with brilliant qualities and great faults; a man whose like is rare in Europe, in spite of those faults.  Great bodies cast long shadows; and he was great, and modelled out of the stuff from which the heroes of old were made—­heroes who understood how to fight and die.  How often did I reproach him with his unhappy “puszta” patriotism, that was digging a grave for him and all of us.  It was impossible to change him; he was obstinate and unbending, and his greatest fault was that, all his life, he was under the ban of a petty ecclesiastical policy.  Not a single square metre would he yield either to Roumania in her day, nor to the Czechs or the Southern Slavs.  The career of this wonderful man contains a terrible tragedy.  He fought and strove like none other for his people and his country; for years he filled the breach and protected his people and his Hungary with his powerful personality, and yet it was his obstinate, unyielding policy that was one of the chief reasons of Hungary’s fall; the Hungary he so dearly loved; the fall that he saw when he died, killed by the accursed hand of some cowardly assassin.

Tisza once told me, with a laugh, that someone had said to him that his greatest fault was that he had come into the world as a Hungarian.

I consider this a most pertinent remark.  As a human being and as a man, he was prominent; but all the prejudices and faults of the Magyar way of thinking spoilt him.

Hungary and her Constitution—­dualism—­were one of our misfortunes in the war.

Had the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had no other plan but that of doing away with dualism, he would on that account alone have merited love and admiration.  In Aehrenthal’s and Berchtold’s time Hungarian policy settled the Serbian disputes; it made an alliance with Roumania an impossibility; it accomplished the food blockade in Austria during the war; prevented all internal reforms; and, finally, at the last moment, through Karolyi’s petty shortsighted selfishness, the front was beaten.  This severe judgment on Hungary’s influence on the war remains true, in spite of the undoubtedly splendid deeds of the Magyar troops.  The Hungarian is of a strong, courageous, and manly disposition; therefore, almost always an excellent soldier; but, unfortunately, in the course of the last fifty years, Hungarian policy has done more injury than the Hungarian soldier possibly could make good in the war.  Once, during the war, a Hungarian met my reproaches with the rejoinder that we could be quite sure about the Hungarians, they were so firmly linked to Austria.  “Yes,” said I; “Hungary is firmly linked to us, but like a stone a drowning man has tied round his own neck.”

If we had not lost the war a fight to the death with the Magyars would have been inevitable, because it is impossible to conceive that any sensible European consortium would consent to be brought into partnership with Magyar aspirations and plans for dominion.