Paris, April 12th

In my first talk since my return with General Smuts today, he was not as reticent as to his bout with Kun as he had been in Vienna, but even so what he did say was not very enlightening. He evidently did not regard the incident as a diplomatic triumph and soon the conversation turned to other fields. He admitted, however, that he had told Kun that the scattered forces, more or less under his control, on the Czech frontier were violating the terms of the Armistice and that sooner or later this attitude would compel the Allies to take severe measures. To this Kun answered that his government were not bound by the agreements which may have been accepted by Karolyi, and that as a matter of fact they were completely ignorant of their provisions. He then asked if the Roumanians were honoring the agreements they had made and Smuts admitted they were not, but he assured him that they, too, would very shortly be brought to book. I have a clear idea now that under his instructions from the Supreme War Council Smuts had tried to convince Kun that his regime was doomed-and had also offered to assist him (for the benefit of all concerned) to an easy “getaway.”¹ >

It must be admitted that the Roumanians also are not paying even lip service to the mighty men in Paris. Without a mandate and against positive and repeated orders, they are marching up through Transylvania and, further complications, thousands of old Magyar soldiers are flocking to the national standard of St. Stephen which Admiral Horthy has unfurled at Szegedin—and so another little war looms on the horizon!

True, the Czechs were on the Hungarian border, probably they had overstepped it, but no one really knew as the new boundaries had not been fixed. Smuts’s first task was to prevent the clash that was so near and, by expelling Kun, to rob the advancing armies of all justification of invasion. Kun stayed in power much longer than Smuts believed he could. Smuts said in April the former Jewish insurance agent could not hang on for more than six weeks. As a matter of fact he retained power for many months, until August, and then made his escape to Moscow via Vienna. There is much reason to believe that before they left Kun and his crew had sent much loot and booty to Russia which would, they hoped, assure them of a comfortable, carefree existence in the years to come. However, these “old-age pensions” with which the White Hungarian papers taunted the provident Red refugees were confiscated by the Moscow Soviet and it is said that Kun has been forced to resume his former pursuit of writing life insurance. But now his methods and technique are quite different. It is said he does not write policies in the great international companies as formerly. You simply paid him premiums and as long as you kept them up you were safe from arrest at the hands of the Ogpu, in which he is all-powerful!

I should perhaps repeat here that in my parting talk with Smuts (before his return to Paris) he not only approved of my staying on in Vienna (as instructed by House), but urged me to try to realize his plan of a subconference to be held in Paris at which all the Succession States of the defunct Empire would be represented. He wished me to work on his plan, which had been interrupted by his call from Lloyd George to take up the Irish problem, and in his enthusiasm he announced that he was confident that, within ten days I would be “herding the delegates” yet to be appointed to the peace fold in Paris. However, I received no instructions on the subject and naturally did nothing. Renner approved of the plan and told me that “in a hasty talk with him, Smuts had touched lightly upon the matter”—“fliichtig beruht” were the words he used, and that he was strongly in favor of the plan—but the invitation never came.

On my return to Paris, Frazier assured me that the plan never reached the Big Four, or even the Supreme War Council. He thought that in all probability Lloyd George had decided that Smuts should devote all his time and his great abilities to a solution of the situation in Erin which was, it is true, quite a man-sized job. Several days later, at a reception House gave to the delegates, Smuts came in and, pushing me into a corner, told me confidentially that his plan had not prospered and that he greatly regretted what he regarded as the unfortunate neglect of a golden opportunity.

He was pleased when I told him that Renner had authorized me to say that as far as Austria was concerned, the project was not dead. Hearing nothing further on the subject from Smuts and fearing that he had been diverted definitely from the only concrete plan he brought back from southeastern Europe, I (April 30th) accompanied the Colonel on one of his constitutional walks, and though I knew how beset he was with problems emerging from every point of the compass, I again explained, at considerable length I fear, the sad posture of affairs in the Succession States as I saw it. He, too, was impressed that something must and should be done, and right away. He took the matter up with the President and found that he, too, was favorable. He had no objection to the plan of a subconference but it soon developed the Italians had. At the moment the Fiume cauldron was at the boiling-over point—and so the vital and indeed most urgent matter was again postponed and later definitely dropped.

As an alternative, I suggested that a mission be sent to Hungary to take over when the Soviet regime collapsed, as collapse it would, although not as soon as Smuts had predicted.² This plan also won approval but was never carried out. It is true there were many, but certainly not more, important problems pressing for solution. Unfortunately, however, these problems were nearer at hand and those who pressed them carried more guns than I did.