Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

From the start Apponyi broke with tradition because in the past any motion that affected the powers of the clergy would have been preceded by discussions with the church authorities and would have then been presented with their tacit, if not open, consent. Apponyi ignored this procedure, relying directly upon the legal obligations concerning the ethnic minorities.

At the beginning of March the minority members declared that they would revert to that policy of obstruction which formerly had been the favourite tool of the present government when it had been in opposition. At this moment the heads of the Romanian church handed in a protest memorandum demanding that Apponyi should pass it on to the King. This last action made it clear that discussions on Apponyi’s motion would lead to the reopening of the Romanian question since, of the 25-strong minorities group in Parliament, only three were not Romanians.

On April 4th, Polit, the leader of the minorities group, had presented his own deposition and he was followed only by Romanian members who all made lengthy speeches. This policy had been decided upon as their numbers were insufficient to insist upon endless vote-taking, the classic method of stopping or delaying parliamentary business. Instead they embarked on a policy of talking out the debates with speeches lasting several hours, speeches which often consisted largely of reading out lengthy extracts from previous debates and pleadings, until the rest of the House, the majority, was dying of ennui.

There had been the occasional lively moment when some government member would shout out some colourful phrase or slogan — as they had in the past, when in opposition, inveighing against that ‘cursed Vienna’ — though now their invective was directed at the cursed minorities. Discussion raged one day when government members read in their newspapers that during the previous day’s debate the Romanian Vaida had read out a poem defamatory of Hungarians which no one, not even the shorthand recorders, had even noticed, so general had been the boredom.

The debate was not really taken seriously until one day Istvan Bethlen made his first speech. Until then, though everyone knew that Bethlen was one of the leading figures in Apponyi’s section of the Independence Party, he had worked almost exclusively in committees. When it was known that he was to speak the House suddenly began to fill up until not a seat was empty. They were rewarded by a most powerful intervention, hard-hitting and aggressive, which instantly transformed the farce of the previous proceedings into a serious battle on more fundamental issues than had until then been discussed.

Bethlen, ignoring the petty matters of school laws, went straight to the heart of the whole problem of the large Romanian minorities who, of course, actually formed a majority of the population in the province of Transylvania. This had the shock effect of bringing out into the open what everyone had until then refused to discuss. At once there were accusations of chauvinism, of disloyal contacts in Bucharest, and hotly contested statements about the increasing power and influence of the minorities. From that moment on the Romanian members found themselves on the defensive.

Abady had now felt that the time had come for him to speak up too. He had realized that he might not be able to say anything that was new, interesting, or previously unknown but he had felt nevertheless that he should now rise and say what he thought. Accordingly he had set to work to prepare himself and when he had gathered his material together he sent in his name as a speaker in the debate.

When Balint rose the House was half empty, probably because he was unknown and owed allegiance to no party. This last was important because each party always ensured that there was an audience for its own members, who would be encouraged with applause and loudly vocal support. But a member who belonged to no party, who had no declared policies, was heard only by those few enthusiasts who would listen to anything and everything, and, of course, by the Ministers whose motions were the subject of debate.

And so it turned out that while Abady was speaking there had only been a bare ten or fifteen of the majority party members present in the Chamber. Only the minority listened carefully to what he had to say; and sitting at the end of the minority bench was the lawyer, Aurel Timisan, who had been one of the defendants in the Memorandum Trial.

Balint spoke about the carefully planned and politically motivated policy of agricultural loans which the Romanian-owned banks, under the leadership of the Union Bank, pursued among the peasants in the central plain and mountains of Transylvania. Certain persons in the confidence of the bank would receive cheap loans and they, in turn, would lend this to the Romanian peasantry through intermediaries. With each transaction the loan would get more and more expensive until the peasant borrowers would find themselves paying staggeringly high usury rates.

‘I know cases,’ he said, ‘where the original twenty-five or thirty per cent has risen to two or three hundred per cent. Of course no debtor can cope with such sums. When compound interest is added to the loan the debt soon exceeds the borrower’s assets and he is forced to go bankrupt. The bailiffs are sent in, the lenders foreclose and the land passes into the hands of those “men of confidence”. The peasant proprietor is ruined and the best he can hope for is to become a tied worker on what used to be his own land. There are thus two major effects: human rights are violated and political resentment is fostered. And who are these “men of confidence”? They are the Hungarian notary, the Hungarian bailiff, and the Hungarian judge. All the poor Romanian peasant can grasp is that the very men who should be his protectors against injustice are the same men who enforce that injustice! Can anyone wonder that he considers these men as much his enemies as their intermediaries who have furnished these monstrous loans? Can anyone wonder at the sense of injustice felt by the hard-pressed borrower and the dispossessed small farmer when at the mercy of the very men whose authority they are forced to accept? This state of things is endemic in the poorer regions. It is a carefully planned operation which is swiftly moving our under-privileged minorities into dependency while at the same time building up rich and powerful estates who owe their existence to Romania.’

The House listened in bored indifference until Balint had felt that everything he was saying was futile and devoid of interest or significance. He also had an uneasy feeling that he was not presenting his case sufficiently well, that his voice was monotonous, his manner dull. Only the Romanian members paid any attention and they, shrugging their shoulders at everything he said, showed clearly that they did not believe a word of it, that it was all untrue and the product of an overworked imagination.

Of all his hearers, only old Timisan gave the impression of really listening to what Balint said. He leant forward, one hand cupped to an ear, clearly intent on not missing a word. Under his bushy white eyebrows his watching eyes were full of suspicion as he took in every sentence. He was waiting to see if Balint would mention his name.

The reason for this was that Timisan had been the man from whom Balint had learned all about the Romanian bank’s carefully laid plans, about the systematic policy they had been employing. This had been when Balint, a year and a half before, had gone to seek his advice when he had found out how some of the former Abady dependants were being ruined in this way.

Balint never referred to Timisan by name. To do so would have caused a sensation but he refrained, speaking only in general terms and not revealing his sources.