J.D.B. News Letter

Hungarian Government Plays Game with Numerus Clausus Amendment(By Our Budapest Correspondent)

Never has a government anywhere in the world engaged in such a deliberate attempt to trick the Jews, the League of Nations and foreign public opinion as has the Hungarian Government with its so-called reform of the Numerus Clausus Law, Of course, the supposed modification really makes matters worse. The Numerus Clausus Law at least provides a guarantee that five per cent. of the students admitted to the universities shall be Jews, but the provisions of the Amendment Bill are so vague and ambiguous that they can be used at will to prevent any Jews at all from being admitted to the universities. The Hungarian Government will thus be able to kill two birds with one stone. It will be removing from the law the religious discrimination clause to which the League of Nations objects, pacifying in that way the League of Nations, and it will be giving power to the Rectors of the various high schools so to manipulate the amended law as to make it impossible for any Jew to become a student at any of the universities. It will all be nice and legal and in strict accordance with Hungary’s international obligations in the Peace Treaties. It will be impossible to object that the new law violates the Constitution and the Jewish organizations abroad will no longer to able to intervene and summon the Hungarian Government before the bar of public opinion at the League of Nations.

To the outside world, the new law is to be presented as a tremendous reform in favor of the Jews. But at the same time, the Hungarian politicians are alive to the fact that if the new law is going to do away with the religious discrimination, it will by implication be an admission of the fact that until now there has been religious discrimination, and the fair name of Count Bethlen and Count Klebelsberg cannot bear such a blot on the honored escutcheon of their Liberal principles. So a plan has been devised to show the world that it was not the fault of these two enlightened statesmen; that they had striven hard to abolish the discrimination but that it had been impossible in face of the united opposition of the country. The entire Hungarian nation and the whole of the student youth of the country stand as one man in insisting on the retention of the Numerus Clausus, and what can any Liberal Government do but bow to the will of the people?

And so carefully staged pogroms were arranged at the universities, and the handful of Jewish students were attacked by crowds of their non-Jewish colleagues, and Jewish girl students were insulted and beaten. Forty or fifty anti-Semites flung themselves on every Jew who attempted to defend himself.

Is it really the fault of the Hungarian students? Is it indeed the soul of the Hungarian nation bubbling over? No, it is a lie and an insult to the Hungarian people. It has all been carefully arranged and organized by the oligarchy and their creatures specially financed, officially supported and instigated. At least several very prominent Hungarian politicians, members of Parliament, have made this accusation against the government, in their speeches in Parliament and on the public platform and in public print. Not only Jewish members of Parliament, but Christians also, like Dr. Rassay and Dr. Hegenegi-Kisz.

In any other country of the world, the Government would have hauled these Deputies before the Court of Law to make them prove their charges. But in Hungary the Government prefers to take no notice. It has something more important to do than to challenge accusations which might be shown to be true if they were really made the subject of a public inquiry. The task of the Government at the present moment is to prove to the world at large that Count Bethlen and Count Klebelsberg are idealists and Liberals who are risking their own position and the future of their Government by fighting for their principles in the face of the opposition of the whole Hungarian nation and the entire student youth of the country. But a Government cannot send police and military forces against the whole of the student youth of the country. However important the removal of the Numerus Clausus Law may be it cannot justify starting a civil war in the country, which, of course, would only make matters much worse for the Jews. The whole fury of the people would then be poured out from the universities into the streets and, the argument runs, it is better to have the Numerus Clausus Law in force than to have pogroms in the streets.

That, in brief, is the game of the Hungarian Government, which so far appears to have succeeded admirably. Yet the ## of the situation passes comprehension. On the very same cay that Jewish students were being thrashed within an inch of their lives at the University of Fuenikirchen and removed bleeding to the hospitals, the Jewish Baron Moritz Cornfield, who is general director of the Rothschild Bank in Hungary, was received with much ceremony in the auditorium of the same university and the Senate and Professors sounded his praises in sonorous academic Latin while they conferred upon him the honorary doctor are of the university. It is positive proof, of course, that the Hungarian Government has nothing against the Jews and on the contrary delights in honoring Jews. But what can the Government do when the whole feeling of the country is against it in this matter of the Jews? And what course is there for any Liberal and Democratic Government but to bow to the will of the people? It is a grand game.