_Saturday, January 9th._ Yesterday on my arrival in Budapest I found
awaiting me an invitation from Count Albert Apponyi to visit him at his
castle at Eberhard, near Pozsony. I left Budapest at eight, reached
Pozsony about eleven, and drove to Eberhard, where I was received by
the Count.
I was extremely impressed on meeting Count Apponyi. I had anticipated
something unusual, but he was quite beyond my expectations. He is about
six feet three inches tall, has a splendidly erect carriage, and is a
most impressively handsome man. He has a broad, well-shaped forehead
sloping back steeply, splendid blue-gray eyes, the biggest, thinnest
nose in the world, enormous nostrils, a strong, sensitive mouth, and a
grayish, square-cut beard. The "grand old man of Hungary" looked up to
his title.
He has been a member of the Hungarian Parliament for forty-two years
and has several times held ministerial portfolios....
He has twice been in America. He has several times visited ex-President
Roosevelt at the White House and at Sagamore Hill, and the Colonel has
been a guest here at Eberhard....
At luncheon there were as guests the Count and Countess Karolyi Hunyadi
and two of their sons, and the Countess Herberstein, whose husband is
a general in the army.
_Sunday, January 10th._ I had the honor of a very interesting walk
and talk with Count Apponyi this morning. Among other things he said:
"I sometimes let my younger daughter (aged 12) play with the children
of the peasants on the place. It gives her an understanding of life,
and besides, there is no one of her own age and rank in this part of
the country." This for a Hungarian nobleman is an extremely democratic
remark.
(And so this American Attaché continues to write in his notebook the
impressions which he received on his official journeys through the
war-ridden countries, which were so soon to become the enemies of his
own country. His diary is one of the most interesting records of the
war.)