THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



children, winter occupation, the depart- 

 ment stands forward spaciously, opu- 

 lently. 



The minister is administrative, exec- 

 utive, even juridical, head of this part of 

 the earth ; the interpreter of statutes and 

 the final court of appeal in the legal bear- 

 ing of certain enactments devised in the 

 agricultural interest. 



Rural Hungary, over which the min- 

 ister thus radiates from his Olympian 

 height, is, moreover, under the joint but 

 informal direction of church and feudal 

 magnate, whose interests are one with 

 those of the State. These interests may 

 be summed up in the universal ban upon 

 the golden calf of Socialism. For the 

 most part, these gods of the fields do not 

 seek tithes and labor only. They have 

 each a genuine desire to see a contented 

 and industrious peasantry always amen- 

 able to patriarchal influences. 



This is not pure altruism, nor does it 

 consist with Western views ; but one can- 

 not translate the old-world peasant small 

 holder into terms of the Blue-Grass 

 farmer. Environment, plane, polity, and 

 economic impulse are at issue. Sober 

 and philosophic liberalism, with true per- 

 spective, would desire no other than that 

 this system should prevail at least until 

 such time as the forces of evolution shall 

 have focused the off-shoots of the eccle- 

 siastico-feudal convention. The indus- 

 trial problem is usually self-contained, 

 susceptible of piecemeal handling. The 

 rural problem is an interlaced immensity, 

 the radical treatment of which would 

 mean chaos. 



Upon this system have been grafted 

 various modern institutions, such as the 

 cooperative principle, rural credit, sci- 

 entific production, and evaluation. Not 

 all of these are of Western origin in 

 principle, for the very feudal institution 

 of corvee, now existent in modified form, 

 is itself purely cooperative in practice 

 both as to spirit and intent. 



The Magyar peasant thus sees his prox- 

 imate deity in the Lord of the Manor and 

 his intermediate god in the awful, shad- 

 owy form of His Excellency. His life, 

 analyzed, is an orderly succession of Ro- 

 gation Days and Thanksgiving Days. 

 Physically he belongs to the State ; mor- 



ally he belongs to the church. On the 

 intellectual side he is fortified by a sense 

 of permanent opposition to government 

 in the abstract. For this there is historic 

 justification. For 400 years he squirmed 

 under the heel of despotism. His im- 

 pressions of government were associated 

 with proscription, oppression, blood and 

 slavery, the violation of his hearth, the 

 sacrilege of his altars, grand seignorial 

 rights and presumption of inferiority at 

 law. 



The Saxon thrall was separated by 700 

 years, but by nothing else, from the 

 Magyar of pre-1848. 



The country is this man in the aggre- 

 gate battling with fierce resentment at 

 the limitations of a soul inarticulate. 

 And so he is a great politician, but his 

 politics, not greatly daring, never get be- 

 yond the idea of opposition. This is the 

 Magyar in the true Celtic mood. 



At rare intervals his endurance gives 

 way, and he does foolish things blindly 

 or great things epically. But ever at his 

 side, in trouble as in victory, stands that 

 proud and superb church to which the 

 ages owe so much. As long as he can be 

 held she holds him in mild subjection. 

 In epic moments when 



"Kossuth sees his warriors fall 

 And sounds anew the trumpet call," 



she stands aside, not reluctantly, and her 

 ministers go forth with cross and sword 

 to merge the accidental cultus of the 

 good churchmen in the unconquerable 

 psyche of better Magyars. Thus it was 

 in the glorious 1848. The hand which 

 held the cross was atrophied; the hand 

 which held the sword 



"made lightnings in the splendor of the moon." 

 DANCKS AND PE;TTIC0ATS 



For the rest the peasant labors in the 

 field among the corn and grasses in sum- 

 mer ; never comes to the city save in na- 

 tional moments, as when Francis Kos- 

 suth was called to his great fathers ; 

 votes if he may, but, as the local deity 

 suggests, goes gaily to the colors a lout 

 and comes back a man conscious of man- 

 hood, with vision enlarged and virtue 

 ensrrafted. 



