Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

So there, for all to see, was proof that it was no fox but still that mighty hare himself.

Once over the crest he needed all his strength to make one last effort and reach the shelter of a densely-grown thicket in the centre of a wood some five hundred yards ahead on the borders of the neighbouring Doboka County.

The rest had done him no good. The effort was too now much for him. He shot ahead of the hounds before falling back only to try again. And then, quite suddenly, he made a great leap in the air and fell dead in front of them without being touched by the hounds. All around him they milled; but they did not touch him. They too were exhausted and they just gazed up at their master with tongues hanging out and it seemed that they might have been saying, ‘Well, we did well, didn’t we?’

As the Master dismounted he called back to the three who had kept up with him, ‘That run lasted a hundred and three minutes!’

He lifted up the hare; it was as stiff as a board.

When the others had also dismounted, their horses did not have to be held; even Honeydew was as mild and tame as anyone could have wished.

‘What a run! Wonderful! Wonderful! This’ll be a day to remember!’

Everyone was repeating the same words and congratulating each other and trying to work out how far it was from the Zsuk meadow to the Doboka boundary, for this is what they had taken at a gallop without a check. It must have been twelve or fourteen kilometres; uphill-downhill all the way! That said something for their horses and for the hounds! They were still talking of nothing else when the rest of the field turned up, first Aron Kozma, then Bogacsy on his sturdy chestnut; a little later came Farkas Alvinczy who was covered with mud from a fall at the Borsa creek and finally, happy and flushed with victory, the two Laczok boys and their groom.

‘Well, you boys,’ laughed Gazsi as they cantered up, ‘you’re in luck to have such a run the first time out.’ And Balint thought he must write to his mother to let her know instantly how the new mare from Denestornya had stood the pace, how she hadn’t hesitated for a moment and was one of the four to be in at the kill — and two of them English thoroughbreds; also what good condition she was in with tendons strong as iron and no sign of a saddle sore. Why, she had hardly been sweating at all, even at the finish. He knew how pleased his mother would be, for she loved her horses as much as if they had been her own children.

After finding some water for the hounds they started for home, riding straight across country, but very slowly as it was obvious that the hounds were now very tired.

The afternoon light was fading and from the west the sun was setting in a blaze of red. From the top of each hill-crest the hills ahead were silhouetted in wavy lines of deep lilac shadow and resembled the huge waves of a petrified ocean.

The Master, the Laczok boys, Farkas Alvinczy and Bogacsy rode ahead of the others. Tisza had stopped to light a cigar and as Balint and Gazsi had waited for him those three were now somewhat behind, riding three abreast with loose reins. For a while no one spoke.

‘I’d like to ask you something,’ said Gazsi at last, turning to Tisza who nodded to him to go on. It was merely this, went on Gazsi: as a hussar officer on the reserve list he had been given a secret order to keep his regiment informed at all times of his whereabouts. Just that, nothing else: but the more he thought this over the more it seemed to him that the only reason could be a possible mobilization because of the Bosnian affair. And mobilization meant that there was a possibility of war. Could this really be possible, he wondered, and went on to ask why, if that were possible, anyone had even considered the annexation?

Though a political leader and former Minister-President, Tisza was not normally given to talk about such matters, and in any case there were few men with whom he would have discussed affairs of state. But he approved of Abady, who had selflessly undertaken much important work, and who had been sensible enough not to join any of the quarrelsome political parties. He had also been attracted to Kadacsay because of something he had said some while before.

At the time of the 1905 elections there had been an argument in the Casino Club of Kolozsvar with most of those present reviling Tisza, who at that time was still in office. Gazsi had defended him until someone shouted, ‘You’re no better than a traitor, talking like that! You’d sell your own country next!’

Then Kadacsay inclined his great woodpecker nose and replied, rolling his ‘r’s, ‘Of cour-r-rse I’d sell it. Sell it r-r-right now. But no one would buy it while you lot still lived here!’

There had been a roar of laughter, and then everyone had calmed down for in Transylvania a good joke wiped everything else from people’s minds. Nevertheless it had taken courage to reply like that in the overheated atmosphere of those days, and so Tisza was honouring his honesty when he decided for once to say what was in his heart.

Tisza began by saying that no matter what political problems arose nor what international friction resulted, the crisis would eventually be smoothed away without further complications. And this would in no small measure be due to Austria’s overwhelming military strength.

He went on in much the same vein, developing his arguments rather as if he were rehearsing for himself a speech he would later make in the Upper House, outlining in hard dry phrases the significance of the nation’s current foreign policy and what were the implications for the future.

‘Personally,’ he said, ‘I am convinced that the annexation was necessary; and so I am ready to bear its consequences. There is no point in discussing whether the government took all the necessary diplomatic precautions or exercised the desired-for tact in carrying it out.’ He refused even to discuss such aspects of the affair and would advise everyone to refrain from such a profitless activity. It was every patriotic Hungarian’s bounden duty to support the actions of the monarch, for internal solidarity was of prime importance to any healthy country faced with opposition or danger from abroad. The uproar created by the other great powers in Europe was quite out of proportion to the real importance of this matter.

‘All this consternation,’ he said, ‘is just an exercise in rabble-rousing directed against the Dual Monarchy.’ It was, of course, he explained, led by the English, whose disingenuous action in making out that Austria-Hungary had only done it so as to stab the Turkish constitution in the back was obviously motivated by spite. England was now using the Turks as a pretext for her concern, just as she had the Poles in the sixties and the Danes in the Schleswig-Holstein affair. The only effect of this simulated concern for other people was to arouse their passions and create false hopes about matters which would soon be dropped in mid-stream. What was certain, however, was that the fifteen-year-old peace in the Balkans was at an end and that Europe was now entering the first, and perhaps most serious, phase of a new East-West confrontation. The Dual Monarchy must now draw its own conclusions from the electric atmosphere in the Balkans, must be even more alert than before for signs of trouble; and, above all, must be ready to make unexpected sacrifices.

‘The government was quite right to offer so many concessions in the Commercial Treaty with Serbia. The policy is the right one and must be upheld, especially now when it is so important to bind closely to us all the small states by which we are surrounded. Naturally,’ he said, ‘whether the Treaty will stand will ultimately depend on the attitude of the Serbs themselves. It is vital for us to maintain our existing policy towards the Balkan peoples, namely safeguarding the peace and doing all we can to secure their economic and cultural development. At the same time we must do all we can to hamstring any movement which might tend to limit their independence by welding them into a powerful aggressive conglomeration that would be part of an all-powerful hegemony in that part of Europe.’