EUROPE FROM PRAGUE
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR' SIR,—I am really surprised that the Press Attachi: of the Hungarian Legation should reopen in your columns the ques- tion of educational conditions in Slovakia before 1914. I do not contest his statement about Mrs. Hodia : hut one swallow does not make a summer. The broad facts are well known. The most recent statement is that by Mr. C. A. Macartncy, whose reputation as an impartial student of Central European affairs is not, I think, questioned in Budapest. In his work on
Hungary and her Successors, published last year under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs he writes (pp. 90-91) :
"That the Slovaks were systematically Magyarised, with every sort of pressure and by the help of every device which could suggest itself to a determined and resourceful people, is a fact so patent that the denials of it which a section of Hungarian writers still think fit to issue can only awaken wonder at the degree of credulity which they impute to the foreigner."
The following passage states the facts as regards the school system : "The number of elementary schools with Slovak language of instruction, after remaining until after 188o at a figure which ranged between 1,971 (the peak figure reached in 1874) and 1,800, sank steadily to an average of 1,300 in the 'eighties, 510 in 1900, 241 in x905. In 1914 the figure was 365 (out of a total of 4,253 elementary schools in the country), but the Slovak character was already little more than nominal since the introduction of the Apponyi school laws."
My statement that children were punished for speaking in their own language outside the classroom was based on the reminiscences of an elderly lady of my acquaintance. If it is any satisfaction to your correspondent, he could learn of similar practices from the memories of the older generation in
certain parts of Wales.—Yours, &c., ALFRED ZIMMERN. New College, Oxford.
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