oyed various degrees of
provincial self-government. The Austrian side of every Austro-Hungarian
banknote bore an indication of its value in every language of the
empire, whereas the Hungarian side was printed in Magyar alone. This was
done in order to foster the belief that Hungary was entirely Magyar.

In reality, Hungary is as polyglot as Austria. Exact statistics are not
obtainable, since the Magyar census returns have long been deliberately
falsified for "Magyar State" reasons. Roughly speaking, it may, however,
be said that, in Hungary proper, i.e., exclusive of Croatia-Slavonia,
where the population is almost entirely Serbo-Croatian, there are
perhaps 8,500,000 Magyars, including nearly 1,000,000 professing and a
large number of baptized Jews. Against this total there are more than
2,000,000 Germans, including the numerous colonies on the Austrian
border, the Swabians of the south, and the Saxons of Transylvania; more
than 2,000,000 Slovaks, who inhabit chiefly the northwestern counties;
between three and four million Rumanes, living between the Theiss and
the Eastern Carpathians; some 500,000 Ruthenes, or Little Russians, who
inhabit the northeastern counties; some 600,000 Serbs and Croats in the
central southern counties; 100,000 Slovenes along the borders of Styria
and Carinthia; and some 200,000 other non-Magyars, including about
90,000 gypsies, who speak a language of their own. Taking the population
of Hungary proper at 18,000,000, the Magyars are thus in a minority,
which becomes more marked when Croatia-Slavonia with its population of
2,600,000 southern Slavs is added.

[Illustration: Distribution of Nationalities in Hungary.]

It would have been possible for the Magyars, after the restoration of
the Hungarian Constitution under the Dual Settlement of 1867, to have
built up a strong and elastic Transleithan polity based on the
recognition of race individualities and equality of political rights for
all. The non-Magyars would have accepted Magyar leadership the more
readily in that they had been dragooned and oppressed by Austria during
the period of reaction after 1849 as ruthlessly as the Magyars
themselves. Deak and Eoetvoes, who were the last prominent Magyar public
men with a Hungarian, as distinguished from a narrowly Magyar,
conception of the future of their country, pleaded indeed for fair
treatment of the non-Magyars, and trusted to the attractive force of the
strong Magyar nucleus to settle auto