254 THEODORE SZEL 



there were 65 per ten thousand. These saddening figures denote the depth 

 of the moral deterioration of the people which before the war was accom- 

 panied by a decrease in the proportion of marriages, an increased number 

 of illegitimate births, the prevalence of prostitution and venereal diseases 

 and by dysgenic consequences in many other ways. 



This enumeration of the genetic effects bequeathed to the future genera- 

 tion is certainly not complete; it is but a few pictures taken at random from 

 the mass phenomena drawn from the statistical registers. One thing, how- 

 ever, is certain: the numerical damage wrought to the population by the 

 war losses, plus the territorial losses by virtue of the Peace Treaty, were more 

 severe for Hungary than for any other country. Notwithstanding this 

 tremendous depopulation, the Magyars survive, with an unshakeable faith 

 in a better future, trusting in the eventual revision of the unjust Peace 

 Treaty. Never was the Magyars' position today, after their unprecedented 

 war losses, better characterised than in the words of the great Hungarian 

 poet Michael Vorosmarthy: 



Diminished yet unbroken 

 Lives the nation in this land 



