Prometheus Unbound

Upon entering the U. S., some three months ago, to visit his sick wife Count Michael Karolyi, first President of the 1918-19 Hungarian Republic, was bound to rocks of silence by U. S. pseudo-Zeus, Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes (TIME, Mar. 2, Mar. 9, CABINET).

Last week, Heracles railway train transported Prometheus Karolyi and his wife across the Canadian frontier, bursting their gyves asunder. The things that the Count wished to say, that the U. S. Department of State forbade him to say and that everybody was anxious he should be allowed to say were said.

At Montreal, the Count told reporters what they already knew about Hungary. He blamed Count Laszlo Szechenyi, Hungarian Minister to the U. S., for causing his enforced silence; he attacked Regent Horthy of Hungary; he averred that U. S. loans were being used to finance another war, etc. In toto, he said what he was expected to say; he proved that he had nothing new to say. He had stolen fire, but so long ago that it had gone out.

The Count was evidently right when, shortly before he sailed from St. John for Liverpool, he said:

"If it hadn't been for them [the Szechenyis] nobody in America would have known about me, or wanted to hear what I had to say. Now, the American press is circulating my views in much greater detail than would have been possible otherwise, and magazines and publishers are after me to write articles. I must really pay Count Szechenyi a commission on what I get for my articles. I think 10% would be about right. He is a very good press agent for me."

His wife, an attractive, alert and brilliant personality, told of a flying visit to Washington, where she discovered the reason for the State Department's action in muzzling the Count. Apparently it was that the Karolyis had been evicted from Italy by Premier Francesco Nitti for carrying on Bolshevik propaganda. The State Department neither corroborated the Countess nor contradicted her; it therefore was fairly assumed that her statement was exact. This made the U. S. Government's ground of complaint against the Count somewhat frivolous; for it is an open secret that the Karolyis were expelled from Italy because a maid in their employ was proved to be a Bolshevik and the Italian Government jumped to the same conclusion about her employers.