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The Daco-Roumanian Irredentism.

From Passau to the Black Sea, from Oderberg to the Archipelago, it is the Roumanian people who are the most numerous.

The number of the Roumanians at the present time amounts to about 11 millions.

By the study of authentic and incontestable[1] Magyar documents, one may see that the Roumanians occupy in Transylvania and in Hungary a national compact territory, in which here and there are to be found some non-Roumanian districts which when taken all together do not equal even a quarter of the general population.

But if we consider that these districts are scattered about, not only in that part of Austro-Hungary inhabited by the Roumanians, but in the whole of the Roumanian territory, they appear to us exceedingly small.

In fact, they amount only to one million of Non-Roumanians, in the midst of a race of 11 millions of Roumanians.

Although the Roumanians are separated into different political States, yet the sentiment of their national unity is still very strong among them.

Every one knows that it is but natural that the Roumanian nation, which now forms a homogeneous and considerable whole, should have the firm belief that one day they may be united into a single political state.

The Magyar students have given us a statement of the essence of Magyarization. May we be allowed also to state in academical terms and in a few words the substance of the question of Roumanian unity, or as the Magyars express it, the question of Daco-Roumanian « irridentism. »

At the beginning of this pamphlet we remarked that one of the causes which had driven and still drive the Magyars towards this fanaticism of Magyarization, is the fear they have, that the Roumanians of Transylvania should unite themselves to the Roumanian independent kingdom.

This fear has also impelled the authors of the Reply to make assertions with reference to this question, which ingenuously belie each other.

It is doubtless that if the great body of the Roumanians were asked: Do you desire the political union with Roumania? they would inevitably reply yes, and if we were to deny this, we should utter an absurd untruth.

Notwithstanding which, the Roumanians, up to the present day, have never any where nor at any time demanded a political union with Roumania, and for this reason.

The Roumanians, a people of the Latin race, speaking a neo-latin idiom, have always thought and still think that the real and great danger for their nationality, as well as for that of the Magyars, comes from the North, and against this peril there is no more natural buckler than a Habsburg monarchy established on federative grounds.

The Roumanians have the firm conviction that the Austro-Hungarian empire can only continue to exist by transforming it into a iree and monarchical federation, in the bosom of which we, and all the other co-habitant nations may progress in complete liberty, under the impulsion of our national spirit.

We are convinced that the Roumanian nation possessing in Hungary and in Transylvania their entire national liberty, and being the equal, not the slave of the Magyar nation, will never have any motive for wishing to realize a union with Roumania and a dissolution with Hungary.

It is not then through fear of the Hungarian bayonets, but from an inmost conviction of its advisability that the Roumanians demand the possibility of a continuance of the political intercourse which unites them to Hungary.

Those who reproach the Roumanians with irridentism are ignorant people who know nothing about the matter.

At the present time, undoubtedly, we cannot deny that there exist among the Roumanians currents of feeling which do but increase and tend to the national unity of all the Roumanians, but these currents are only the natural result of the long oppression of the Roumanian nation by the Magyar supremacy.

The discontent which agitates the Roumanian people takes greater and greater proportions.

Even the most fanatical Magyar papers vie with each other in hiding the truth about the question of nationalities, and yet forget themselves sometimes and lift a corner of the veil which conceals the situation.

Lately we read in the « Egyetertes »:...« Terrible news are received from our correspondent of Cluj. . . . The Roumanians of the mountains and especially those about Albac, speak of the Magyars with the greatest hatred . . . These omens are the more alarming because one foresees a repetition of the events of 1848. . . . The Roumanians threaten already to recommence the sanguinary episode of Fontanele, etc. »[2]

Many a time we hear the cries of indignation of the lower classes against the Magyar despotism.

« Rather Russian than Hungarian!» is a stereotyped phrase often heard from Roumanian lips. The people, and it is not astonishing, know that the antagonism between the Hungarians and the Roumanians, has lasted many centuries, and that it has often burst out with the shedding of torrents of blood; and they know that the nobility which has oppressed us for ages is the Hungarian. Hence the proverb; « The Roumanian can expect nothing good from the Hungarian »; the very lowest of the Roumanian peasants knows that in past times the faith of his ancestors was persecuted, and now he sees how daily the persecution against his tongue increases, how his nationality is insulted, how he is taken advantage of in every way, to augment the triumph of those whose desire is that the Magyars alone shall rank as a race.

The Roumanians are the most peaceable and gentle people in the world, but in face of the oppression to which they are exposed, our people who live and die only for their language, their faith and their nationality will be terrible in their vengeance, and we much fear that no one, not even our political leaders, will be capable of hindering this loyal and patient people, from one day losing all self command and taking justice into their own hands, as often under the yoke of their oppressors, they have already threatened to do.

The more obstinate the Magyars are in their determination to exterminate the Roumanian nationality, the more the ideal of national unity has grown until it has become the only hope and refuge which may assure the safety of the Roumanian nationality. Flere possumus, sea juvare non!

But our Magyar colleagues nourish the hope that at least the Slav nations will remain quiet, because, as we have seen, they are not allowed to oppose a legal resistance to the pressure exercised upon them by the Magyars.

We know what the state of the Slav nations of Hungary is, but our Magyar fellow students will allow us to say that this tranquillity bears a striking resemblance to the calm of the sea before the breaking of the storm.

« As long as the Slavs remonstrate, says Fischof, they still hope.

« The day that they begin to be silent, they will have lost all interest for Austro-Hungary and for its existence.

« Woe to her, woe to the West, when the rallying cry of Russia shall resound throughout the whole of the Slav world. »[3]

Since the Magyars in their pride, do not cease to identify themselves with the state, by using every effort, every means allowed by the law, to tear out of the hearts of the nations every fibre of sympathy for the Magyar institutions, it is a very natural consequence that Hungary should be acted upon by centrifugal currents, for the nationalities see in every Magyar institution and even in the smallest Magyar flag the hat of Gessner.

« These nationalities » continues Fischhof, « have only a relative interest in maintaining a state composed of different nationalities, for here state and nation are not synonymous terms, and differences may occur between their tendencies, which may put the nationalities face to face with the alternative of sacrificing either themselves, or the state of which they form a part. »[4]

The magyarization of the nationalities is equivalent to their national death, and if magyarism considers it has the right to magyarize them, it is clear that they may think they have the right of getting rid of it.

The explanation of this fact is simple: wherever there is life, there also an implacable but natural law reigns, in right of which all pressure causes a re-action. And it is not the Magyars who will change these iron laws of nature! We, in our turn repeat what the Magyar students remarked, that: « One can enter a suit against such laws, but it is impossible to gain it. »

Many moderate and impartial politicians have prophesied that it is the Magyars themselves who are preparing the dissolution of Hungary.

Von Helfert, when speaking of the magyarization of the Slovaques, writes as follows « In a political sense, panslavism would signify an ardent desire to belong to another state.

« Let us suppose for instance that such a wish did exist among the Slovaques of Hungary, would not this resentment be nourished and fortified by the actual conduct of the fanatics?

» Do not they themselves increase the danger which they wish to stifle? » There lies the true peril to the territorial integrity of the kingdom of Saint-Etienne, and the fault of increasing it in such a manner that it becomes a crime of treason against the country, does not fall on the Slovaques, or on the other non-magyar inhabitants of the country, but upon the representatives of pan-magyarism. ...

» Hungary is not an island, on the contrary, it is a country which is bounded to a great extent, especially on the S.-E. by states formed of young nations, which make rapid progress, and these states will be the more dangerous because they will excite, by a mistaken policy, the discontent of the co-nationalities of those states which inhabit Hungary. »[5]

If the Magyars had rightly understood the nature of our common state. Hungary would be to day a Switzerland of the East, prosperous and happy, whose people would never seek their welfare and the safety of their nationality in the forms of government, relatively foreign, of the nations who surround them!

Emile de Laveley, who well knew the struggles of the Hungarian nations against the supremacy of the Magyars, wrote thus: « In turbulent times, what a danger it is for the Magyars to have such bitter enemies in the county of the crown of Saint Stephen.

» The Magyars should unhesitatingly accept a federal constitution in Transleithania just as the Germans should in Cisleithania and the Magyars should accept it, the more because their situation is more dangerous than that of the Germans.

» The Magyars can no longer hope to magyarize the Croats who have Serbia and Bosnia for neighbours, neither will they be able to magyarize the Roumanians, who are re-inforced by the young kingdom of Roumania, which continues to progress.

» What a danger for the Magyars, to find themselves, the day that they will be called upon to defend their country, in a state of enmity with the other cohabiting nationalities! »[6]

Pan-magyarism, in confiscating Hungary, and in identifying itself with it, desires to put an end to the nationalities.

But a day will come when Hungary will have to defend itself against the greatest danger which has ever threatened it.

In such difficult and decisive moments, it is indispensable that the nations should coalesce in the defence of Hungary, and that they should not be placed face to face with the cruel fact that they are obliged, so to say, to shed their blood for the country, only afterwards to arrive at the sad privilege of being magyarized!

That is the criminal side of the Magyar tendencies, that is what makes of the Magyars, an element of provocation, disorder and destruction!

« The oppressed » said the great patriot Schuselka, « will only wait for a favourable occasion to throw off his yoke, and the world as well as his own conscience, will say that he has every right to do so! »[7]

« Our fellow-students themselves boast that when the Magyars were oppressed, they refused to fight against the enemies of the empire, and that the young Magyars passed over in numbers to the ranks of the enemy! »[8] ....

We should not give all these extracts, were it not our profound conviction that the tendencies of pan-magyar egotism will certainly lead the whole monarchy to its ruin, and consequently us with it.

In our patriotism we have considered it our duty to show frankly the true state of our common country, and to draw the attention of all those who love peace, to the great dangers to which our country is exposed under the terrorism of the politic of magyarization.

If the fall of Hungary and consequently that of the whole empire were what we desire, being irridentists, as the ignorant and infamous press of the Magyars designate us, we should not have written this Reply.

Whoever wishes for the overthrow of Hungary need only say as was said of Poland formerly: « Order reigns in Varsovie! » he has but to be silent to approve the conduct of the pan-Magyars to encourage them in their work of undermining the state.

And, in short, this is how by their actions, the Magyars aid the irridentists of Roumania!

This is what we read in an irridentist paper: « Every thing is going on famously beyond the mountains towards the accomplishment of our ends.

» All open struggle, all legal resistance, is rendered impossible to the Roumanians and to the non-Magyars in general; no breathing room is left them.

» When this work of suffocation, will be finished, the struggle will have become a conspiracy, and we do not doubt that, bitterness and hatred will be concentrated to such a degree, that one day they will burst forth more terrible than ever, and destroy the foundations even of the whole edifice of Magyar despotism.

We believe in this denouement, our ranks thicken daily, and we rejoice at it, whatever tears may yet have to be shed, whatever sufferings may yet have, to be endured! »[9]