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By Root 437 0

were, of course, right to recognize that they had gained nothing from their passivity and their refusal to attend debates. The general public had failed to appreciate the great moral lesson of their abstention and had not even realized that in this great dispute the opposition itself was really the injured party! It was, of course, the same realization that had brought them back into Parliament, which had prompted the renewed rash of obstructionist tactics, and led Zoltan Desy openly to attack Lukacs claiming that the Minister-President was the ‘world’s biggest “Panamist”’, though few people knew what he meant by the epithet except that it was rude. This had all been good clean fun and, they said, completely justifiable, even heroic … until now, when the Balkan crisis seemed to deserve something more.

The opposition had to have a voice, they said; to take a stand, make a speech! Some cogent expression of opinion was necessary, something to show how original they were and how different from the government in power, how statesman-like, how much more intelligent and understanding!

It would not be enough merely to take part once more in the parliamentary debates on foreign affairs, and in any case if once they gave Tisza an opportunity to allow their members to speak it would be tantamount to recognizing his authority, to accepting his appointment as Speaker and his right to interpret the Rules of the House in his own way, all of which they had until now steadfastly refused to do. Why, someone might even interpret such a move as accepting the legality of Tisza’s position, and that was unthinkable.

Instead they searched around to find another solution which, to them at least, appeared very droll and witty.

The opposition therefore proclaimed that ‘Parliament’ – their own self-styled Parliament, not the one that met in the official House – was the only true parliament and would hold its sessions in the ballroom of the Hotel Royal. There, they declared, the real Parliament would meet, complete with Speaker and Legal Authorities seated on a dais high above the members, a President, two Vice-Presidents and other necessary Officers of State.

The first member to speak was Albert Apponyi. In a speech redolent of sweet reason, he outlined recent political events in the capital and declared that all those gathered together that day in the hotel ballroom were the country’s true representatives and that in their name, and that of the Hungarian nation, he saluted the heroic struggle of the Serbs, Greeks and Bulgarians. He talked about the right of all nations to determine their own affairs, and of the right to independence, and he therefore proposed that Hungary should make a noble gesture to those enslaved peoples and stretch out the ‘hand of friendship’ to Belgrade. This was the tenor of the motion he urged the delegates to accept.

Other speakers followed him. Among them Lovaszy and Lajos Hollo went even further. Both had for some time been outspoken critics of Austria-Hungary’s foreign policy. Now they came out as outright partisans of Serbia, stating that Viennese pretensions to the status of a world power were ridiculous and based on nothing but foolish vanity. It was nothing to Hungary, they said, how affairs in the Balkans were settled; and nothing but folly to intervene in any way: it would be mere meddling in other people’s affairs. It was here that it was stated for the first time, although still in somewhat veiled terms, that the alliance with Germany was a harmful one and served only Germany’s interests. The general feeling that surged through all the speeches, and which was expressed in vague terms of brotherly sympathy for oppressed nations, was that the Hungarians were loved throughout the Balkans while the Austrians were universally loathed. Apponyi’s motion was accepted unanimously, and everyone thought that by doing so they had made a ‘heroic’ protest against the pretensions of Vienna.

Balint put down his paper with a gesture of contempt, deeply shocked by everything that he had read. This pseudo-Parliament was crazy,