_November 12th._
What has happened?
In front of one of the big schools sailors were lined up in a row. A
company, armed to the teeth, stood in the middle of the road. People
looked at each other curiously, anxiously. This school had an evil past.
In October the deserters had gathered together here, the armed servants
of the Károlyi revolution. It is said that Tisza’s murderers started from
this point.
“What are they up to now?”
“They’re Ladislaus Fényes’s sailors. They’re going to Pressburg against
the Czechs,” a lean, fair man said.
Somebody sighed “Poor people of Pressburg!” The fair man made a
frightened sign to him to keep quiet. Behind his back an officer began
to talk excitedly. I could only hear half of what he said, but it was
something to the effect that in one of the barracks three thousand
soldiers and five hundred officers who were going to the defence of Upper
Hungary had been disarmed by the orders of Pogány.
A broad, dark Jew, rigged out in field uniform, now came out of the
school building, a ribbon of national colours on his chest. His voice did
not reach me. I only saw his mouth move. He addressed the sailors, and
cheers rang through the street. The crowd rushed forward and I turned
back to escape it, tried to reach home by a circuitous route. Suddenly
I heard more cheering, and behind me the roadway resounded with heavy
steps. The detachment of sailors was marching to the railway station,
the mob accompanying it. The detachment was headed by the dark Jew, with
drawn sword, and behind him marched a criminal looking rabble dressed in
sailors’ uniforms. Most of them wore red ribbons in their caps, and the
deeply cut blouses displayed their bare, hairy chests. The last sailor
was a squashed nosed, sturdy man, his dirty pimpled face shone. Round his
bare neck he wore a red handkerchief. As he walked along he caught his
foot in something and looked back. Between his strong, bushy eyebrows and
protruding cheekbones his eyes were set deep. I shuddered. This riff-raff
going to the defence of Pressburg! Are such as they to recover Upper
Hungary?
Then I remembered. The man at the head of the sailors must have been
Victor Heltai-Hoffer, who on the 31st of October, from the Hotel Astoria,
was nominated Commander of Budapest’s garrison. I was told that he had
been a contractor, but people from Károlyi’s entourage affirmed that
he had been a waiter in a music-hall of ill-fame. Later he became a
professional dancer, and during the war he lived by illicit trade,
dabbling in hay, fat and sugar. Those who were his accomplices are not
likely to be mistaken.... On the day of the revolution Heltai offered to
storm the Garrison’s command with a band of deserters. This disgraceful
success was followed by his nomination to the post of commander by
Fényes, Kéri, and the other National councillors. A few days ago queer
news was circulated about him, and he was suspended from his position.
Heltai is said to be in possession of certain disgraceful secrets
concerning those in power, and it was possible that he was put in command
of the Pressburg relief force in order to get rid of him.
The noise of the sailors’ steps was lost in the hubbub of the street.
Carriages passed with their miserable lean horses, people went to and fro
with spiritless monotony. Although the sailors had long disappeared I
still seemed to see the last, with his squashed nose, his red tie. That
criminal face wore the expression of the whole contingent.
[Illustration: HELTAI’S SAILORS.
(_To face p. 120._)]
And that horrible face under a cap worn on one side of the head is
everywhere in a country that putrifies. It appears in the light of the
burning houses, it enters at night into lonely manors, into cottages, it
rushes in under the portals of palaces, goes through the rooms, searches,
spies, and there is no escape from it. Whoever it pursues, it will
catch.... Then it wipes its bloody hands on silk or linen, and when its
heavy step has passed, death grins in the dark, pillaged room behind it.
Once upon a time the word “sailor” brought to our minds the image of the
great, free expanse of oceans and shores. Now we hold our breath at its
sound, and shudder in horror.
That face with the sailor’s cap worn rakishly on one side, that face with
the deep, loot-seeking eyes.... There it was in Moscow when thousands of
Imperial officers were slaughtered between the walls of the Kremlin. It
was in Petrograd in the hour of starkest horror, in Odessa, in Altona;
and in Helsingfors it bathed itself in the blood of Finns. It is now in
Berlin, in the Imperial castle on which the red flag floats. And it was
lurking in the courtyard of Schönbrunn Castle when the Emperor Charles
was driven from his home.
I can see the large staircase of Schönbrunn by which the Emperor, the
Empress and their little fair children left their home, walking down
alone, expelled. In olden days a hundred footmen jumped at a sign of
their hand; courtiers bowed to the ground before them. Now, wherever they
looked, there was not one faithful eye for them; whoever they might call,
he would not come.
When Francis Joseph was dying on his little iron camp-bed, in a room at
Schönbrunn, the heir to the crown and the Archduchess Zita wrung their
hands in their despair. “Good God, not yet, not yet”.... Then the door of
the old ruler’s room was opened: it had become a mortuary, and they two
walked slowly down the great gallery. The Court bowed low before them.
And they walked weeping, holding each other’s hands. Since then they have
been always walking, through many mistakes, disappointments, and tears,
and now they have reached the bottom of the staircase.
The little Crown Prince, as he had been taught, saluted all the time
with his baby hands. “They won’t acknowledge it to-day, mother,” he said
sadly. The red-cockaded peoples’ guards who occupied the place turned
aside.
The King, in civilian clothes, with bowed head, stepped out into the
open. The sound of his steps died away in the big, empty house, and the
darkness of the evening swallowed up the garden, under whose straight-cut
hedges, peopled with statues of gods and goddesses, the Hapsburgs had
passed so many lovely summers.
When the royal motor-cars passed through the court of honour the usual
bugle-call did not resound; the guard did not turn out, and red flags
rose above the roofs of the houses of Schönbrunn. Over the gate the
double-headed eagle was covered with red rags; though it had been
predatory and had cruelly clawed peoples and countries, it had never
returned from its flight without bringing treasures for Vienna. And it
may be the greatest tragedy of the Hapsburgs that their unduly favoured
capital turned indifferently away from them when the scum of the red
power had driven them from home.
The rapidly speeding car took the unfortunate prince to Eckhardsau, and
henceforth he lived under the protection of the National Council of the
Renners and Bauers. Who knows for how long? Who knows what is in store
for him?
* * * * *
_November 13th._
Every day has its news, and the news has eagle’s claws that tear the
living flesh.
Behind the retreating Mackensen, Roumanians pour through the
Transylvanian passes. The Serbians have occupied the Banat and the
Bácska. Temesvár and Zombor are in their hands. The Czechs are advancing
towards Kassa and, after having robbed our land, they even want to
rob the country of its coat of arms. They have stolen our three hills
surmounted by a double cross and have assigned it as arms to Upper
Hungary, which they have named Slovensko.
[Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCE OTTO (_de jure_ KING OF HUNGARY).
(_To face p. 122._)]
To-day Linder is going to sign in Belgrade the death-bearing armistice
conditions. In Arad, Jászi is distributing our possessions to the
Roumanians. Károlyi is intriguing to undermine the power of Mackensen,
who, at the head of forty to fifty thousand men, is the only armed hope
remaining in the midst of destruction. A deputation of magnates, all,
without exception, patriotic, faithful lords, has, inconceivably, arrived
at Eckhardsau, to ask the King for his resignation. It is more than one
can bear.
The country is going through the horrors of decomposition while still
alive; its counterfeit head is rotting and its members falling off.
And there is no silence in our distracting grief; the great decay is
accompanied by revolting continuous applause. Those who cause the ruin
applaud themselves. In the press, in their speeches, on their posters,
in their writings: their applause drowns the groans of agony. The day
begins with this abject applause, for it appears in the morning papers,
and in the evening it follows us home and haunts our dreams; it tears
our self-respect to shreds, for it is a perpetual reminder of our own
impotence. The press with its foreign soul, which has enmeshed public
opinion completely, now prostitutes the soul and language of Hungary; it
has betrayed and sold us; it applauds our degradation, jeers and throws
dirt at the nation which has given its partisans a home.
The chief writer of Budapest’s Jewish literature, Alexander Bródy, has
written an article in an evening paper about the German Emperor, of
whom he used to speak, not so long ago, when he was still in power, as
if he were a demi-god. Now he starts as follows: “One of the world’s
greatest criminals, Wilhelm Hohenzollern, has escaped from his country,
and in Holland has begged his way into the castle of Count Bentinck.
There he slept last night with about ten others, a trifling part of his
accursed race, with his always smart red-faced (because always drunk)
son, the wife of the latter, Cecilia, and with the Mother-Empress, that
shapeless female of the human species.” And he ends up: “Moaning, sick,
uncomfortable, the escaped Kaiser lies on his bed. And for the present
the ‘poor old man’ only trembles for his life; they may spit into his
face, they may put him on his bended knees—nothing matters so long as his
life is granted.”
He who now writes like this is the master of those radical journalists
who form the major part of the present government. That is the spirit
which rules over the forum to-day. That is the tone which is assumed by
those who claim to speak for the nation, which for nearly a thousand
years has enjoyed the reputation of being the most chivalrous nation of
Europe.
This article, however, roused Hungarian society even from its present
torpor. Only the meanest kick the unfortunate. The paper received several
thousand letters of protest, and many subscribers returned their copies.
But what is the good of that? The paper takes no notice of protests, and
the shame of the cowardly notice, like many other disgraceful actions
committed in our name, will recoil upon us, and we shall have to bear its
disgrace.
How long must we suffer this? Good, gracious God, how long will it last?
There is no place we can look to for consolation. From the frontiers,
narrowing round us every day, fugitive Hungarians are pouring in. On all
the roads of the land despoiled and homeless people are in flight. Carts
and coaches, pedestrians and herds of cattle mix on the highway, and the
trains roll along, dragging cattle trucks filled with homeless humanity.
Villages, whole towns in flight....
Maddened, with weeping eyes, half Hungary is escaping towards the capital
which has betrayed it. And the heart-breaking wave of humanity is no
longer an unknown crowd: familiar names are mentioned, and one perceives
familiar faces. They are coming by day and by night, those who have no
hearth, no clothes, not a scrap of food; and instead of their clean homes
they have to beg for quarters in low inns, for fantastic prices, even if
it is but for a single night....
Rain poured down in the street. A cold wind blew at the corners as I
walked with a little parcel under my arm towards a small hotel on the
boulevards. I got the news this morning: some dear, good people have
arrived there, robbed of everything they possessed. The hotel was
ill-ventilated and dirty. The lift did not work, and I climbed painfully
up the dark stairs. Muddy footsteps had left their mark on the dirty,
crumpled carpet. And the whole place was pervaded with a stench made up
of kitchen smells and the pungent odour of some insecticide.
[Illustration: “ON ALL THE ROADS ... HOMELESS PEOPLE ARE IN FLIGHT.”
_Photo. Erdelyi, Budapest._
(_To face p. 124._)]
In the dusk of the third floor’s corridor I could not distinguish the
numbers of the rooms. I opened a door at haphazard. The air of the room
met me like a filthy, corrupt breath. A Polish Jew in his gabardine
was standing near the window and, swaying from the hip, was explaining
something with an air of importance to a clean-shaven co-religionary,
dressed in the English style. A few men stood in the middle of the room,
and foreign banknotes tied in bundles lay on the table. They seemed to
be Russian roubles. One man threw a newspaper over the table and came
towards me. “What do you want?” he asked, rather embarrassed, though he
spoke threateningly.
“I made a mistake,” I said, and banged the door.
Behind the next door I found the friends for whom I was looking. The
wintry darkness was lit up by an electric light near the bed, on which
a pale little boy was lying. The other child was huddled up in a
chair, swinging his legs wearily. Their father stood with his back to
me, between the two wings of the curtain, and was gazing through the
window into the November rain. The mother was sitting motionless near
the little invalid; her two hands lay open in her lap, as if she had
dropped everything. When she recognised me she did not say a word, but
just nodded, and tears came to her eyes. Her husband turned back from
the window. His face was a picture of rebelling despair. He clenched his
fists, and, while he spoke, walked restlessly up and down the room.
“The Roumanians have taken everything we possessed; nothing is left,
though we have worked hard all our lives. They robbed us in our very
presence. We had to look on and could do nothing to prevent it. Then they
drove us out of the house with this sick child.”
“What is the matter with it?”
“Typhus, and yet they showed no mercy.”
The sick boy tossed his head from one side to the other and groaned in
his sleep. His groans are not the only ones that the shabby gray walls
had heard this year. Rooms that are never unoccupied, rooms like great
stuffy cupboards that are crammed with humanity. Their complements
arrive and are crammed into them, awaiting with trembling heart the hour
when some new arrivals, able to pay more, will crowd them out again. Up
and out on to the road again, to drag with them the horrible vision of
their lost land, their destroyed home, through the great town which has
squandered without mercy that which was theirs and now has no pity for
them.
But there is also another drawer in the cupboard: that other room, the
man in his gabardine, the clean shaven one, the foreign money on the
table.... No, these don’t suffer. These have come to take possession of
what is left of Hungary.
Through the influence of Trotski, Jews from Hungary who were prisoners of
war, became in Russia the dreaded tyrants of lesser towns, the heads of
directorates. The Soviet now sends these people back as its agents. Will
the government prevent them from coming? Will it arrest them? Probably
not. Many believe that during his stay in Switzerland Károlyi came to
an agreement with the Bolsheviki and now abets the world-revolutionary
aims of the Russian terror. Sinister tales circulate under the walls of
the houses of Pest. What madness! An agricultural country like Hungary
is no soil for that seed. And yet.... A few days ago an alarming rumour
spread. In vain did the government attempt to suppress it. The news
leaked out that as soon as it had come to power the government received
a wireless message from the Russian Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, who
sent their fraternal greetings and promised that the Russian Soviet
would send help and food if only the Hungarian proletariat would join
it in its war against the Capitalism of the Allies. For, said the
wireless: “The freeing of the toiling masses is possible only through a
proletarian world-revolution. Unite, Hungarian proletarians! Long live
the world-revolution! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat! Long
live the world’s Soviet-republic!”
This message, kindled by the fire of class hatred, spread its sparks over
the Russian swamps, over the Carpathians, and fell glowing into Károlyi’s
nefarious camp. Nobody trod on it to extinguish it, it was kept alive,
in secret, among them. No wonder they are uneasy.
* * * * *
_November 14th._
The days are getting shorter and shorter, and darkness comes earlier
every day.
The lamp was lit on my table. Count Emil Dessewffy was telling me
about his journey to Eckhardsau. Now and then he fixed his strong
single-eyeglass into his orbit, then again he toyed with it between
his long, thin fingers, as if it were a shining coin. He was obviously
nervous; and he kept crossing and uncrossing his legs.
“Prince Nicolas Eszterhazy, Baron Wlassics, Count Emil Széchényi and I
went there. The Cardinal Primate declined at the last moment.”
“How could you bring yourselves to such a step?”
“Our intention was to check Károlyi’s machinations, to obtain the
resignation of the King, and to persuade his Majesty to stand aside
temporarily. At first the King wouldn’t listen to reason. He said he had
taken the oath to the Hungarian people; if others wanted to break their
oath towards him, let them arrange that with their conscience; he was
not going to perjure himself. We explained to him that as he had already
transferred, alas, his supreme command to Károlyi, he would safeguard
the interests of poor Hungary and of the dynasty better by standing
aside during the period of transition, than by hanging on obstinately to
his formal right. By this he might frustrate the attempt of those who
are fishing in troubled waters to force the nation to face the _fait
accompli_ of a deposition by violence. The King stamped his foot and
declared several times that whatever might happen he would not stand
aside. We explained the advantages of the step from various points of
view, and at last made him understand that after the mistakes that had
already been made, no other solution was possible. Wlassics edited the
document, but we couldn’t make a final draft because no foolscap paper
could be found in the whole castle. We sent out for some paper. Then
there was no ink, and we had to search for a pen. Time passed, and
meanwhile the King went out shooting....”
“Went out shooting!” The whole tragedy seemed to be becoming a burlesque.
“Yes, we were rather shocked,” said Dessewffy. “But later on we found
that there was not a scrap of food in the castle, and the King had to
obtain game so that the Queen and the children might not starve. It is
all very sad. Their clothes too were left behind in Vienna. When they
left Schönbrunn they just threw a few things hurriedly into the car. The
children have no change of clothes. They even had to sleep for several
nights without bedclothes. It’s no good sending messages to Vienna: the
Government Council, which has taken them under its protection, does not
even answer.”
I thought of the Austrian and Czech nobles, so favoured by the Hapsburgs,
of those, who, insisting on their rights based on the Spanish etiquette
of older times, were mortally offended if at some festivity at the Vienna
Burg they could not stand in the immediate vicinity of the Emperor, or
were put by mistake into a position somewhat inferior to their rank.
Where were they? Where was the ruler’s General Staff? The generals
covered with orders? Where was the bodyguard with its commander, which
“dies but never surrenders?” In the last days of Schönbrunn they all
had withdrawn like the tide from the forsaken shore. “_Nous étions tout
seuls_,” the Queen had said.
“And then?” I asked Count Dessewffy.
“After a time some paper was brought, two sheets in all, and Széchényi
sat down to make a clean copy of the document: he had the best
handwriting of us all.”
Dessewffy showed me the original document. It read:
“Since the day of my succession to the throne I have always tried to free
my people from the horrors of this war—a war in the causation of which I
had no share whatever. I do not wish that my person should be an obstacle
to the prosperity of the Hungarian people. Consequently I resign all
participation in the direction of affairs of State and submit in advance
to the decision by which Hungary will fix its future form of government.
Dated at Eckhardsau, November 13th 1918.
CHARLES.”
“The King still hesitated when the document lay ready for signature on
the table. And as he wavered with the pen in his hand he looked the very
picture of despair. During the last few days the hair on the sides of
his head has turned gray. Suddenly tears came into his eyes, and he fell
sobbing on Count Hunyadi’s shoulder. Well, none of our eyes were quite
dry....”
[Illustration: QUEEN ZITA.
_Photo. Kosel, Vienna._
(_To face p. 128._)]
While Dessewffy talked on, I thought of a tale I had heard long, long ago.
It was evening in a village far away. The autumnal wind was rising,
and the poplars round the house were soughing like organ pipes in a
dark church. In the kitchen the maids were shelling peas. The light
of the fire played over their hands, and the dry shells fell with a
gentle rattle on the brick floor. Katrin, the housekeeper, was telling
a story.... “And the wicked knights went into the King’s tent, armed
with halberds and maces, and said in a terrible voice: ‘Give up your
crown or you shall die the death.’ The beautiful Queen folded her hands
imploringly, and the King took his crown off his head....” That was the
story. The maids cried over the poor king, and in their hearts approved
of him.
In stories it is the unfortunate who are always right, in reality it is
those on whom fortune smiles.
* * * * *
_November 15th._
“Long live Michael Károlyi! Elect him President of the Republic!...”
Again a paper disease has infected the houses’ skin.
In the first year of the war Michael Károlyi had betted that he would
be the president of the Hungarian Republic.... Will he win his bet
to-morrow? But whoever may win, Hungary will be the loser.
Posters ... new posters appear above the old ones. A new shame covers the
old, and that is all that changes in our lives. Big flags float in the
wind on the boulevards. Flags are hoisted on the electric lamp-posts,
and above the house entrances the old ones flap about. The government has
ordered the beflagging of every house in the country, and its newspapers
are preparing the mood of the morrow. They announce in big type:
THE RED FLAG HAS BEEN HOISTED IN THE FRENCH TRENCHES.
REVOLUTION HAS BROKEN OUT IN BELGIUM.
SWITZERLAND IS ON THE EVE OF A REVOLUTION.
I heard a little school-girl say to her friend: “Károlyi is a great man.
He makes the fashion, now even the French are imitating us....”
“Long live ...” shouted the walls and the shop windows, but the people
were silent. Why? Why don’t they tear down the disgraceful posters? Why
are they resigned, why do I alone protest? Or are there more of us, only
we don’t know of each other? I looked carefully at the passing faces.
Their eyes passed indifferently over the posters. Nothing mattered to
them. I walked quickly, as if haunted, a stranger among the soulless
crowd.
I reached Károlyi’s palace. The one-storeyed house, built in the Empire
style, looked low under its old roof among the high, newly erected
buildings. The row of windows was dark: Károlyi had already moved into
the Prime Minister’s house. The first floor was inhabited only by the
tenant of half the building, Count Armin Mikes, and I had come to see his
wife. Since the events of October I had not been there.
The little side gate opened as I rang, noiselessly, as if automatically,
and the _concièrge_ looked out of his _loge_ and disappeared. Nothing
stirred. Under the deep arch of the entrance my steps alone resounded;
they echoed strangely, as if invisible hands were dropping things behind
me.
I stopped for an instant. The soul of the place seemed to be whispering
in the dark. On the right side a corridor was visible through a
glass-panelled door, its walls covered with revolutionary pictures,
and at its end a side staircase led into Károlyi’s apartments. I
shuddered, as one does when one enters a house where a murder has
been committed. The traitors—perjured officers, Gallilest students,
deserters—congregated up there, in the dark rooms, in the nights of
October. Those who sold us and, among themselves, sentenced Tisza to
death whispered and advised up there.
I went on. From the semi-obscurity of the huge staircase, marble seemed
to tumble down like a frozen waterfall. Beyond, in the garden, the trees
whispered in the cold wind.
Countess Mikes’ small drawing-room was light and warm. I found a
gathering of Transylvanians there, and beyond the room the notorious
house, the whole town, seemed to have disappeared. My own sufferings
were forgotten in the recital of theirs, and I was no longer alone in my
grief, for all who were present shared it with me. They helped to raise
up hope, because they knew what patriotism was, it is an old legacy
of theirs. The strength and the will power which supported Hungary
throughout her most disastrous periods, when the Turks from the south
and the Germans from the west trod on Hungary’s soil, had their source
in Transylvania. When the fire of resistance was extinguished everywhere
else, it went on burning among its inhabitants. And so after every dark
night our race has gone to Transylvania to kindle anew the flame which
has lighted it back into the dying country.
Great, suffering Transylvania, what is thy reward for this?
There they sat, Transylvanian men and women, the descendants of ancient
princes, sufferers with shaded eyes. And as I looked at them there
appeared behind their handsome faces the dreamlike outlines of a
bluish-green landscape. As if seen in the crystal of an antique emerald
ring, distant, dreamy trees appeared: two pointed poplars reached towards
the sky: down below, among the meadows, a willow-bordered brook flowed
softly: wagons rumbled on the winding road: a horseman came slowly, with
a sack across the saddle in front of him. Beyond, the meadow rose to a
velvety hillock, where an ancient spire, a little village, a tiny Székler
village, nestled....
A wanderer told me the tale this summer, when I was in Transylvania.
It happened during the war, in 1916. It was when the alarm was raised
for the first time, and one day the cry passed through undefended
Transylvania, “The Roumanians are coming!” In mad haste it spread through
the counties, rushed along the electric wires, rang in the bells: “Save
yourselves!” One village carried the next with it, Transylvania was
fleeing.
In the village of Gelencze, on the bank of the rippling brook, at the
foot of the hillock, there was silence. It was just like any other day;
the people were working in the fields. Meanwhile the Roumanians crept
cautiously through the undefended Transylvanian passes. One morning
early, soon after the break of day, like some awful sudden death, they
fell upon the people of Gelencze, there in their fields in the midst
of their peaceful work. The people were helpless. Only one old Székler
raised his spade, and fell with a shout among the rifles. They knocked
him down, but he did not die; so they nailed him to a plank and dragged
him into the forest that he might die there, alone. He was heard till
nightfall, struggling and cursing the Roumanians.
That is how Gelencze was informed of the invasion of Transylvania. The
alarm, the cry of warning, had passed it by, had missed it on the way.
The telegraph wires carried the news, but they passed over its head,
and not a word, not a sound came to bring warning. The Government, the
County, the District, forgot—Hungary forgot the little village.
A wanderer told me all this, there, just outside the village of Gelencze,
when it was still ours. And as I listened to the sad story it became
bigger and deeper, so deep that the whole of Transylvania had room in
it.... The hillock became the mass of Transylvania’s mountains, the
brook became all Transylvania’s rivers, and the fate of the village was
Transylvania’s fate.
“Do you remember how I promised you that summer, down there, that I
would write a book of Transylvania, that I would trumpet the rights of
your land, your race? I was to proclaim the wrongs you have suffered and
call to account those who directed Hungary’s fate and for ever forgot
the Hungarian folk in Transylvania. How they delivered you to the tender
mercies of your foes, and armed neither your soul nor your arm for
resistance.... A forgotten village! Do you remember? I said that that
should be the title of my book. You were nothing but a forgotten village
to those who wielded power in Hungary. The sufferings of Transylvania
never caused them a moment’s inconvenience.... And the present government
surpasses them all. As if it had decided on your destruction it now
sends out an old accomplice of the Roumanian _Irredenta_ to speak in the
defence of the victim whom he himself has condemned to death. Oscar Jászi
deals to-day in Arad with Transylvania’s fate.”
[Illustration: “A TINY SZEKLER VILLAGE.”
_Photo. Erdelyi, Budapest._
(_To face p. 132._)]
Hate and disgust were depicted on the faces of the Transylvanian women.
That man of Galician origin, the internationalist who wanted to make
an eastern Switzerland of our country, and who hated everything that
was Hungarian to such an extent that his hatred made him forget the
traditional caution of his race and exclaim in a fury when speaking of
us, “If they don’t obey, let them be exterminated”—he is sent there to
negotiate in the name of the Hungarian race! The very spirit in which he
conducted the negotiations showed his eagerness to revenge himself on
the nation which had given him hospitality: he renounced what was not
his, gave up rights which were ours, and sold Transylvania to Manin’s
Roumanian National Council, which he and Károlyi had themselves created
during the October days. In Arad the Roumanians speak already of national
sovereignty! They claim a Roumanian supremacy and _twenty-six_ Hungarian
counties! They demand that the Hungarian Popular Government shall disarm
the police, disband the Hungarian National Guards, punish all energetic
officers, but ... that it shall provide arms for the Roumanian National
Guards and pay for its men and officers out of the Hungarian taxpayer’s
pocket. Jászi and the revolutionary Government delegates have promised
all this. Meanwhile the Roumanians are dragging out the negotiations, and
their voices become more and more sharp and exacting, for do they not
know that every hour takes the royal Roumanian troops deeper into the
heart of undefended Transylvania?
And while at the county hall of Arad the traitors are at work, the main
column of Mackensen’s always victorious army is rolling over the bridge
across the Maros. Endless rows of motor columns pass. Behind them comes
an unceasing flow of army service corps wagons, covered ammunition
wagons, lorries, carts and waggonets. Hours and days pass, and they
are still going on, orderly, gray, grave. They do not rob, they do not
pillage, they just go on, from the foot of the Balkan Mountains, from the
frontiers of Transylvania, through Hungary. On foot, on horseback, on
wagons, in close columns, on they go, silently, homewards.
With them goes hope, and Károlyi watches with an anxious eye: if he
turned back, if he lifted his fist.... And Roumanian heads in sheepskin
caps appear above the crests of the mountains, look after the Germans,
and their feet stamp on Transylvania’s heart.
My bitterness overflowed and I burst out, “We shall take it back!”
The Transylvanian women pressed my hand.
“We shall take it back,” said one of them; “I do not know how, but I feel
it will be so.”
As I came out of the house I saw my brother Béla come towards me. He
said hurriedly, “I met Emma Ritoók, who also is in despair. She asked
me to tell you that she must speak to you.” That again reminded me that
probably there were many of us, only we did not know of each other.... My
mother, my brothers and sisters, Countess Zichy, the Transylvanian women,
Emma Ritoók, they are faces I can see, voices I can hear, but beyond them
there must be many women scattered in the great silent multitude, left to
themselves, who weep over the past and fear the future....
When the electric tram stopped I stepped forward to get off. Somebody
knocked me in the back. My feet missed the steps and I fell, face first,
into the road. I looked back. It was a fat young man, in brand-new field
uniform. His characteristic nose fell like a soft bag over his lips. He
jumped over me without saying a word, nor did he attempt to help me. He
was in a hurry.... I just caught sight of his two fleshy ears under his
cap as he rushed on.
That is typical of the streets of Budapest to-day; in fact that is the
only reason why I mention it. Unfortunately I sprained my ankle.