Nightmare

In London, last week, one of the strangest of living politicians, Count Michael Karolyi, Tolstoyan, Socialist and Hungarian nobleman, was closely noting his country's confused and frantic efforts to break with Germany.

They began when the Red Army, having swept up most of southeastern Europe, began to roll across the Alfoeld, the vast Hungarian plain, toward Budapest. Aged (76) Regent Admiral Nicholas Horthy had asked the Allies for an armistice. Thereupon Major Ferenc Szalasi, Hungarian Nazi leader, took over the Government. The Germans took over Horthy, carried him off to Germany, together with Hungary's national gold reserve of 80,000,000 pengoe ($27,500,000). But the Hungarian peace delegation had already flown to Moscow.

Last week, Colonel General Janos Voeroes, chief of the Hungarian Army general staff, who had gone over to the Red Army, broadcast an appeal to his troops from Moscow, ordered them to desert with their weapons and equipment to the Russian side. General Voeroes said that he spoke in the name of Horthy's regency. Though the Russians for more than two decades had denounced the testy old Admiral as a fascist, General Voeroes ended his broadcast to Hungarians with the words: "Long live free, democratic Hungary under the leadership of Regent Horthy."

Well might Karolyi wonder. For he had played no small part in Hungary's present plight. After World War I, he had become Hungary's premier and first president. He began by giving away his estates (value: $15,000,000). He ended by giving away his Government.

At 9 o'clock, one night in 1919, a messenger came to the jail where Karolyi had imprisoned Communist Bela Kun. In his cell, Kun was informed that Karolyi had quit, that Kun was free to set up a soviet republic in Hungary. Said Bela Kun later: "All night I could not get it out of my head--es ging zu glatt, es ging zu glatt--it went too smoothly." The 133-day Red Terror that followed gave Hungarians a psychic shock which laid them wide open to the blandishments of Germany.

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