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IT has interested scientists and students of contemporary international politics in America to observe, in connection with the history of Hungary since the armistice in 1918, that Count Paul Teleki has been the official or unofficial geographer of each successive government of his country. This indicates clearly that there is thorough agreement that he is the man best informed on geographical matters in Hungary. He has also served his country with distinction in five different cabinet positions. He held the portfolio of Instruction once, and that of Foreign Affairs three times in different administrations; finally he was Minister President, or Premier, during a very difficult period of Hungary’s existence. Hence it is patent that he was unusually well qualified to give a series of lectures on the new Hungarian kingdom at the Institute of Politics in Williamstown during the summer of 1921.

Teleki was born in Budapest, on November 1, 1879. He studied law, political science, and geography at the University of Budapest, and specialized for one year at the Agricultural Academy. He has stated that he decided to become a geographer because of the inspiring lectures of Professor Louis de Lóczy, of the University of Budapest. Teleki received his doctor’s degree in 1903. He then made an extensive trip to the Sudan.

On his return he finished his first major work entitled: “Atlas to the History of Cartography of the Japanese Islands,” a cartographic monograph which is accepted in Japan, and in the scientific world outside, as the best study of that subject. This atlas also contains a translation of the Dutch journals of Mathys Quast and Abel Janszoon Tasman, written in 1639. The publication of this atlas attracted much attention among geographical scholars because of the explanation of the effect of the discovery of America upon the European world’s knowledge of Japan and its representation upon maps. Mr. E. L. Stevenson of the American Geographical Society of New York has characterized Teleki’s atlas as: “one of superior excellence, a model for those who have in contemplation a history of the cartography of any other single country.” Teleki was awarded the Jomard Prize of the Société de Géographie de Paris in 1911, when M. Henri Cordier characterized the atlas as one of the monumental works of geography. Dr. Hermann Wagner, the Nestor of German geographers, wrote: “He never used secondhand sources if he was able in some way, even with the greatest difficulty, to find the original source.”

In 1909 the International Geographical Congress in Geneva elected Teleki one of the seven members of a committee formed for the study of ancient charts. He became successively: member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; corresponding member of the Geographical Society of Vienna; honorary member of the Spanish Geographical Society; president of the Turan Society; president of the Society for Social Hygiene; and general secretary of the Hungarian Geographical Society (Magyar-Földrajzi Társaság). From 1909 to 1913 he was president of Hungarian Geographical Institute. Through his efforts appeared the first Hungarian scientific atlas of the world, published by this institute.

During the summer of 1912, he was one of the official delegates of the Hungarian Geographical Society to the Transcontinental Excursion of the American Geographical Society of New York, traveling in the United States for two months in a company of distinguished geographers. To all his European colleagues and to the American geographers who accompanied this excursion, Teleki endeared himself as a charming companion and an efficient scientist. One of the fruits of this American journey was Teleki’s lectures, in 1913, at the Commercial Normal School, and, in 1922, at the University of Budapest, on the Economic Geography of the United States. His book, “Amerika Gazdasági Földrajza,” 220 pages, Budapest 1922, is thus far published only in Hungarian. It presents the economic geography of the United States in a new way and is especially valuable because it is the work of a competent geographer, possessing perspective regarding the United States which we Americans necessarily lack.

Before the war Teleki took little part in political life, though he represented a constituency in Parliament, being elected three times between 1905 and 1911; he was usually a member of the Opposition. In general he kept aloof from party struggles and has told me that he never made speeches except on social hygiene and education.

During the war he served as a lieutenant in the Hungarian army. Part of this time he was on duty with troops, and part of the time in charge of a large office which looked out for disabled soldiers. Teleki then ranked as an Undersecretary of War. His office for disabled soldiers had eighteen hospitals with about 18,000 beds, a widows’ and orphans’ section, and a social section. This last Teleki organized personally. Believing that the first principle of social help is that the work must be done individually, not as with a mob, he initiated the social experiment of an individual solution of the future of disabled soldiers and their families with 50, then with 500, and finally 2500 cases. I know of no such experiment elsewhere, and have been told that Teleki’s experiment was a brilliant success. His system might furnish a solution of agricultural reforms in such countries as his own. Unfortunately this great work was no sooner well under way than the disabled soldiers became bolsheviks, in the early days of Károlyi’s régime, ruining the whole work. Teleki tried to save what he could of it, and I have been told that he and his assistants spent two months working at their offices, with revolvers in their pockets. The disabled soldiers feared the bolshevik leaders, however, thus making it impossible for this interesting social experiment to continue.

Early in the war it was reported in the American newspapers that he had been killed in action. As this was never denied, I regretted for four years the loss of an able geographer and warm friend. On going to Hungary in January, 1919, I was overjoyed to learn that Teleki was still alive.

Teleki did not entirely lay aside his scholarly and philosophical work during the war. Every soldier knows how much waste time there is in an army,—long waiting during the days, periods of wakeful inactivity between inspections at night. What Teleki did was to work out notes for a history of geographical thought. From these notes, taking advantage of a long sick leave in 1917, Teleki dictated a book “A Földrajzi Gondolat Története.” Upon the basis of this essay of 231 pages, Teleki took, in 1917, the chair in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, to which he had been elected in 1913.

The extent to which Teleki was effectively active in the capacity of geographer of the several Hungarian administrations since the armistice, as alluded to above, can best be stated in terms of an American geographer’s contacts with him during this period. In January, 1919, the American Commission to Negotiate Peace sent a mission to Austria-Hungary. When we arrived in Budapest we found that Provisional President Michael Károlyi had designated Teleki to be of all possible service to the Americans who had come to Hungary to study the situation with a view to the drafting of a peace treaty. Upon the basis of a comprehensive knowledge of the geographical material available in Paris for the use of the several delegations to the Peace Conference, I have no hesitancy in saying that the cartographic and documentary material on Hungary, which Count Teleki gave us in Budapest, and which we sent to Paris, was the most complete and accurate data regarding a single country which was supplied by any European government, either of the Allies or of the Central Powers. It appeared to me, also, that it was unusually dispassionate, and that, although Teleki was a conspicuous member of the League for the Maintenance of the Integrity of Hungary, the maps and pamphlets which he helped to prepare were obviously the work of an unprejudiced scientist. Immediately after the armistice, Teleki had perceived the need of preparing concise information, and particularly graphic maps and diagrams, and had persuaded the new Hungarian government to provide facilities for having statisticians, draftsmen, and printers prepare a summary picture of Hungary for the use of the Peace Conference. Thus Teleki did very much the same thing in his own country that the Inquiry did, regarding various countries, for the American government.

Károlyi subsequently prevailed upon Teleki to accept an appointment as professional geographical adviser of the Hungarian Peace Delegation, which he, as president of Hungary, was getting ready to send to Paris. Although a political opponent of Károlyi, it is a tribute to Teleki’s ability as a geographer that he was offered this appointment and agreed to accept it.

At the time of the bolshevist coup, when Károlyi resigned the presidency and the government was seized by Béla Kun, Teleki and I both happened to be in Berne, Switzerland. The Béla Kun government made overtures to him to return to Budapest and become geographical adviser to the bolshevists. I shall never forget Teleki’s indignation, and his vehement statement that he would rather be shot or imprisoned than undertake service under Béla Kun. Nevertheless, the fact stands out that Teleki, though a bourgeois, was so eminent as a geographer that even the bolshevist government desired him to enter its service.

In June, 1919, Teleki entered the Ministry of the provisional anti-bolshevist government at Szeged, accepting the portfolio of Instruction. Subsequently he became Minister of Foreign Affairs. I had seen Teleki in Vienna during the previous weeks, and it happened that he was leaving for Szeged within a day of the time I left for Paris. When we said good-by to each other, he told me confidentially that an anti-bolshevist government was to be set up, and that he was going to Szeged to do what he could for his country by enlisting actively in the movement to overthrow Béla Kun. He never spoke of the personal danger he was to encounter. It became evident what a brave thing Count Teleki and his associates were doing, in the weeks afterwards in Paris, for we received reports about the nature and strength of the counter-revolutionary government in Szeged. This government had a tiny army, made up of scores of officers to each private soldier; it was not outside the country like the revolutionary governments which have sprung up at various times since 1918, in Switzerland, Italy, and Austria to try to upset existing régimes in distant countries. It was on the soil of Hungary itself; and its members were making active opposition to a relentless and rather powerful foe who was at that time hanging and shooting Hungarians in Budapest without trial. Béla Kun would have promptly executed every member of the Szeged government, had it been possible to capture them at that time. Hence Teleki was doing an unusual thing as a geographer, and an exceedingly brave thing as a Hungarian patriot. But of this he seemed to be quite unconscious; his only aim was to help restore his country to peaceable and reputable administration.

He has never spoken to me of such matters, but other Hungarians have told me that Teleki showed his personal daring many times during the recent eventful years of his country’s history. One instance was in August, 1919, four days after Béla Kun was overthrown. There followed two days of half-communist, half-socialist government, and then the Roumanians entered Budapest. Teleki, learning of this in Szeged and hoping there were to be changes in a conservative direction, persuaded the Council of Ministers to agree that he should go personally to see the situation in Budapest. The next morning he flew to Siófok, a village near Budapest, which had been till the second day before the bolshevik army’s aerial headquarters. He landed there in order to prevent his aeroplane being taken by communists or by Roumanians in Budapest. There were about a thousand bolsheviki in this village, including some officers of the army of Béla Kun. Teleki calmly dined in a great hall in the midst of eight hundred dining bolsheviks. He would say, modestly, that there was no heroism in this trip.

After the government of Béla Kun was overthrown, Count Teleki participated in the new government, at first only in the way of preparing for the peace conference. In 1920 he was elected to the Hungarian National Assembly from the constituency of Szeged.

During the existence of the Hungarian Peace Delegation which went to France and lived at Neuilly, Teleki was the geographer of the delegation, and was as effective in this capacity as any representative from the Central Powers could possibly have been, considering the conditions under which this delegation negotiated the Trianon Treaty. The Hungarian plenipotentiaries were not permitted to sit at a table with the representatives of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers and of the new states adjacent to Hungary. They did their work alone in their own quarters, being given a draft treaty, presenting observations upon it, and finally receiving word that modifications had been made upon the basis of certain of their observations but that in other cases the draft treaty must stand as originally drawn up. The cartographic and diagrammatic material prepared by Teleki and his associates was so clear and logical, however, that, regardless of how the present generation of Hungarians views the wisdom and justice of the Treaty of Trianon, it must be admitted that the peace terms were decidedly different from what they might have been if Teleki had not done his work. In this connection a tribute must be paid to his atlas: “The Economics of Hungary in Maps,” prepared for the Commission of Count Paul Teleki, Chief of the Office for the Preparation of Peace Negotiations, by Aladár de Edvi Illés and Albert Halász, and published in Budapest in 1920 and 1921. This is one of the best atlases presenting the geography of a country, and a number of the maps from it have been reproduced by Teleki in this book. He is a positive genius on graphic maps and atlases. His atlas of the economic resources and systems of communications of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Jugoslavia, Roumania, Bulgaria, Greece, and European Turkey, published in Budapest in 1922, will be indispensable to all students of Central European and Balkan affairs.

On March 18, 1920, Teleki became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of Premier Simonyi-Semedam. On July 19th, 1920, he assumed office as Minister President or Premier of Hungary. He reorganized his cabinet on December 16, 1920, and guided the affairs of his country until May 2, 1921, with all the sagacity and wisdom of a trained statesman.

An outstanding event during this period was the first return to Hungary of the late King Charles. In April, 1921, Count Teleki, the Premier, and Admiral Horthy, the Regent, quite independently, realizing that the return of a Hapsburg to the throne of Hungary was impossible, persuaded the former King to leave Hungary and return to Switzerland. It is not easy for Americans to understand why Teleki, who has always said that Charles was the rightful King of Hungary, took the position that his King could not ascend the throne and rule the country. Premier Teleki felt, and frankly told the King, as Admiral Horthy told him later the same day, that it would ruin Hungary if he were to attempt to rule as King, because the neighbors of Hungary would never permit a Hapsburg to reassume the Hungarian crown.

I speak of this wise and brave act of Teleki as an outstanding event of the period during which he was Premier; I think, however, that he would like it better if his administration were remembered, not for this, but for the series of wise undertakings and reforms which were effected during this period. Of some of these he speaks modestly in the later chapters of this book. These acts did much to set Hungary on the road to progress and along the paths of peace. The Treaty of Trianon, formally establishing the complete independence of Hungary and its recognition by the Great Powers, after four centuries of various degrees of foreign rule or semi-independence, was ratified by the Hungarian Parliament under Teleki’s premiership on November 13, 1920. He also issued the great order of amnesty.

No geographer in the history of the world has ever had such an opportunity in statecraft as Teleki had; and, remembering always that before the war, although at times a member of the Hungarian House of Commons, he had worked upon and made speeches only regarding social questions, Teleki’s three different periods of service as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and particularly his administration as Premier, are all the more remarkable.

In May, 1921, after his retirement from the office of Premier, which seems to have been caused chiefly by those who objected to his persuading King Charles to leave Hungary, Teleki quietly entered upon the scholastic work of his professorship of geography in the Faculty of Economics of the University of Budapest, a chair which he was the first to occupy. It is quite characteristic of him that he said, in all simplicity and sincerity, that he was “happy to be once more a private man.”

It has been my great privilege as an American geographer, and as the leader of a Round-table Conference at the initial session of the Institute of Politics, to have talked over with Teleki the general plan and many of the details of his lectures at Williamstown in August, 1921, and to have read his manuscript before it was sent to the printer and again in proof. The geographical picture presented by the author is sound and adequate. I regard this book as one of the best geographical publications of the present year, and one which will be an essential part of the equipment of all thoughtful students of geography, history, ethnography, economics, and current European politics.

Lawrence Martin.

Washington, D. C.

May 8, 1922.