whom it indirectly urged to overthrow the Kuhn Cabinet and
receive the promised reward--namely, the privilege of entering into
formal relations with the Entente and signing the death-warrant of the
Magyar state. It is not easy to see how this solution alone could have
enabled the Supreme Council to establish normal conditions and
tranquillity in the land. But the Duumvirate seemed utterly incapable of
devising a coherent policy for central or eastern Europe. Even when
Hungary had a government friendly to the Entente they never obtained any
advantage from it. They had had no use for Count Karolyi. They had
allowed things to slip and slide, and permitted--nay, helped--Bolshevism
to thrive, although they had brand-marked it as a virulent epidemic to
be drastically stamped out. Temper, education, and training disqualified
them for seizing opportunity and pressing the levers that stood ready
to their hand.

In consequence of the vacillation of the two chiefs, who seldom stood
firm in the face of difficulties, the members of the predatory gang
which concealed its alien origin under Magyar nationality and its
criminal propensities[155] under a political mask had been enabled to go
on playing an odious comedy, to the disgust of sensible people and the
detriment of the new and enlarged states of Europe. For the cost of the
Supreme Council's weakness had to be paid in blood and substance, little
though the two delegates appeared to realize this. The extent to which
the ruinous process was carried out would be incredible were it not
established by historic facts and documents.

The permanent agents of the Powers in Hungary,[156] preferring
conciliation to force, now exhorted the Hungarians to rid themselves of
Kuhn and promised in return to expel the Rumanians from Hungarian
territory once more and to have the blockade raised. At the close of
July some Magyars from Austria met Kuhn at a frontier station[157] and
strove to persuade him to withdraw quietly into obscurity, but he,
confiding in the policy of the Allies and his star, scouted the
suggestion. It was at this juncture that the Rumanians, pushing on to
Budapest, resolved, come what might, to put an end to the intolerable
situation and to make a clean job of it once for all. And they
succeeded.

For Rumania's initial military reverse[158] was the result of a
surprise attack by some eighty thousand men. But her troops rapidly
regained their warlike spirit, recrossed the ri