Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/44½
Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
[Received February 5.]
Sirs: I have the honor to inclose herewith a number of reports sent by Mr. C. M. Storey from Budapest.77 I can confirm from my own experience his statement of the way in which posters of President Wilson are to be found all over the city. The memorandum of Mr. Pogany on educational program78 is interesting though it throws no light on the disputed question of Mr. Pogany’s attitude towards Bolshevism. In general the impression I get of Hungarian affairs is disquieting. The coal situation continues bad, there is a menace of shortness of food fats, and there has been a division, I do not know how serious, in the ranks of the parties that support the Government.
The government of Count Karolyi is faced among other difficulties with the one, insuperable for the present, that it does not see how it can call for the election of any popular assembly. The states that are now holding large parts of what was formerly Hungarian territory will not allow any election to take place there for an assembly in Budapest. In view of the fact that they hope to keep these occupied lands, at least in great part, this attitude is natural. On the other hand, the Hungarians are unwilling to hold an election in only the restricted area which is now under their control. They feel that to do so would be a sort of recognition of what they regard as an utterly illegal occupation. They are thus unable to hold any election at all and are correspondingly weakened and unable to test the feeling of the country. The Austrians have to face the same difficulty, especially as regards German Bohemia. They get out of it by treating the former representatives of that district as still being such. This method could hardly be applied in Hungary, at least with the consent of the Socialists, for it was in the now occupied districts and not in the purely Magyar portions of the country that the most extreme partisans of the old regime were elected in the greatest numbers, thanks to the way in which the elections were conducted.
I have [etc.]