chedule in the Balkans were those loaded with Swiss goods and belonging
to the Swiss Government. In crossing Southern Hungary we passed at least
half-a-dozen of them, they being readily distinguished by a Swiss flag
painted on each car. Each train, consisting of forty cars, was
accompanied by a Swiss officer and twenty infantrymen--finely set-up
fellows in _feldgrau_ with steel helmets modeled after the German
pattern. Had the trains not been thus guarded, I was told, the goods
would never have reached their destination and the cars, which are the
property of the Swiss State Railways, would never have been returned. It
is by such drastic methods as this that Switzerland, though hard hit by
the war, has kept the wheels of her industries turning and her currency
from serious depreciation. I have rarely seen more hopeless-looking
people than those congregated on the platforms of the little stations at
which we stopped in Hungary. The Rumanian armies had swept the country
clean of livestock and agricultural machinery, throwing thousands of
peasants out of work, and, owing to the appalling depreciation of the
kroner, which was worth less than a twentieth of its normal value, great
numbers of people who, under ordinary conditions, would have been
described as comfortably well off, found themselves with barely
sufficient resources to keep themselves from want. To add to their
discouragement, the greatest uncertainty prevailed as to Hungary's
future. In order to obtain an idea of just how familiar the inhabitants
of the rural districts were with political conditions, I asked four
intelligent-looking men in succession who was the ruler of Hungary and
what was its present form of government. The first opined that the
Archduke Joseph had been chosen king; another ventured the belief that
the country was a republic with Bela Kun as president; the third
asserted that Hungary had been annexed to Rumania; while the last man I
questioned said quite frankly that he didn't know who was running the
country, or what its form of government was, and that he didn't much
care. As a result of the decision of the Peace Conference which awarded
Transylvania to Rumania and divided the Banat between Rumania and
Jugoslavia, Hungary finds herself stripped of virtually all her forests,
all her mines, all her oil wells, and all of her manufactories save
those in Budapest, thus stripping the bankrupt and demoralized nation of
practically all of her resour