Bela's Billion

If you can't lick'em, copy 'em was the policy little Engelbert Dollfuss adopted when the Nazis first laid hungry eyes on Austria. The results were not happy. In spite of his totalitarian Catholic state, the Nazis shot him and four years later absorbed his country.

Down the Danube, in Hungary, old Dictator Horthy was running a Fascist state before Adolf Hitler was much more than a barroom orator. But the Nazis are beginning to put the muscle on him. Not long ago the budding Hungarian Nazi Party, which is constantly watered with cash from Germany, began sprouting leaflets attacking His Serene Highness Regent Horthy. The upper house stood firm with Premier Kalman Daranyi, a Rightist who does not mind dictatorship so long as it comes from within the country. But the lower house has heard the siren song of Hitlerism, and last week it passed by acclamation a measure which will gradually expel Jews from jobs in Hungarian trade, industry and the professions, until in none of these will the number of Jews exceed 20% in the year 1943. So Dictator Horthy cracked the whip and, like a dog & pony act, the Cabinet did a bit of graceful shifting.

A few hours after Premier Daranyi resigned, a new Cabinet was formed by his former Minister of Economics, potent Hungarian Banker Bela Imredy. The new Premier at once announced drastic penalties for disturbing public peace, drastically curtailed freedom of public assembly in Hungary--both these measures being regarded as crackdowns on the Hungarian Nazi Party. However, as Foreign Minister, Kalman Kanya was not instructed to alter his friendly policy toward Germany. Indeed, far from being less disposed toward totalitarianism than his predecessor, Premier Imredy is the author of a national economic policy which aims to synchronize with the German Four-Year Plan. Hungarian grain will be swapped for German guns. It looked as though Dictator Horthy knew when it was time to bend.

Rich, slim, clean-shaven, quick-witted Financier-Premier Bela Imredy has been climbing rapidly in Hungary. Today Hungary is $400,000,000 in default to foreign creditors, so Bela Imredy must try to find a billion pengoes ($200,000,000) in Hungary, reputedly plans to raise it partly by an internal loan, partly by a capital levy of $120,000,000 on Hungarian fortunes over $10,000. This program, offered on the plea that it soaks the rich to benefit all Hungary, includes besides Rearmament:

Land to the Peasants. Since some of the largest Hungarian estates are bankrupt or nearly so. His Serene Highness expects no difficulty in Bela Imredy's program of using part of the billion pengoes to enable landless peasants to buy land at really cheap prices on long-term State guaranteed loans.

Water to Everybody. Hungary is most backward in matters of water supply, especially in the villages, and part of this program of Reconstruction is to dig hundreds of artesian wells. Along with this are to go irrigation projects involving the Danube and Tisa, for no peasant is to be sold more than ten acres under the State guarantee, and Admiral Horthy recognizes that production per acre must be greatly increased in Hungary, as it has been in Italy.*

Highways. Admiral Horthy, realizing that in Hungary the motorist must horn his way through every village at the speed of its cows and chickens, has slated a concrete speedway program modeled on Adolf Hitler's, tied it to Hungarian Rearmament, since a modern army does not march on its stomach but rides on its tires.

Rearmament will eat up a great part of the billion pengoes, but Admiral Horthy, too old and shrewd a campaigner to let the world know how much, preferred to emphasize Reconstruction.

* In 1937 Italian peasants had finally increased their wheat yield in 15 years from an average of under ten quintals (36.7 bu.) per hectare (2.47 acres) to somewhat over 16. Thus, without much increasing Italy's total wheat acreage, which was impossible, total yearly production was increased from 45 million quintals to 80 million. Since the Italian people continue to eat about 75 million quintals, this meant that Premier Mussolini had won the "battle of the grain" (TIME, Oct. 24, 1927), made Italy-self-sufficient in wheat for the first time in modern history.

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