Counterfeiters

Super-scareheads frightened many citizens of Budapest: "CHIEF OF POLICE NADOSSY AND PRINCE WINDISCH-GRAETZ TEARFULLY CONFESS TO COUNTERFEITING 30,000,000,000 FRENCH FRANCS! Possible Fascist Putsch to Set up Archduke Albrecht of Hapsburg as Kaiser of Hungary Nipped by French Detectives! Premier Count Stephen Bethlen Believed Well Pleased at Developments, Which May Discredit His Rival, the Regent of Hungary, Nicholas Horthy!"

Such revelations together with rumors that Premier Bethlen will now try to give a push to a putsch which would raise up the young Prince Otto of Hapsburg as King of Hungary, provided last week one of the major political sensations of the decade since the World War.

The Counterfeiting. Writers of detective fiction lamented that last week's superfluity of revelations could not have been doled out in installments and syndicated somewhat as follows:

For months the Bank of France has been aware that attempts were being made to pass counterfeit 1,000-franc notes in Holland, Italy, Hungary. One day an Amsterdam banker, Mynheer Severin, sent to the Bank of France a 1,000-franc note which he had recognized as counterfeit when his Hungarian housemaid, one Vrouw Kovacs, asked him to change it for her into Dutch florins.

Detectives, despatched by the Bank of France to Amsterdam, found that the housemaid was receiving counterfeit bills regularly from her family in Hungary. They discovered that her father was the valet of the celebrated Prince Ludwig Windisch-Graetz.

The Prince is "a descendant of the Holy Roman Emperors," a Hapsburg, and a grandson of Feldmarschall Alfred Windisch-Graetz who put down the Kossuth revolution of 1848. Once he was the intimate adviser of the ill-fated Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary (1915-1918), and he is the present owner of the famed Eleventh Century castle at Saros-Patak. He is well known as "the most notorious titled gambler in Budapest," and is an avowed Fascist champion of the Archduke Albrecht as King of Hungary. The French detectives ferreted into his affairs excitedly.

Their excitement was caused by the fact that the Bank of France had long suspected the Hungarian-Fascist Albrechtists of being in some way connected with the French bank-note counterfeiting. It was now decided to make an exhaustive search of the 15 miles of natural tunnels in the rock upon which Windisch-Graetz Castle stands. The tunnels had once romantically housed the adherents of the famed Hungarian revolutionary Prince Francis Rakoczy. They might now have been unromantically degraded to the use of counterfeiters. The French detectives poked about with flashlights during many a weary night, found nothing.

It was then observed that noted German Fascist Colonel Bauer, sometime aide to ultra-Fascist General Ludendorff, was frequently in the company of Prince Windisch-Graetz. Colonel Bauer was suspected of having brought certain packages to the Prince from Germany. It was thought that counterfeit printer's plates, supposed to have been engraved in Germany during the War for the purpose of flooding France with counterfeit notes, had at length found their way into Hungary via the mysterious packages of Colonel Bauer. This line of investigation was pursued into such high places that General Ludendorff himself felt obliged to issue a statement last week: "During the War the Imperial General Staff several times gave its attention to suggestions that we should flood enemy countries with forged currencies. This might have disorganized our enemies' fiscal machinery; but we refused to consider taking such a step."

Since the German trail did not appear immediately promising, renewed attempts were made in the Netherlands to apprehend more important counterfeit -note -passers than the housemaid of Mynheer Severin.

At length three Hungarians were caught red-handed in Holland: Colonel von Jankovitch, Captain Marsowsky and one George Mankowitz. In their possession was a trunk with a false bottom stuffed with counterfeit 1,000-franc notes. The trunk still bore official Hungarian Government seals, which had exempted it from inspection by customs officers. The three men possessed shoes with double soles in which they carried the notes which they desired to transfer to subordinates, who passed them at hotels and in shops.

Allegedly the men arrested in Holland furnished the French detectives with information which enabled them to dovetail together numerous doubtful clues which they had turned up at Budapest. This mass of evidence was officially conveyed to the Hungarian Government by the Government of France --with the demand that action be taken.

Premier Count Bethlen of Hungary was rumored to have professed himself so staggered at the number of alleged friends of his political enemy, Regent Horthy, who were involved, that he went to the Regent and offered to resign rather than proceed to prosecute the offenders. Regent Horthy allegedly professed himself astounded that anyone should have supposed the men implicated were his friends, and gave Premier Count Bethlen explicitly to understand that the guilty whoever they were, must be punished.

The Jailed. 1) Prince Windisch-Graetz. Following his arrest, the Princess Windisch-Graetz left him "still undismayed" in "the most comfortable cell which could be placed at his disposal." Questioned by the authorities, he broke down, wept, admitted that he had employed M. Gerce, Chief of the Cartographical Institute of Budapest, to superintend the actual counterfeiting, which was done on Government presses used normally to print Hungarian paper currency. The Prince issued a statement: "It was to avenge my country upon France that I erred. . . . I wished to send the franc crashing to nothingness on a tide of counterfeit inflation. . . . I invested my last Hungarian krone in this patriotic enterprise. . . . Now I am deserted and without money of any sort. . . ."

2) Chief of Police Nadossy of Budapest. He too broke down, wept, confessed to having protected the counterfeiters from police molestation. Recovering his usual calm, he dictated his resignation to the many clubs to which he belonged: "I must sever my connections with my friends. I am lost."

3) Chief Counterfeiter Gerce. "It was the stupidity of Prince Windisch-Graetz which ruined us. . . . I made the paper we used myself, from German pulp; and the first 20,000 notes which I produced were not successful. . . . Prince Windisch-Graetz, however, insisted upon having them passed, and of course they were detected. . . . Later I raised our paper and technique to such a pitch of perfection that my last notes will continue to pass current in France indefinitely without detection. . . ."

4) Some 40 additional persons, many of high rank, were jailed or "unobtrusively guarded in their homes, to avoid scandal." One suspect, Deputy Franz Ulain, safe at Milan, foamed: "These counterfeiters are noble and venerable patriots. . . . I demand that Premier Count Bethlen be swept out of office for daring to arrest Hungarian heroes. . . . I demand that public admission be made of the fact that Hungary is still actually at war with France, and that the counterfeiting was a legitimate and laudable act of war. . . . The profits from the sale of the counterfeit money were being used solely to equip a Fascist army which would have set the Archduke Albrecht over the Hungarians, his would-be loyal subjects, in despite of France. . . ."

The Situation. Observers were inclined to dwell upon the fact that Hungary is officially the Kingdom of Hungaria, "a kingdom without a king." Admiral Nicholas Horthy de Nagybanya is "Regent" for a hypothetical monarch who remains to be chosen; and Horthy administers Hungary under the old Monarchial Constitution.

This status quo was established by the Hungarian Parliament, after Hungary had suffered as the "Republic" of which Count Karolyi was President (Nov. 1918 to March, 1919) and endured the "Soviet Government" of Bela Kun (March, 1919 to Aug., 1919).

There are so many equally powerful "royal" families in what is now Hungary that probably only the Hapsburgs, who have worn "the Holy Crown of Empire," possess sufficient prestige to reign over this country of mixed races. The Prince Otto of Hapsburg, son of the late abdicated Emperor Karl, grandson of famed Emperor Franz Josef, is the "legitimate heir." Were it not for the external pressure of the Allies, he would probably be welcomed as king by his father's subjects, who have made it clear at the polls that they desire to be governed by "a king." The Archduke Albrecht has been called "simply another Hapsburg, who it was hoped would prove more acceptable to the Allies than Otto."

Regent Horthy is supposed to be pro-Albrecht and Fascist, just as Premier Count Bethlen leans toward Otto and the strict Legitimists. Late last week Albrecht decided that the Fascist jig is up, and resigned as President of the Fascist League. It is almost unthinkable that the Allies will now let an Otto putsch succeed. Presumably the kingdom will continue kingless.