Karolyi's Treason

At Budapest, the Hungarian Supreme Court confirmed the finding of a lower court--namely, that Count Michael Karolyi (TIME, July 16, 1923) was guilty of high treason (TIME, Nov. 3, 1924). The Supreme Court also up- held the previous sentence of confiscation of all his personal and entailed property, amounting to many millions of dollars. All that was allowed from the estate, before it became State property was $42,000 for legal fees to Karolyi's attorney. The report on the findings of the Supreme Court was obviously incomplete ; no mention was made of the Count's defense that he entered into communications with Hungary's ene- mies on the request of Emperor Karl. In the main, he was charged, like Caillaux and others in France, of endangering Hungary's alliances, aggravated in his case by entering into communications with the enemy during a time of war.

Without any question Count Karolyi is, in the light of unbiased legal evidence, guilty of high treason. Nothing is surer, however, that he acted with the best of intentions; nothing more certain than that he was always the good friend of the Allies and that he ought, therefore, according to the terms of the Versailles Treaty, to be immune from the sentence confirmed by the Supreme Court. But in Hungary, as in most other places, courts of justice are established to carry out the letter and spirit of the law without reference to mitigating sentimental evidence.