Juriga), while the 8,651,520 Magyars had 405 seats, so that every Slovak
deputy represented one million electors, every Magyar deputy, however,
21,000. As regards administration, all civil service officials in Hungary
have to be of Magyar nationality. The cases of persecution for political
offences are innumerable: Slovak candidates were prevented from being
elected by being imprisoned. Corruption and violence are the two main
characteristics of all elections in "democratic" Hungary. Even to-day when
some Radicals in Budapest talk of electoral reform, they want suffrage to
be extended to Magyar electors only, and also stipulate that the candidates
shall be of Magyar nationality. No Magyar politicians will ever abandon the
programme of the territorial integrity of Hungary, their aims being
expressed in the words of Koloman Tisza: "For the sake of the future of the
Magyar State it is necessary for Hungary to become a state where only
Magyar is spoken. To gain the Slovaks or to come to a compromise with them
is out of the question. There is only one means which is
effective--Extirpation!" And this aim the Magyars have faithfully kept
before them for at least the last hundred years.

In the same way also the economic development of the non-Magyar
nationalities has been systematically hampered, because the Magyars know
that economic dependence means also political subservience. The Slovaks and
Rumanians are not allowed to found co-operative societies or banks on the
ground that such institutions "are opposed to the interests of the elements
which hold the Magyar State together."

But it is not only the non-Magyars who suffer. The Magyar working classes
and the majority of the Magyar country people themselves are deprived of
political rights, for Hungary is ruled by an oligarchy and scarcely 5 per
cent. of the population has the suffrage right.