While we were waiting for a train today, Count Apponyi informed me quite seriously that Hungary was not the least feudal, either in theory or practice. The Hungarians harbor no animosity against Britain and France and really deserve the chivalrous friendship of these two nations. They are the only people in the present conflict who, in the heat and excitement of war, have on all occasions behaved like good sportsmen. When trains of Russian prisoners arrive at Hungarian stations, the people manifest no hostility, but greet them with kindness and sympathy and offer them food and flowers. The populace has not molested alien enemies, and their government has not indulged in wholesale internments of enemies' subjects. In Hungary I found British horse trainers, English tutors, and French governesses going tranquilly about their peaceful occupations. English tailors advertised their business in the Hungarian newspapers, and their clients went to them as readily as they would have gone in peace time. French chefs and servants were, as a matter of course, retained in the employ of noble families, and were treated with unvarying consideration and sympathy by their Hungarian fellow-servants. This attitude has been steadfastly maintained in spite of the wholesale imprisonment by the Allies of such Hungarian subjects as were left within their territory at the opening of hostilities. Of the nations which I have studied Hungary is the only one involved in the present conflict which has not stooped to reprisal and retaliation. It was a curious demonstration of the difference in the national temperament of the Teutonic and Magyar races to mark how diametrically opposed was the manner in which the two peoples regarded the efforts of the American Embassy in Paris to safeguard their respective subjects. As I, during the earlier weeks of the war, had been closely associated with these efforts, everyone I met had something to say to me upon the matter. [Illustration: EBERHARD--ONE OF COUNT APPONYI'S VILLAGES] Throughout Germany there was universal complaint and criticism of the methods of treating the German subjects who, at the beginning of the war, had been interned in France. I was constantly obliged to hear accounts of how many people had been crowded into one building, how at first only straw was provided for bedding, and how scarce and poor was the food which was furnished. The censure was primarily for the French nation, but the comments conveyed no sense of obligation to our Embassy staff, who had worked so untiringly to alleviate these conditions, which, moreover, resulted from no mal-intent on the part of the French, but were simply the inevitable consequences of the sudden oncoming of war. Every national resource of the French Republic was devoted to quick mobilization, upon which the fate of the nation hung, and until that operation had been accomplished, little time or thought could be devoted to alien citizens.