Vol. XXVI, No. 4 WASHINGTON 



October, 1914 



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HUNGARY: A LAND OF SHEPHERD KINGS 



By C. Townley-Fullam 



THE church in the morning of her 

 splendor ; old Gothland success- 

 fully repelling the Turanian van 

 on bleak Baltic shores ; the Saracen, last 

 depositary of a delicate Mauretanian cul- 

 ture, justifying under Andalusian skies 

 the superb dominion of the Caliphs ; 

 Charlemagne arbiter of the Roman 

 world ; pillars of old faiths fallen ; Pan- 

 theons deserted — these are the phenom- 

 ena which herald the birth of that cen- 

 tury fated to witness the last great 

 organized irruption of abarbarian people. 



For the rest the figures are shadowy 

 and indistinct. Pirate and paladin, ex- 

 arch and cenobite flit through the twi- 

 light of the gods, are swept into the 

 current, and disappear. They do their 

 work, quit themselves as men, and pass 

 on to be dissolved in the Universal. . . . 

 And the new forms germinate. 



It is this seething, swash-buckling, 

 brawling mass into whose midst, noisiest, 

 most careless of all, strike the fabled 

 descendants of the mighty Attila — the 

 Hungarians, who give themselves the 

 name of Magyars. Not inopportunely, 

 for they bring with them the breath of 

 Asia and a quickening impulse : horse 

 thieves charged with an ozonic principle ; 

 destroyers with the mission of saviors ; 

 pagans, the destined guardians of the 

 church ; barbarians, the future pillars of 

 Latin civilization. 



They drive their wedge through the 

 Dacian outposts of the great Slav Em- 

 pire and destroy its potentialities for 



centuries. They see the stately river, 

 the River of Ovid and Marcus Aurelius ; 

 illimitable plains. They see the enemy, 

 without whom there' is no joy in life. 

 Their dream is fulfilled ; their many-ten- 

 tacled being grips the land. 



THE FOUNDER OE HUNGARY 



The Magyar shows his fangs and the 

 West begins to palpitate. There is erected 

 against him the Eastern March, the Pale, 

 to be known hereafter as Austria. . . . 

 At length, but at the psychological mo- 

 ment, there is born to him one of those 

 demigods whom Nature at rare intervals 

 sends into the world to favored races — 

 men to whom it is given to mold, out of 

 lawless and joyous rabbles, the orderly 

 unit, instinct with racial ideals and na- 

 tional purpose ; men, who combine in their 

 diviner parts the attributes of Moses, 

 Orange, Romanofif, and Hamilton. 



The name of this man is Vaik, the 

 first King of Hungary 1000-1038, whose 

 personality is obscured under the title of 

 St. Stephen, Apostolic King, and Baptist, 

 Father, Lawgiver, Shepherd of his peo- 

 ple. He "converts" them ; draws, quar- 

 ters, and disembowels them. In time the 

 circumstance that a Magyar remains alive 

 becomes strong legal presumption of a 

 state of grace. To the genius of that 

 magnificent and truculent barbarian, who 

 takes his children by the scruff of the 

 neck and rubs their noses into the comity 

 of the Latins, Hungary owes, if not her 

 fundamental constitution, at least her 



