Bethlen de Bethlen.

The matter is of paramount world importance because the Rumano-Hungarian dispute is outstanding among those problems which the League of Nations puts off, year after year, because it has not the power to enforce its decisions. Impartial opinion is preponderately to the effect that Hungary's cause is just, in this instance; but that France, Rumania's great ally, will prevent any League decision tending to favor Hungary.

Count Bethlen made the further staggering threat, last week, that he proposes to proclaim "inoperative" the Treaty of

Trianon, if the League refuses to adjudicate; on the ground that the treaty provides for settlement of Hungarian grievances against the Allies through the machinery of the League of Nations.