Hungarian Numerus Clausus Should Be Abolished in Economic Interests of Country Jewish Deputy Urges I

The abolition of the numerus clausus law in Hungary as a measure of economic rehabilitation of the country was urged today by Deputy Pakots, one of the Jewish Deputies, in a motion introduced in the Chamber.

The Jews of Hungary, the Deputy explained, are forced by the operation of the numerus clausus law to send out of the country five million pens every year in order to help to maintain the Jewish students who are compelled to go abroad to study at foreign universities because they are denied the right of study in their own country. If the numerus clausus law is abolished and the Hungarian-Jewish students are enabled again to attend Hungarian Universities, instead of travelling abroad, all this money will stay in the country and go to provide employment and economic opportunities and help to restore economic stability.

The resolution has been printed on the order paper of the House, and the Government is expected to declare its attitude the House, and the Government is expected to declare its attitude on the subject at one of the early sittings.

Deputy Pakots has played a leading part in the campaign for the abolition of the numerus clausus in Hungary, and by his repeated interpellations on the subject has earned the expressed disapproval of the Government. At one sitting of the Chamber, the Minister of Education, Count Klebelsberg complained that Deputy Pakots was constantly trying to make an issue of this question, and he advised him to select some other matter to make his own.

Deputy Pakots retorted angrily that he was able to decide what subject to select for his political activity without any advice from the Government, and he would not allow the Minister to dictate to him what he should or should not attack.

Particular interest attaches to Deputy Pakot’s argument that the abolition of the numerus clausus law would improve the economic position of the country, in view of the fact that the Government contention expressed repeatedly by the Premier, Count Bethlen, the Minister of Education, M. Klebelsberg, and other Ministers, is that “it is impossible to withdraw the numerus clausus law before the economic conditions in the country have improved”, as Count Bethlen once put it. “The numerus clausus,” he declared in the same speech, “protects the Christian youth which has suffered from the economic distress, and it is, therefore, a bread and butter question. The proposal of the Government is to improve conditions in the country, and then the numerus clausus will automatically cease to exist.”

When Count Klebelsberg appeared before the Council of the League of Nations in 1925 to present the defence of the Hungarian Government against the indictment of the numerus clausus law by the late Mr. Lucien Wolf, on behalf of the Joint Foreign Committee, he explained his case by saying that in the view of the Hungarian Government the numerus clausus is not intended to remain a permanent institution but a temporary provision due to the exceptional situation created by the Treaty of Trianon, and that it may be modified as soon as the social and economic life of Hungary recovers its former stability.

Hungary has been dismembered by the Treaty of Trianon, he said. Two-thirds of her territory and two-thirds of her population have been torn away, leaving her with scarcely a third of her former population, and less than a third of her territory, with a capital containing a population of a million of inhabitants out of a total population of eight millions. All the great central organisations which formerly administered the country remain in Hungary, while nearly everything which needed to be administered has been taken away. A great number of intellectuals were thus deprived of the possibility of continuing their occupations. There was further an emigration on masse, either voluntary or involuntary, of Hungarian intellectuals from the territories detached from Hungary to the territories which remained attached to her. Scarcely had the Treaty of Trianon come into force before the number of Hungarian refugees amounted to 320,000 persons from transferred territories, 80 percent. of whom were intellectuals with their families. Between the census of 1910 and that of 1920 the number of intellectuals increased by 50 percent., the number of lawyers by 25 percent., of chemists by 33 percent., the magistrates, professors and doctors by 50 percent., and of State officials by 100 percent. The Hungarian Government had to reduce the number of State officials in connection with the financial reconstruction. This reduction, which was supposed to benefit the finances of the country, has increased the difficult situation of the intellectual classes. The result has been an undue increase in the middle classes. The evil was increased by the complete ruin of the middle classes, whose money was principally invested in Government Bonds, mortgages, and other shares which lost all their value during the period of inflation. This was the origin of the numerus clausus.

The numerus clausus law in Hungary has since been modified, but Deputy Pakots pointed out in Parliament last September that even this amended and more liberal numerus clausus law allows for only seven percent. of Jewish students in Budapest, where the proportion of the Jewish population is 20 percent. of the total.

To this complaint, the answer of the Minister of Education, Count Klebelsberg, was that the Mumerus Clausus could be abolished only gradually, and that any attempt to do away with it at one stroke would be inpracticable, and would only rouse the impassioned opposition of the Christian students and their friends. A gradual abolition of the numerus clausus, carried out step by step, he said, is much more useful than would be a hurried measure seeking to abolish it at one stroke. No one Knows what a fight was necessary before the religious paragraph in the numerus clausus law was removed. The numbers of Jewish students would also have been increased, had the Opposition been more moderate and things would have gone much more smoothly he added.