The Hungarian Crisis

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Oct 5, 1905

The Hungarian Crisis

A VERY serious situation has arisen in Hungary—serious not only for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, but for the peace of Europe as well. The Hungarian people yearn for independence, and a strong party has arisen there which has separation from Austria as the goal of its efforts. The dual monarchy is only held together, it is said, by personal loyalty to the aged emperor Franz-Josef. But a crisis has arisen; demands have been made by the Hungarian party which the emperor has refused, and there is an incipient revolt, which threatens to grow to an open rupture. A London dispatch speaks of the situation thus:—

The Hungarian revolt has taken a still more serious aspect this week, and the situation causes grave uneasiness throughout Europe. . . . A vast majority of the Hungarian people have joined the party of independence. Real concessions must be made by the emperor, or he will be compelled to govern Hungary by military force without a parliament. That situation would speedily result in armed resistance, and then nothing would avert the cataclysm which Europe has been dreading as the greatest of calamities for the past thirty years. It was this looming peril more than anything else which induced Germany to cease hectoring France this week, and refer all questions in the Morocco dispute to the coming conference. The best judgment, on the whole, is that the time for this great rupture, with its attendant dangers to European peace, is not yet. The Austro-Hungarian empire will hold together in some shape so long as the emperor refrains from the use of the arms of one country in an attempt to coerce the other.