I General Klapka.

The following programme of General Klapka, which we have received from a reliable source, is destined to be handed to Kossuth on his arrival in London. It proves how greatly Kossuth’s authority among his more prominent adherents has been shaken. It reads as follows:

“Political Programme.
Since I have retired for some time and perhaps for a long while from the scene of all political activity, and in order that my principles and views may not be misinterpreted, I hereby declare to my friends:

1) No dictatorship, either in the homeland or outside it, so long as the will of the nation does not decide on this point.

2) Paying homage to the majority of my compatriots and to my own conviction, I recognise our honoured fellow-citizen Ludwig Kossuth as head of the Hungarian refugees’ association, but at the same time I declare that I consider clinging to the office and title of governor to be quite incompatible with the fundamental principle of our revolutionary activity and very detrimental to our cause.

3) Concerning our activity abroad.

a) For the conduct of business there shall, alongside the above-named chief, be a number of other members, elected by the entire emigration, who together with him shall form the Central Committee.

In distributing the monetary assistance obtained through the exploitation of Hungarian popularity, the guiding rule shall be not personal relations but solely the circumstances: whether one is a faithful son of the homeland, what one has achieved for the homeland, and whether one is entitled to support at all. Accordingly, the funds designated by the Central Committee for private assistance shall be administered impartially and publicly by committees elected by the respective refugee corporations themselves.

Concerning our activity at home.

As soon as Hungary is in a position to begin the life-and-death struggle with her tyrants, those who then stand at the head of public affairs shall be obliged, within the shortest possible period, to convene a constituent National Assembly on the basis of universal suffrage; the sole revolutionary power and the government shall be only an emanation of this Assembly.

4) Since it cannot be our task to interfere in the activity of the future representatives of the nation, and to work out a constitution for our homeland even now, we can merely indicate those principles from which we expect the homeland’s future prosperity, resurrection, strength, welfare and the guarantee of a united, indissoluble union of all nationalities; these principles, if we moreover wish to take account of the spirit and the past of our nation, are Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, applied equally to individuals as to nationalities.

These are my personal principles. — But since Providence, taking no notice of our petty reasonings, often exerts its decisive influence on the fate of nations precisely where it is least expected, and since, in my view, the future constitutional question of Hungary is at present only a question of secondary rank, whereas the shaking off of the Austrian yoke, which threatens national existence with utter annihilation, is the main and vital question, I declare that I shall serve with my sword as well as with my influence any foreign power whose aim is the overthrow of the House of Austria and, in connection therewith, the restoration of the independence and statehood of Hungary.
April 1852.

Georg Klapka
General.”

From the above programme Klapka’s character can be very accurately judged. He holds himself firmly between two stools; he would dearly like to appear independent and energetic, but lacks sufficient strength to do so. Natural instinct is stronger than will. He wants Kossuth and also does not want him. With one hand he strokes him, with the other he deals him slaps; but so that they may fall more gently, he puts on silk gloves. Klapka forgets that a box on the ear, whether delivered with or without gloves, always remains a box on the ear, and that a vain, irritable, ambitious man like Kossuth forgets the small insult just as little as the great one. Vacillating, dependent people like Klapka always have the misfortune of doing everything only by halves. With this programme Klapka manifests his political minority, and his closing phrase even bears the stamp of clumsiness, of imprudence. Klapka forgets that a single untimely word is often enough to betray whole plans. We hope that General Klapka may not find himself in a position to regret the clumsiness of the diplomat Klapka.