Bratislava

“ Hungary, however, would stand little chance against three combined. So with great zest the new combination was formed. Certainly the warmest national friendship in the Near East to-day is that between Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia, and it has been called into being by the common danger of the Magyar.
Budapest is a handsome city with grand bridges spanning the bending Danube. The fashionable part climbs upwards on crags to the higher light, and the Danube flashes upward. The modern city is a first-class aggregation of business houses, cafés, and places of pleasure. There is pavement comfort. ”

“ You see no grapes and hanging ribbons in Belgrade and Sofia. They will come there next year or in 1923. The Hungarian women are broad-faced and broad-bosomed, and talk more than they smile. City madam in elegant attire with languorous half-shut eyes and Hungarian drawl is a man's darling. Flesh-coloured stockings greatly abound. One is, however, strongly advised not to judge of Hungary by the people who spend four or five hours of the day sitting in the cafés of Budapest. The poor parts of the city present a different spectacle. ”

“ Vienna, the Hungarian capital delights some visitors far more—though in regard to animation, if we go along the Francis Joseph Quay during the promenade hour, or along the Andrassy Street in the evening, when the cafés are at their busiest, then Budapest may compare in that regard, too, with the Austrian capital. The visitor perhaps feels more at home among the Hungarians than in the social cosmopolis, and that even though some travellers have declared that in Budapest we first touch the Orient. ”

“ Hungary is still in the flush of youth, high-spirited, brilliant, enthusiastic, and a little out of perspective in its national consciousness. But who would ever do anything if he saw his true place in the cosmos? The rapid rise of Budapest—unprecedented save in the gold countries—into a capital of European importance, has shed a buoyant optimism, refreshing enough in this jaded century, over the inhabitants of that beautiful city. "We are the Vienna of the future," cried my cicerone, "and already Vienna is feeling our rivalry. ”

“ Budapest no doubt will always win friends for the country of which it is the capital. Capitals can be of enormous service to states in the matter of silent propaganda. A handsome comfortable city of impressive buildings will always predispose foreigners in favour of the country itself. On the other hand, an inadequate capital will be a hindrance to a state. In this respect, Belgrade, as it is to-day, is a handicap to Jugo-Slavia. But Budapest will help Hungary enormously. ”

“ But as against that Slovaks will lose large fragments of their people who have been for centuries settled in small compact bodies in the midst of Magyar territory. In Budapest itself there are 25,000 Slovaks, and in the neighborhood of the capital there are many Slovak villages. These ethnographical islands are scattered throughout the Hungarian plains as far south as the territory of the South Slavs. The number of men thus lost to Slovakia is estimated at 450,000, more than twice as many as the Magyars will lose. ”

“ Budapest is situated nearly in the centre of Hungary, and dominates by its strategical position the approach from the west to the great Hungarian plain. The imposing size of the Danube, 300 to 650 yds. broad, and the sharp contrast of the two banks, place Budapest among the most finely situated of the larger towns of Europe. On the one side is a flat sandy plain, in which lies Pest, modern of aspect regularly laid out, and presenting a long frontage of handsome buildings to the river. ”

“ Birches and willows grow freely, and in summer the flowers are really beautiful. It was formerly Crown property and belonged for a long time to the late Archduke Joseph, but since 1908 it has been taken over by the city. The baths on the island are extensive and well built, and are naturally warm. Indeed, Budapest is pre-eminent among cities in the number and variety of her healing springs; those on the Buda side were known to the Romans and much appreciated by the Turks, by whom the two finest, the Imperial and the Rudas, were built. ”

“ An ancient race has quickened with new life.”
From the Magyar The immediate approach to Budapest by river is distinctly and remarkably impressive. Ahead on the right are seen the heights of the Gellert Hill and of the nearer one on which the royal palace stands, while as we pass under the Margaret Bridge we get a striking view of what is surely one of the most beautiful groups of Parliament buildings in the world. Coming down-stream to Vienna it is only after we have got a certain degree of intimacy with it that we begin to do justice to its fascination. Budapest captures from the outset. ”

“ The wonderful progress of Budapest is undoubtedly due to the revival of the Hungarian national spirit in the first half of the 19th century, and to the energetic and systematic efforts of the government and people of Hungary since the restoration of the constitution. So far as Hungary was concerned, Budapest in 1867 at once became the favoured rival of Vienna, with the important additional advantage that it had no such competitors within its own sphere as Vienna had in the Austrian provincial capitals. ”

“ But all these memories of Prague, personal or historical, recent or remote, I must leave, to come at once to the Austrian capital, one of the most interesting cities of Europe. Vienna is a far more picturesque city than Berlin. It is many times older. It was a great city in the Middle Ages, when Berlin had no existence. The Cathedral of St. Stephen was erected hundreds of years before the Elector of Brandenburg chose the site of a town on the Spree, or Peter the Great began to build St. ”

“ In his brief account of Budapest he gives a suggestive summary of the impression of that river-side promenade which, as I have said, is one of the abiding memories of the fascinating city: “To the stranger Budapest hardly exists beyond the Ferencz-Josef Rampart along the river, which has at all hours an operatic air, as of something hastily got up for your pleasure, and with immense success. Well-dressed people walk to and fro upon this cheerful boulevard, with its trees, cafés and flags; little trams run smoothly along it between you and the water, with a continual, not unpleasant agitation ”

“ In the old Buda the ancient East has left its traces; in Pest, the modernity of the West has become apparent. I knew something of it in 1918.
I loved Budapest, and I preferred the small Coburg Palace in the Hungarian capital and its charming receptions to our home and our entertainments in the capital of Austria. The atmosphere was different from that of Vienna, and I was pleased to find myself in the neighbourhood of the good Archduke Joseph, my mother's brother, who was so warm-hearted and so dear to me. His palace was at Buda, and his château was some hours' distance from the town. ”

“ There is a feeling of hospitality about Budapest which is increased and fixed by the cordial reception accorded by the people with whom we come in touch. Mr. Arthur Symons, who has, as it were, made a study of the psychology of cities declares that at Budapest “coming from Austria, you seem, since you have left Vienna, to have crossed more than a frontier. You are in another world, in which people live with a more vivid and a quite incalculable life: the East has begun.” ”

“ In great contrast is the town of Pest, which, though in its origin almost as old as Buda, has nothing left to carry back its date. It is in all ways a large and splendid town, with wide streets enlivened by beautiful sculpture, fountains, and trees; it has magnificent buildings, and the streets show splendid vistas, especially where they lead down to the bridges. Everywhere run electric trams, and there are electric railways underground. The principal street is that of Andrassy, a name honoured in Hungary’s political life. Here is the National Opera House, subsidised, as are also the theatres. ”

“ The indignation in the city was great, but the king was too strong to be resisted, and he speedily quelled all movements of tumult. Prague, situated upon the steep and craggy banks of the Moldau, spanning the stream, and with its antique dwellings rising tier above tier upon the heights, is one of the most grand and imposing capitals of Europe. About one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants crowd its narrow streets and massive edifices. ”

“ But the Pesth part of Budapest is a disappointment. One expects to feel the first breath of the East, and one gets a modern, a Western, almost an American town, with an electric underground railway and a telephonic newspaper which reads itself out all day long to whosoever will clap the cups to his ears—the old town crier in terms of modern science. ”

“ Go to Budapest, select a room with windows 131 giving on the Danube, and see if you do not agree with me. Throw the guide-books aside and wander down the superb Franz Joseph Quai. Note the battlements, the colossal statues of bronze, the Moorish architecture united with that of the Romanesque. You will not find all the sumptuousness of Budapest on this street, however, for it is scattered everywhere.
The beauty of the architecture can be seen by daylight, but the glory of Budapest can only be felt as you sail away ”

“ Pesth or, rather, Budapest, is the capital of Hungary and, next to Vienna, the second city in Austria-Hungary. Pesth stands on the left, Buda on the right, bank of the Danube, 170 miles from Vienna, and since 1873 the two have been one municipality. The towns are connected by chain bridges and a railway bridge. Buda is much the older town, Pesth being an essentially, modern place — the growth of the 19th century principally. It has many fine streets and squares, and the buildings are noted for their large size and substantial appearance. ”

“ The most beautiful of all, is Budapest itself. It makes a very imposing impression; to the left, the palace and the old castle; to the right, the hotels and public buildings; above all, the Parliament Building. ”

“ I have never seen such interesting photographers' show-windows as there are in Budapest. Partly this is because the photographers are good, but partly it must he in the Hungarians themselves—such vivid, interesting, unconventional faces. These people look as if they ought to do the acting and write the music and novels and plays and paint the pictures for all the rest of the world. ”

“ Trade.—-In commerce and industry Budapest is by far the most important town in Hungary, and in the former, if not also in the latter, it is second to Vienna alone in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The principal industries are steam flour-milling, distilling, and the manufacture of machinery, railway plant, carriages, cutlery, gold and silver wares, chemicals, bricks, jute, and the usual articles produced in large towns for home consumption. The trade of Budapest is mainly in corn, flour, cattle, horses, pigs, wines, spirits, wool, wood, hides, and in the articles manufactured in the town. ”

“ No city in Europe offers a more superb approach than does Budapest to the traveler who enters it on the deck of one of the beautiful steamers of the Danube Navigation Company. As we glide downstream towards the twin city, an immense mass of palatial structures suddenly bursts on our view. ”

“ Hungary has had to spend heavily upon road-making, bridges, railroads, sanatory and other economic improvements, and very heavily for rectification of the course of the Danube; in fact they have ambitiously set themselves too much to do in the time. They have rendered Buda-Pest, with its magnificent river embankments, one of the finest capitals in Europe. The Magyar does everything with a degree of splendour that savours of the [Pg 258] Oriental. They know not the meaning of the homely adage which tells a man to "cut his coat according to his cloth." ”

“ To look at Úprka’s canvas is to look through a window into the Slovak heaven; his colors full of bold contrasts, shimmer in sunshine and shout with joy, even though the motive be a most simple one. His art aims at one thing only—to register on canvas what he sees around him, people at work, at their pleasures, in church, in the field. But everything he sees with a great master’s eye and so all his work is true, delicious art. Always he paints his own Slovak people and above all children, whom he loves. ”

“ In Hungary, of which Slovakia until her recent union with Bohemia was an unwilling part, there were only three classes: those at the bottom, including the peasantry and rural and industrial laborers; the upper class, consisting of the landlords who owned more than half of the arable land and all the big forests, together with the lesser nobility or gentry who made their living exclusively out of politics; and finally a small middle class of merchants and the so-called bourgeois. Magyar magnates, like Karolyi, Andrassy, Apponyi, were all in politics, both for the glory and for the spoils of it. ”

“ In no city that I have yet seen have I felt so much pleasure, or such varied emotions, as during my walk into Prague.
Then we pass under the equally picturesque bridge tower of the Altstadt, and enter narrow streets lined with good shops, and full of bustle; and after many puzzling ins and outs, we emerge into the spacious area of the Ring—a lively scene, people crossing in all directions, or sauntering under the arcades; here and there sentries pacing up and down, and small parties of soldiers, in gay uniforms, marching away to beat of drum. ”