Hungarian Question

At the modernist Fuehrerhaus ("Leader's House") in which the Munich Conference was held (TIME, Oct. 10), Adolf Hitler last week received the new Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Dr. Frantisek Chvalkovsky, who officially assured the Fuehrer that "Czechoslovakia will assume a loyal attitude toward Germany."*

Dr. Chvalkovsky knew that in a nearby Munich hotel was waiting former Hungarian Premier Dr. Koloman Daranyi on a mission from Budapest to ask the Chancellor to "advise" Czechoslovakia to yield 8,000 square miles to Hungary--enough territory to pinch off the eastern end of Czechoslovakia and give Hungary & Poland a common frontier. The Hungarians had been offered 2,000 square miles which they indignantly rejected last week and Hungarian Regent Horthy promptly mobilized approximately 500,000 troops with the slogan "for Peace, not for War."

The German Dictator, after talking with Dr. Chvalkovsky and later with Dr. Daranyi, said to them privately that Hungary can get only the same sort of thing as Germany got in the Sudetenland and no more, that is only predominantly Hungarian areas, which would not give Hungary and Poland a common frontier.

The Hitler "can" was completely unofficial. Officially the Fuehrer sent Dr. Chvalkovsky and Dr. Daranyi back by air to Prague and Budapest with the advice that their Governments must settle the matter by negotiation. Meanwhile, 500,000 Czechoslovak soldiers faced 500,000 Hungarians, and in one potato field the trenches were less than 85 yards apart.

* Eduard Benes accepted an invitation to lecture on Democracy at the University of Chicago.

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