They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [18]
But things had changed and the political climate in 1910 was not at all what it had been five years before. The public had become disillusioned and now there were not many who bothered themselves with anything so trivial as a change of government.
In 1905 such had been the general optimism that people had really believed that Hungary stood on the threshold of a new golden age. The resounding promises of reform and improvement which had been brandished as the election slogans of the parties forming the Coalition – as, for example, the separation of the army commands and the establishment of an independent Customs service – had everywhere been taken as if these goals had already been achieved or, if not exactly achieved, at the very least only temporarily delayed by the unpatriotic plots of their political opponents, that wicked camarilla whose sinister influence would be swept away as soon as the Coalition came to power. Few people had then paused to reflect that the trade-unionists would never really co-operate with any other group and had only joined in the call to overthrow the existing government because they themselves had never expected to be called upon to face the realities of political power; nor that there were forces in the running of a great nation far greater and more complicated than were admitted in the seductive paragraphs of the radical press. It never occurred to the majority that the real national interest lay in the sound administration of agriculture, industry and commerce, in the defence of the realm and the maintenance of law and order; and in fair treatment of the ethnic minorities and the under-privileged. It was on how such matters were handled that the prestige of the Dual Monarchy and its position as a great power rested; and it was on Austria-Hungary’s position as a great power that the continued prosperity of the individual depended. And yet, simple and logical as this proposition might have appeared, it still seemed beyond the grasp of the general public.
During the period of Fejervary’s government the leaders of the Coalition began to grasp that their fight was hopeless because they had argued themselves into a totally false position. It was this that led to the famous Pactum between the radical coalitionists and the Emperor.
And now they made their first great irremediable mistake: they declared publicly that the compromise was a triumph. This bare-faced lie, like the principle of original sin, bedevilled the five years of their reign until, totally divided, quarrelling over every issue, accusing each other of ineptitude and incapacity, the Coalition ended in total fiasco. The general public, for once, grasped what had happened and withdrew its support, turning away with bored contempt. Khuen-Hedervary quickly grasped what was happening and cleverly turned the situation to his own advantage.
The new government’s initial programme was intentionally, and wisely, colourless and confined itself to generalities. The only exception was a declaration of support for the idea of introducing universal suffrage, expressed only in the vaguest terms. Indeed the whole document was so imprecise that everyone, conservative or radical, could read into it support for anything they themselves desired.
The first real action taken was to correct some of the most glaring of the Coalition’s mistakes. Rauch, the Ban of Croatia, whose rule had been so disastrous, was