_July 21st._
People call revolutions ‘youth’ and ‘dawn’. But revolutions are not
daybreaks, nor are they the chaos out of which comes the beginning of
all things. They are not the first hour of a new age, but the last
decaying hours of a senile age in which the features of the times have
become distorted.
This is not dawn! Revolution is the midnight agony of a passing age,
when the vision of the future appears only through the blood and sweat
of the dying. The senile age dies in the revolution. And when the
disorder of dawn has passed and morning breaks, man becomes a child
again and an autocratic power takes it by the hand and leads it back to
order, to law, to church, to early Mass, into the presence of God. Then
comes the youth of the age, the period of dreaming idealism, of fights
for freedom, of Art. This age gathers flowers, ploughs and reaps, sings
and follows the footsteps of the beloved. Then comes the age of manhood.
It creates industry and commerce, it goes on board ship, weighs anchor
and brings treasures from beyond the seas. The treasures increase, the
superfluities accumulate and flow into a few hands, the reign of gold
raises its head above the misery of millions.
The evening comes over a pale world of ill omen. The nauseous scent of
faded flowers pervades the air. In saturnalian revelries the cups are
emptied to the dregs. These are the hours of wild, dissolute orgies, old
faces painted to look young, derisive laughter. The bells of the
churches only mark time, law is only respected by the simple and
regarded no better than stupid, traditional nursery tales by the
cunning. The tired incapable crowd is ruled by degenerates, hereditary
wrecks, criminals and lunatics. Respect disappears, the hand that worked
drops its tools and the hour of midnight approaches.
Then comes the agony of the senile age. Blood is shed, flames rise to
the sky and between fire and blood the age dies. Revolutions are not
mornings. They are the death-struggles of the midnight hour. And we poor
Hungarians have been for months the witnesses of such an artificially
provoked agony. It ends the age, but, above my sufferings, I feel that
the real dawn is coming towards us.
* * * * *
_July 22nd._
The day of the heralded world-revolution has passed. The Red press
gushes over the strikes in other countries, but reports that the
Dictatorship will summon before the Revolutionary Tribunal any Hungarian
workman who dares to stop work. In a fortunate country like Soviet
Hungary there is no longer any need for strikes. In Russia, where
happiness has been attained to an even higher degree, workmen who strike
are executed. None the less there is no work being done in town to-day.
Nor is there any on other days. Why work? For forged banknotes?
World-revolution! That is the word which is being whispered to-day at
street corners. A mad hallucination! Yet, if it were to come? What if
man’s evil spirits were powerful enough to send millions in the same
hour to the assault of their God, their country, their home and
humanity? Or if Béla Kun’s word is just successful enough to induce the
Proletariat of the Western Powers to tie their Governments’ hands so
that things may continue here as they are for months and years, till the
fire has burnt out?
A solitary figure came through the silence, came quickly, with an
elastic gait, though the bag on his back seemed heavy. He turned his
head constantly to right and left, and his eyes, widely opened, had a
stare in them which reminded one of the demented. He looked round, then
again started quickly towards the Ipoly. Then he disappeared.
This stranger passes here frequently nowadays, though he is not always
the same. Sometimes he is young, sometimes old. He is fleeing from gaol
and death, and dreams of Szeged. Two friends of my brother Géza escaped
this way, across the river. They came to the house, on their way to
Szeged. They had no idea I was here, but they brought news of my
brother. He is hiding in the hills of Buda, like the others who have not
escaped abroad and are not yet in prison.
They also told us that Stephania Türr had been in Budapest in June,
looking for Count Stephen Bethlen and me, to take us to Italy.
One evening there was a knock at our gate at an unusual hour and a
newcomer stood in front of us like a shadow—Count Stephen Keglevich,
fleeing from his property in Abony. His wife and children are coming to
us too, they have had to flee separately, so as not to attract
attention. They were driven out by hunger and the children were on the
verge of starvation, for the only food they could obtain was what the
peasants succeeded in bringing them by stealth from Count Keglevich’s
own farm. Since May, when Szémuelly suppressed the Counter-revolution in
Abony, that region has been like a mortuary, and now war is beginning
again there. So they are escaping to Ipolykürt, beyond the Ipoly, to the
plundered castle. There they will, at any rate, be able to sleep on the
bare ground—the one thing the Reds and the Czechs could not take away.
The patriotic Counter-revolution of the faithful Vends in Western
Hungary has been defeated by the Reds and the Vends have fled into
Austria. They have been interned in Feldbach and many Hungarian officers
have joined them. Baron Lehár is their commander. In Szeged the
legendary hero of Novara, Nicolas Horthy, is Minister of War. Paul
Teleki is Foreign Secretary. General Soós and Gömbös are organising the
national army. When I took leave of the latter in March, I knew that I
should hear of him if I lived.
It is said that Colonel Julier, the new Chief of Staff, who was forced
to take Stromfeld’s place at the point of the revolver, will be Red only
till he has crossed the Tisza. It is also said that whole battalions of
the Red army are deserting to Szeged. In our imagination that town, like
a mirage, is floating amidst national coloured flags on the banks of the
Tisza, above the Great Plain. We see the three colours, we hear the
National Anthem whenever we think of the town. Our proscribed flag, our
proscribed hymn! I am a beggar, for the property of the dead and the
condemned reverts to the Soviet. But when my imagination sees the three
colours floating against the sky, when the great prayer of my race
echoes in my mind, I am the richest woman in Hungary.
A hand has put ‘The Red Newspaper’ on the table: big type
again:—“Revolutionary outbreaks in Paris, Berlin and Turin.
Demonstrations of the foreign Proletariat in favour of the
world-revolution.” Then, set in small type, a short notice:—“Kiel....
The demonstrations have passed without the slightest disturbance.”
That is the history of the world-revolution. It is finished and the door
is still open.
* * * * *
_July 23rd._
The news is in everybody’s mouth: the Reds have won a decisive victory
on the Tisza and the members of the Directorate have regained their
confidence. It is from the attitude of these people that the town reads
the position of the Dictatorship. Their star is in the ascendant and the
Proletarians treat us with more rudeness than ever. Red colour has again
blossomed out on the soldiers’ caps, but they do not feel too sure about
it, and instead of ribbons they wear geraniums. That generally means
that the position is doubtful: a ribbon cannot be removed suddenly, a
flower is quickly torn off.
Goodness only knows how often I have wandered round the little back
garden. If it is really true that the Reds have crossed the Tisza! Those
who have seen their bestial destruction in their own country, and
observed them returning with booty stolen from people of their own
blood, must falter when they think of their victims.
“What news?”
In Huszár’s hand the journal’s yellow, mean paper rustled. “They have
crossed ...” he paused, then went on: “... On July 20th we crossed the
Tisza at various points.... From Tokaj to Csongrád we are pursuing the
beaten Rumanian troops everywhere....”
So they have won a victory with our blood against our own blood; for
this is not a question of Rumanians. A defeat of the Rumanians, the
re-occupation of the torn-off territory, the release of our Hungarian
brethren, were not the objects of the Dictatorship’s ambition, but a new
larder and a new field for robbery, new slaves and new legions. And we
cannot even deceive ourselves with the belief that the news is untrue.
It is true, it must be true, because Béla Kun, who loses his head when
in despair and is impudent after success, has sent to Clemenceau, the
President of the Peace Conference, the following ironical, provoking
message: “We have been obliged by the Rumanian attack, which was
undertaken against the wishes of the Entente, to cross the Tisza, and to
enforce the wishes of the Entente against the Rumanians.”
[Illustration:
THE LENIN BOYS POSE FOR THEIR PHOTOGRAPH WITH THEIR VICTIM.
]
Our thoughts travel wearily to those parts where, behind the receding
Rumanian flood, foreign energy will set against each other the few
remaining Hungarians. Számuelly’s train is under steam, and if it starts
it will plant the further shore of the Tisza with gallows.
A tightly-shuttered house has been burning here in Hungary for months.
Nobody tried to extinguish it. At last the smoke choked itself, the fire
burnt itself out. Who troubled about those who were in the house? Those
outside cared only that the fire should not spread to the adjacent
houses. Now the windows of the house on fire have burst, the fire has
been revived by the air, the flames lick the palings, spread, flare up,
run. What if they were to ignite the Great Plain and unite with the
Russian conflagration?
Evening came. Hours dropped into space. One of us picked up the paper
and we now noticed something for the first time. Below the news of the
passage of the Tisza, three words darkened the page: “Sentence of
death.” At Saint Germain the victors presented their peace treaty to the
remnant of Austria.
Our quarrel with Austria has lasted for centuries, and she brought us
hard times, yet there is no people on earth to whom her fate causes as
much pain to-day as to us. We have fought and fallen together on the
battlefield. Now they hang a beggar’s satchel round the neck of
unfortunate, torn Austria, and out of irony, with devilish cunning, send
her to take her share with her own predatory enemies, in the plunder of
Hungary. They compensate her with Western Hungary, with a piece of land
that promises endless revolts and is meant to act as a living wedge to
prevent for ever an understanding between the two despoiled peoples. It
is a devilish plan, the most perfidious part of the terrible Peace
Treaty. It pretends to be a present, but it is a curse and a disgrace.
A single candle was burning on the table, and by its light we could see
a map on the wall—the map of Hungary! That unit of a thousand years
which was not created by man but was made into one country by nature.
The thing I could never believe, which was always deemed a threat meant
only for the Revolutionary Bolshevist Government, the frontier of
Hungary as delineated by Clemenceau, has disclosed itself in the
Austrian treaty as the real aim of their vengeance. In the name of
peoples and nations the men at the Peace Conference are preparing a
crime which is only paralleled by the partition of Poland.
Suddenly I see, like a train of misty ghosts, a shackled procession pass
before my eyes: the granite walls of the Carpathians; the mysterious
rushes of Lake Fertö; the sea under the Carso; the Danube rushing
through the Iron gate; the summits of Transylvania; the forests of
Mármaros—all of them under a foreign yoke! I did not own an inch of that
ground, and yet it was all my own. They take it from me, and equally
from everyone who is Hungarian. Aladár Huszár has drawn upon the map the
frontiers fixed by the Paris Peace Conference. It is as if a knife were
passing through our flesh, leaving a line of blood wherever it passes.
The ancient frontiers are all left far beyond the line and deep in the
country there is an awful gash. The red line proceeds on the map,
staggers now and then as though in horror, stumbles, recoils and then
goes on, leaving ancient Hungarian cities without, cutting pure
Hungarian regions in two, leaving a miserable, truncated body—the
Hungary of the Peace Conference!
Those who have never leant over the map of their own country, those who
have never drawn with weeping eyes new frontiers within the old
historical boundaries at the bidding and according to the predatory
desires of enemy peoples, those are ignorant of the meaning of torture,
of lust for vengeance, of revolt, of hatred, of patriotism.
“We shall take it back!...”
Which of us said it? It matters not. It is not the saying of one person,
it is the word of a whole nation. Even in our misery and destruction we
had the strength to say it. “We will take it back!” That is the phrase
which all our coming generations will breathe. That is the phrase
mothers will teach to their infants. Bride and bridegroom will pledge
each other’s troth with that phrase before the altar. Those who go will
leave this phrase as an inheritance, those who remain will take their
oath upon it. We will take it back! The last clod, the meanest tree,
every spring, every blade of grass, every stone.
Nothing moved in the silence of the night. Only the flame of the
burnt-out candle flickered.
“Let us go ... we must sleep. This is the last candle in the house....”
* * * * *
_July 24th–29th._
There is one piece of news to-day that gives us some hope. Even if the
ship seems still afloat, it is sinking, for the first rats are leaving
it. Michael Károlyi, who proclaimed he would hold out to the last
breath, who has betrayed Hungary and has driven her into Bolshevism, has
been arrested with his wife and secretary at a Czech frontier post and
sent to Prague. Retribution must be near, for he was afraid and fled. It
is reported that since the banks refuse to pay more than two thousand
crowns to any one individual, he provided himself with several millions
of Austro-Hungarian Banknotes and a false passport. He wanted to go
through Vienna to Milan, but Italy did not desire his presence. Bavaria
refused to admit him, but Prague offered him an asylum. They owed it to
him. Without Michael Károlyi the Hungarian Highlands would never have
passed into Czech captivity.
He has gone, fled from the nation’s just vengeance, but he cannot escape
the long arm of God’s justice. Millions of Hungarians driven into
slavery and homelessness, seas of spilt Hungarian blood, miles of
Hungarian land, cry out to heaven against him.
A mean man, a debased politician, and one of the greatest traitors in
the world’s history.
Iscariot has passed.
* * * * *
_July 29th–31st._
Sometimes one can learn a town’s news by watching its street corners.
To-day some soldiers gathered opposite the house. One of them said
something, gesticulating, while the others stood and stared at the
pavement. There were no red flowers in their caps, though I saw some in
the gutter. Shortly afterwards I saw them leave the village with their
bundles on their backs and disappear through the corn-fields.
Everybody is talking about the tremendous losses of the Red army. The
official papers try to screen them: “Our victorious armies.... The whole
of Rumania’s forces opposing them.... We withdrew our troops behind the
Tisza, in perfect order, without any losses in men or material....”
“Twenty-eight thousand dead,” says rumour, and ten thousand men are
reported drowned in the Tisza. Soma Vass need not plant his nurseries
for gallows, the wholesale murder of Hungarians has been successfully
accomplished on the banks of the Tisza. And while they died, Comrade
Landler, the Commander-in-Chief of the Red army, and other comrades
watched them from a safe place through field-glasses. The Rumanian
victory and the defeat of the Reds are both paid for in Hungarian blood.
Never have Hungarians died a more tragic death.
If this sort of thing lasts much longer there will be no one but
lunatics left when the end comes. Every hour brings new tales of terror.
In Budapest Tibor Számuelly is gaining more and more power. He wants to
become Dictator. Hitherto the Dictatorship has been too lenient, so the
terrorists are going over to his side. And their one idea, before they
lose their power, is to be revenged on the nation. Already the
Directorates have received secret instructions and are drawing up lists.
Számuelly is preparing for a massacre of the citizens. None shall be
spared, neither artisans nor peasants.
News comes from the other bank that the Czechs are returning. They say
they have orders to occupy Vácz on the 3rd. More and more soldiers are
disappearing from the village, and Terror Boys are continually flowing
in from Budapest to take their place. There are already eighty here.
After the arrival of the evening train people steal in the dark towards
the Ipoly. Hitherto it has been Hungarians who were escaping, now it is
mostly Jews who slink along the walls carrying parcels. In the town hall
they are feverishly packing up the archives of the Directorate; the
Jewish comrades have again withdrawn into the background.
Szijgyártó has now become the absolute master of the town. Among other
things he issued an order to-day that every individual who is not
registered and whose stay is not considered justified by the Directorate
must leave Balassagyarmat within twenty-four hours, on pain of being
summoned before a Revolutionary Tribunal. Those who come from Budapest
will be sent back there under police escort. Once more there is talk of
searching houses: the terrible hand groping for me has returned. It will
be bad luck if it catches me now when its days are already numbered.
We discussed the matter and the old plan of escape was revived—across
the Ipoly, somehow to Vienna, to Szeged; but again the horror of asking
hospitality from the Czechs in my own country, my poverty, my illness,
interfered.
“Let’s wait and see how things develop,” said my friends.
How often have they said that!
Suddenly I thought of the house in Szügy: I could not leave without
bidding it farewell; so I walked over to it and saw the garden and its
mistress once more.
[Illustration:
TERRORISTS WITH A VICTIM WHOM THEY HAVE FLAYED AND TORTURED TO DEATH.
(This photograph was found at their headquarters.)
]
When I was there last the crops were still standing; now the wheat was
in sheaves and summer walked between their gold over the fields. Then I
came to the garden and found that the clean-swept courtyard was no
longer a soldiers’ right of way. Crimson ramblers were blooming on the
walls of the house, and round about the pump the downtrodden grass had
sprung up again. On the terrace, green plants and garden furniture had
taken the place of ammunition boxes. How rapidly the ruts of ammunition
carts and service waggons and dirt and garbage disappear. Will it be
like this elsewhere too?
Before I left, Mrs. Beniczky walked through the garden with me and we
stopped for a moment near the trees between which I had caught a glimpse
of the hussar bugler among the Red soldiers, near the bushes whence I
had watched Pogány’s car. How much had happened since then! The trees
had become dark green and grave; the garden had passed its nuptial
glory. Its wreath had faded, its most beautiful flowers had gone.
When I reached the small railway station of Balassagyarmat I saw that
soldiers were running about, throwing their arms into waggons. “They are
evacuating the town,” said a railway man, laughing scornfully. On the
open track, amidst piles of boxes and bags, carriages, bedding,
machine-guns, and pianos were standing near the waggons, ready to be
loaded. The streets were quiet, but carts were standing at the doors of
some of the houses and people were hurriedly packing things at random
into them. They are running away! Yet Comrade Landler reported in ‘The
People’s Voice’ of the 29th that: “There is no change in the situation
at the front.”
The Red press is indulging in paroxysms of fury against the Szeged
Government. “Cheats, scoundrels, Jingoes,” are the epithets bestowed by
Béla Kun’s newspapers; and all the time little handbills are being
secretly passed from hand to hand. They were dropped by an aeroplane
from Szeged: “The hour of delivery is at hand! Prepare to support the
National Government!”
The village listens, tense under the Red posters which disfigure its
walls. It listens abstractedly, as though trying to hide its thoughts,
and behind closed doors and windows people put their heads together.
Stories born of desire are spreading, but the insufferable thought that
we are in need of help from the Rumanians dominates our imagination and
hopes: “The national army has already left Szeged!... Whole Red
regiments have passed over and have laid down their arms. White
Hungarian troops will come with the Rumanians. Perhaps to-morrow.... In
Budapest the commander of the garrison has prepared the population for a
general alarm should the Dictatorship of the Proletariat be in danger.
The whole town is covered with posters.... An hour after the alarm has
been sounded nobody must be in the streets. Soldiers must hurry to their
barracks, workmen to their respective headquarters. Within an hour from
the alarm all electric trams must be withdrawn.... All shops and public
offices must be closed at once, as well as the doors and windows of
houses. Simultaneously with the alarm martial law will be declared.”
Such preparations have never been made before, either in May when the
Rumanians attacked, or in June during the Counter-revolution. Those who
come from Budapest speak of the disruption of the Red army as it
retires, of its anarchy, of mutinies of Terror detachments, of
Számuelly’s autocracy. It is impossible to get a clear picture of what
is happening: “The White army is approaching! The Rumanians are
advancing from the Tisza!”
One can hear the crackling and collapsing of the Dictatorship. The
powers of the Entente have sent a note, and the Cabinet has felt obliged
to publish it in its press. This note is no longer addressed to the
Soviet or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. At last, then, the Allied
and Associated Powers are going to address themselves to the Hungarian
people! Under the title: ‘Declaration of the Entente on the Blockade!’
the Red press screens the Note of the Powers in which they declare: “We
sincerely desire to make peace with the Hungarian people....” But peace
can only be concluded if the Hungarian people is represented by a
Government which “represents really the will of the people, and not by
one whose power rests on terror.”
It has taken the Entente Powers four and a half months to come to this
decision! No wonder they have been slow to discredit Béla Kun, for,
after Károlyi, he has rendered them invaluable service. He has ruined
and robbed Hungary of her last sources of strength. Now they can take
possession of the booty which is no longer capable of offering
resistance and can pay with our thousand years’ old possessions the war
bills presented to them by their little allies.
* * * * *
_August 1st._
The news reached the village last night. The Red army has gone to
pieces. Comrade Landler reports that after “the unchanged situation at
the front, we are attacking the Rumanians who have crossed the Tisza....
The Red army is in perfect order and has gained a victory over the
Rumanians.... We have retired, unbeaten, of our own accord.”
The members of the Balassagyarmat Directorate are unable to disguise
their nervousness, the comrades are rushing about the shops clamouring
to buy no matter what so long as they can get rid of their white Soviet
banknotes. But however much they pester and threaten, the shopkeepers
refuse to sell. The shop windows are empty, only the propaganda shop of
the Commissariat of Education still offers its wares—pamphlets,
portraits of the Commissaries, Red stars, badges with the ‘Red man’ and
plaster busts of Lenin and Marx. But these are at a discount to-day. The
town is practically without traffic and the telegraph wires bring
incessant orders from Budapest: “Let everyone remain at his post. Let
none dare to run away....”
Steps halted outside and I heard a Semitic voice say: “Let us lead it
into other channels....” What did that mean? While I was pondering the
front door bell rang. The Sub-prefect has come with a wire from
Budapest. Béla Kun’s rule is over!
Something snatched at my heart and I felt that I wanted to shout.
“It’s certain to be true,” the Sub-prefect said. “A purely Socialist
Government is being formed.” And he folded his hands carefully as if he
were afraid of committing himself.
A purely Socialist Government! That was not what we had expected! Now I
remembered the rumours that the delegates of the Entente had not been
negotiating with the Viennese committee of Count Stephen Bethlen, nor
with the Government of Szeged, but had been exchanging pourparlers for
days, not with Hungarians, but with William Böhm, Kunfi and with
Károlyi’s henchman, Garami.
I thought at once of what I had heard outside my window: “Let us lead it
into other channels....”
So the Jews are still to be our leaders: the Red hangmen of yesterday
are resuming their old garb of moderate Socialism and are preparing to
pass the power from one hand into the other. The world-revolution has
not come off, and there have been other mistakes in their calculations;
they reckoned every item as they thought—the threats of the Entente, the
attacks of the Rumanians—but they forgot to take into account that dying
Hungary might have energy enough to cross its arms over its torn breast
and undermine Bolshevism from within with its old weapon, passive
resistance, despite the failure of the Entente and Rumanian arms.
There were shouts in the guard-room opposite:
“Who said that? Arrest him!” And Red Guards and Terrorists rushed
towards the post office. If the postmaster said so, he must be arrested.
But instead of answering them the postmaster called up Budapest, a
Terrorist meanwhile holding one of the receivers. And along the wires
the question rang to Budapest. The answer came at once: “The Government
has resigned, the Soviet exists no longer. Budapest is mad with
happiness.”
The Terrorists glared at each other terror-stricken, but they did not
arrest the postmaster; instead they went to the Directorate for
instructions. But the Red offices in the town hall were empty and the
comrades had disappeared. Some of them had been suddenly taken ill and
had been obliged to go home. The news rushed along the darkening streets
and in a few seconds it had spread all over the town.
Peace on earth and good-will among men!
The house became too narrow for me. So did the garden. A violin was
being played next door, sobbing to the accompaniment of a piano. Then,
in spite of ourselves, we all burst into the forbidden, outlawed,
Hungarian hymn. We just stood and sang, and the National Anthem went up
in that summer night, to the starlit firmament.
Below, in the dark, on the other side of the street, noiseless dark
figures slunk away. In the light streaming from open windows the
neighbours stood bareheaded. They were praying too.