A Spectator's Notebook
I HEAR that once again rumours are circulating in Budapest that a secret trial of major political importance is now taking place in Hungary. The trial centres on the most dramatic figure of the October Revolution, General Pal Maleter, who so gal- lantly defended the Killian Barracks in Budapest for the first week of the uprising. On October 31 he was appointed Deputy Minister of Defence in Nagy's government. Around midnight on November 3 he was arrested by the Russians, two hours after he had arrived under a white flag to parley as Nagy's representative. Since then little has been heard of him; but there have been fre- quent reports that Kadar would bring him to trial, the last of them from Vienna three weeks ago. It proved unfounded, but Kadar's government was probably flying a kite to see what the re- action would be in the West. Since it passed with- out a murmur, except for a letter to the Minister of Justice from the International Commission of Jurists (of which the all-party organisation `Justice' is the British section), Kadar appears to have been emboldened to bring Maleter to trial on a charge of having broken his oath of loyalty as a soldier.
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