CHAPTER XI.

June 3rd.

I've got a fever of some kind and it frightens me it would be terrible to be ill at such a time and in a strange house. I must try to keep going, but oh ! how I long to go to bed.

A man came in from the village this morning and reported that when the Reds made their advance on Friday morning the houses of all Jews were at once surrounded by Jewish Red soldiers with fixed bayonets to prevent them from being looted. This was corroborated by one of the owners of the protected houses himself.

Thus even after the abolition of private property the Dictatorship officially protects all Jews' belongings. Beyond the Ipoly Red soldiers have plundered Sztregova, the ancient castle where Imre Madách wrote The Tragedy of Man ; but the Jewish Red soldiers protected the bouse of Fischer, the land agent of Leszeny...

........

June 7th.

I've had to give in : I can hardly distinguish things and am unable to move.

Baron Alexander Jeszensky came to see me, bringing messages from Bercel. Charles Kiss is with the Kállays and is coming to fetch me in a couple of days. He has made all preparations for my escape to Vienna.

........

June 8th.

The Reds have retaken Kassa from the Czechs. Poor City. It received the victors with red, white and green flags, thinking they were Hungarians. Orders promptly came that the flags were to be removed.

Two days ago someone knocked at our window late at night. Anxiety spread through the house ; men's voices were audible from the corridor. Aladár Huszár had come home ! He looked like an apparition, a man of the woods, for his dress was torn, his shirt was in shreds, and his beard and hair had grown inordinately long. For six weeks he had been hiding with his friend George Pongrácz in the wild hills of Börzsöny.

They, too, were expecting the fall of the Dictatorship and were waiting for the intervention of the Entente. Then came the offensive of the Reds. As the battle was progressing northwards they concluded that the Reds were winning and that there was no escape ; and as they could not ask for asylum from the Czechs, whom they had formerly helped to drive out, what was the good of waiting any longer ? " So we came home, " said Huszár, and despair was in his eyes. " We shall give ourselves up to the Directorate and stand our trial. " The Directorate had ordered proceedings to be taken against them, but miraculously had failed to arrest them.

........

The doctor came to see me this morning—I've got rheumatic fever, and in the afternoon the children brought me some forget-me-nots from the river. Dusk came, then darkness. When I woke up a candle was burning in the room and Charles Kiss was sitting at my bedside. He brought me news of my mother, after all this time ; she is alive and well, but fretting about me as she has not heard from me for weeks. She was questioned many times by the Red agents and they forced her to swear that as soon as she knew where I was she would report to them. Once a detective said to her : " How must you have brought up your daughter for her to behave like this ? " " I brought her up as a Hungarian, " my mother replied simply. Whereupon the detective hung his head and then said, as if ashamed : " I, too, am Hungarian, " and he kissed my mother's hand. Since then there have been no more inquiry agents to see her.

Then Charles Kiss talked about himself. Most of the time he has been hiding in Western Hungary, where the whole region is in a ferment, counter-revolutions breaking out here and there. But as soon as ever there is news of one Számuelly makes a sudden appearance. In Devecser he had the counter-revolutionaries hanged round the church ; with the exception of a young teacher they were all peasants. He forced the women to look on. In Nagygenes he had a farmer hanged in front of his children. The farmer did not die at once and when he was in his coffin he sat up. The wife and children ran to him sobbing. But the Terror Boys know no pity : they finished him off in his coffin.

Charles Kiss is going to escape to Vienna. To do this he has to go through Budapest—a long way round. I watched his face anxiously, afraid he might say that I should have to take the same road, but to my relief he said nothing. I raised my arm to shake hands with him when he went, and had to clench my teeth to restrain a cry of pain. Then I lay for hours motionless, and all through the night made preparations. In the morning I was as tired as if I had wandered along endless roads.

........

June 11th.

The newspapers are howling victory the delivery of Kassa. The Internationale is played and the Red Guard of Honour (?) cheers as Garbai and Béla Kún pass before it.

Far away I seem to hear wild Kuruc songs... and see the Kuruc horsemen waving their caps to their prince[3]... Our lovely town, longing for deliverance from Czech captivity. What a different home-coming you must have expected !

And this is how (according to the reporters) Béla Kún held forth :

" Dear comrades ! Now, comrades, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a fine thing, is it not ? You have scarcely tasted it, but you will soon see what a beautiful, good and reasonable thing the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is, from the workers' point of view. The Proletarian who labours, who was oppressed, cannot understand how anyone can want anything else but the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It is so simple. We do not mind what language a labouring brother Proletarian speaks, we have but one enemy the bourgeoisie, whatever language it may speak... "

Above the words of Béla Kún and the other ' comrades ' I seem to hear a thundering voice rising from the depths of the Cathedral crypt : " Why did you bring me home ? I listened in peace to the murmur of the sea... "

........

June 12th.

It has been rumoured for days and now it turns out to be true : Clemenceau is negotiating with Béla Kún in the name of the Peace Conference. His Note came by wireless from Paris to Budapest " to the Hungarian Government. "

This Note, which declares to the Hungarian Government that it has just been decided to summon its delegates, calls upon it to stop its attack against Czechoslovakia, otherwise the Governments of the Allied and Associated Powers will take the firmest measures to force Hungary to do so. The Note reminds Béla Kún of the gratitude which he owes to the Allied Powers because : " on two occasions they have stopped the advance of the Rumanian armies which had crossed the frontiers fixed by the armistice, and had prevented them from advancing on Budapest, and had stopped the Serbian and French armies on the southern front of Hungary. "

Clemenceau, the President of the Peace Conference, is ready to sit down at a table with Béla Kún. His blind hatred is ready for anything so long as it leads to the poisoning of the open wound in the side of poor Hungary, fallen in a gallant fight. And we, poor fools, expected human charity from the victors, who by this very document certify that for months they have been responsible for the prolongation of Bolshevik misrule in Hungary ! Béla Kún, the Communist of 1919, thus answered M. Clemenceau, the Communist of 1871 : "

Monsieur Clemenceau, President of the Peace Conference. Paris.

" The Hungarian Soviet Government has observed with pleasure the intention of the Allied and Associated Powers to convoke Hungary to the Paris Peace Conference. The Hungarian Soviet Republic has no hostile intention towards any people in the world, it desires to live in friendship and peace with all of them, all the more as it does not insist on territorial integrity. " Then he goes on sarcastically :

" We are delighted to hear that the Allied Powers have ordered the Czecho-Slovak republic, the kingdoms of Rumania and Yugo Slavia to stop their attacks, but we are forced to emphasise the fact that the States in question have paid no heed to the orders of the Allies. " Finally he offers the help of the Red army " to enforce the orders of the Allies. "

........

June 13th.

We only heard of it to-day, although it happened at the beginning of the month : the Directorates of Szombathely and Celldömölk had attempted to use the military to enforce the enlistment of railwaymen of military age in the Red army. They, however, decided to stop work and overthrow the Dictatorship of the Proletariat by a strike. All honest railwaymen joined the rising one after the other, and on the 2nd of June all trains between the Austrian frontier and the Danube stopped. The train of Számuelly with its Lenin Boys alone was running. As Budapest had refused to join in, the railwaymen did not succeed in stopping the traffic throughout the country, and after a struggle of six days they returned to work. The trains started from gallows-trees and with them the halting circulation of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was restored. Another hope gone. Then followed the fulfilment of Béla Kún's promise : " I shall hang a few railwaymen in every station and then order will be restored. I have done the trick before in Russia. "

But meanwhile the smouldering fuse had again blazed up and counter-revolution broke out in Sopron. Other towns followed, but it did not last long, for in a few hours the Reds came in from all sides. In Csorna the Terrorists of Györ collected the counter-revolutionaries and crammed one hundred and fifty into a small cell, then closed the iron shutters to suffocate them.

Then Számuelly arrived in the town. In front of him armed guards ran shouting : " Into the houses ! " and those who did not manage to get out of the way in time were shot. When Számuelly with his Lenin Boys actually entered the town the streets had been cleared, so the black hyena in his armoured car raced amidst a deathly silence to sit in judgment.

A table was placed in the open, and the prisoners were led before Számuelly one after another. He examined nobody and only asked who was possessed of property. Then he ordered some to the left and some to the right. No witnesses were called : Számuelly alone represented the tribunal. " To death ! " he shouted to those on the left, and eighty started for the square in front of the church.

One of the men sentenced, a journeyman bootmaker, collapsed on the way and was left there. The others were beaten with rifle butts and spat upon by their hangmen. The eye-glasses of Lieut. Takács were thrust into his eyes until the eyeball was forced out of its socket, and while he walked on they even tore his handkerchief away so that his eyeball hung on his cheek. They boxed the ears of Gyula Akics, a mill-owner, while he stood under the gallows, and then Stephen Tárcsay, Louis Laffer, Gyula Németh and Francis Glaser were hanged. No doctor was present at the execution. Before the corpses were cold the Lenin Boys stripped them and made the other prisoners bury them. Számuelly watched the execution and made jokes.

Next day he went to Kapuvár and entered the place with a band of a hundred and fifty Terrorists armed with machine-guns and hand grenades. All he asked the prisoners was their name. " Hang them ! " he cried. The mayor, the police sergeant and three others were led in front of the Catholic Church. He reprieved one of them on the way, because he was told he was the president of the Jewish congregation. In this place, too, the prisoners were beaten on their way to execution. The rope broke when police sergeant Pinter was hanged. His two little children ran up and implored mercy, but Számuelly would not relent. He then imposed a fine of millions on the town, and all the cattle he could lay hands on were driven away. Then he went on, without remorse, calmly, in his princely special train.

This death train passes through Hungary day and night, and wherever it stops men are hanged on the trees and blood is spilt on the pavements. Along its track people often find naked and mutilated corpses. In the Pullman car Számuelly sits in judgment. I heard this from a reliable man, who had gone over with the Socialist party to the Communists to save his own skin. He had to report to Számuelly in Szolnok, and it was then that he saw the train.

Számuelly lives permanently in this train, and even in Budapest he sleeps in it, being surrounded by thirty selected Terrorist guards. His special executioner travels with him. The train consists of two parlour cars, two first-class carriages in which the Terrorists travel, and two third-class carriages for the victims. The executions take place in these, and the floors of the cars are covered with blood-stains. The corpses are thrown out of the windows, while Számuelly sits in his Pullman car surrounded by tapestry walls, bevelled mirrors, and fragile gilt Louis XVI. furniture covered with pink brocade, and seated before his delicate, feminine writing table, he disposes of people's lives.

Through every action of practical Marxism, through all its ordinances and institutions, even through the communication of its news, there grins cruelty—the repulsive, morbid cruelty of sensuality.

The brave kill, the cowards torture. The Hungarian people can be wild, ruthless, coarse and even vindictive, but through all its history it has never been cruel. It is not a sensual race. It expresses sensuality neither in its ancestral religion, nor in the conception of its gods of pagan times, nor in its legends, stories, folk-songs, humour or art. The cruelty of the Bolsheviks, on the other hand, is imbued with the sensuality of pathological aberration.

Its origin is neither Slav nor Turanian, but of another race living in our midst. The history of the Hebrews, the Covenant, the Talmud and the Jewish literature of the various languages of the world, everything that originates with Jews, is overflowingly sensual. Cruelty finds its fantasy and energy in sensuality. The bloody invasion of the Turks, the merciless oppression of the Austrians, were incomparably milder than the cruelty of the Bolsheviks.

Számuelly's train races on without a stop, past trembling little guards' houses, through torpid, insignificant stations, through plains and over hills. It rushes through the country from end to end, to forge, with the cruelty of the conquering race, permanent shackles round our ruined country. No other sound is heard throughout the land ; just the shriek of a train.

........

June 14th.

The town was smothered in a stifling white heat. Under the window the little street basked lifelessly in the sun. As far as I could see from my pillow nothing was happening. Our fate was as stifling and as motionless as the street.

The first national congress of Soviets is meeting to-day in Budapest. On the previous two days the Communist party held meetings in the Hungarian House of Parliament. I began to read the report : " There was a red shine in the eyes... " Then I stopped : a grimy old wall in Budapest came to my mind, a glaring red poster sticking to it... And under a blue sky a giant labourer was furiously painting the House of Parliament red with a brush that dripped...

I continued to read the account of the Communists' general meeting. The reporter, with the traditional rapture for everything that is new, gushed over the aspect of the altered assembly room in the House of Parliament. The old frescoes have disappeared, and instead of the sacred crown above the chairman's seat, " a fierce-looking labourer with a Phrygian cap is contemplating the place, with the Soviet's five-pointed star above his heart. On the wall there are no longer pictures of ' historical celebrities, ' nor of ' glorious battles, ' new strokes of the brush have transformed them into symbolical, grandiose decorations. " How they hurry to cover and efface everything that was ours ! Yet even while they are painting their ordinances with our blood, every successive beat of the country's heart is louder and louder, more and more threatening.

" What have you done with our country ? With our language, our honour, the purity of our children, the memory of our greatness ? The throbbing of the Hungarian blood bodes ill, but they hear it not, though the anger of a deeply insulted nation is boiling up around them. They will not hear, they plunder and murder as before and hold meetings in the stolen house of our stolen country. Their newspaper chroniclers record with satisfied racial self-consciousness the arrival of the delegates : " They entered without the slightest embarrassment, without emotion, without fuss. "

The strength and misfortune of the Jewish race are that it is surprised by nothing and does not believe in the aims which it professes.

I thought of the great hall where once the noble figure of Stephen Tisza dominated so many storms, and I thought also of those who could never have invaded the place had they not passed over his dead body. They do not know it, but they are going to their ordeal, for even as they speak the blood begins to ooze out of the country's open wound.[4]

" As they passed before the red draperies their faces showed up against the red background. " Many of the People's Commissaries have escaped from gaols and lunatic asylums : is the background of these faces a fitting place for the Hungarian labourer, painted above the presidential stand with a Phrygian cap and a Soviet star ? If this labourer could articulate, his cry would sound the knell of this ' assembly.' I have spoken with many real Hungarian labourers during the last few weeks, on shaky, springless carts, near railway embankments, in the fields, near the hills, on the main roads, and how many of them have cursed those who deliberate this day over our ruins. But they were not there in the great hall among the speakers. It was Béla Kohn, Richard Schwarz, and William Böhm who spoke. The committee is composed of : Moritz Heller, Rabinovits, Vera Singer, William Lefkovits, Elias Brandstein, and Arpád Schwarz.

What did they discuss during the two days ? Did they raise the question whether it was fitting to shed blood in order to accomplish their universal brotherhood or whether they should attain their aim by starvation ? Did they mention that round the green table in Paris foreign hands are squeezing our thousand-years-old frontier, while others are standing by eager to tear off such parts as have not yet been distributed ?

Not they ! The Dictators discussed a proposed change of name of their party and debated the expediency of tightening or relaxing the pressure of the Dictatorship. In this the hand of Lenin appears, for a few days ago the Russian tyrants sent a message to their Budapest branch that henceforth it must call itself ' the United Communist party of Hungary. ' Many members obeyed, but the more cunning ones advocated the advantages of the ' Socialist ' sign. They look ahead and hope that should Communism collapse somehow in Hungary it might be possible to save the Jewish domination by returning to the old conditions. That is the only thing that matters to them ; everything else is of secondary importance the school books, the gallows, the prisons, the keys of the safe-deposits, the fresh soldiers' graves, the new casualties, the recent mutilations. Henceforth it will be unnecessary to characterise the Dictatorship and its tyrants ; their deliberations have disclosed their nature.

" The power of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is now in the hands of an active minority, " said Béla Kún. In giving the list of the delegates' names ' The Red Newspaper ' and ' The People's Voice ' show what this active minority is. Practically every member of it belongs to the foreign race. In his programme, Béla Kún clamours for the application of merciless violence. " The quotation of pacificism has suffered a slump, and the quotation, not of the imperialistic war but of the revolutionary class war, is soaring... The army is nothing but the armed Proletariat. It is a class army... this does not mean that we intend to limit our recruiting to the industrial Proletariat of the towns. It would be rank folly to expose to the risk of death none but the élite of the Proletariat. The self-conscious Proletarians must be distributed among the Proletarians who possess self-consciousness in a lesser degree. We must be sparing with the class-conscious Proletarians. "

This is meant for the educated classes, the manufacturers and agriculturists. Never have words contained more calculated iniquity. The Israelites have redeemed their blood with that of the Canaanites. Let him bear the cross who is about to be crucified on it.

Béla Kún continued to outline his programme. He had but a few words for the land question : " That my programme does not say much about it is quite natural. It is a question concerning which we are still groping in the dark. I admit that. "

They will talk about it later, when the peasant has paid the blood tax. Till that is done, let him live in the illusion that his land is his own and is not appropriated by the Co-operatives of Production belonging to the Government.

" The Dictatorship must apply stricter measures ! " Pogány exclaimed. He spoke of the Counter-revolution in West Hungary. " There is only one road open for us : Forward, to the left ! "

Comrade Horváth, of whom it is common knowledge that he has stolen his clothes from Count Joseph Károlyi's castle, declared that the prestige of the Dictatorship ought to be improved and expressed himself disparagingly of the Soviet delegates : " I declare and am ready to prove that in Székesfehérvár one evening there were sixty political delegates in the coffee-house whose Polish-Jewish origin was unmistakably written on their faces."

Vágó-Weiss, a People's Delegate, interrupted : " How dare you talk like that ? " and Számuelly banged his desk with his fist. How hurt they are if we touch anything belonging to them ; but if we express pain when they destroy our God and our country they hang us.

All references to gallows, all threatening and blood-thirsty speeches were suppressed by the newspapers, out of consideration for foreign countries. The meeting was concluded by a speech by Béla Kún in which Hungary's Dictator furnished some further characteristic details about himself and his order.

" First of all I want to deal with Comrade Schwarz's interruption, " the Commissary for Foreign Affairs said, and then proceeded to answer the comrade who had proposed : " if our party's old programme contained the abolition of capital punishment, its present programme ought to contain it too. " In his answer Béla Kún made some humorous remarks concerning capital punishment and said that the old Socialist programme had claimed the right for everyone to install and operate small stills (loud laughter). Richard Schwarz interrupted : " I was not joking ! " Béla Kún continued : " I know full well that Comrade Schwarz was not joking, for he is not a humorous man (laughter), and yet there was some unconscious humour in his proposal (hear, hear). When a programme like ours is under consideration... a programme which forms the foundation of the Dictatorship... it is unseemly to discuss such trifles. This settles, as far as I am concerned, the proposal made by Comrade Schwarz, and I propose its rejection. (Signs of approval.) "

Finally, to complete his self-characterisation, he expressed his ideas on intellectual production :

" It is in the nature of things that the Dictatorship is not over-favourable for the development of personal liberties, it is not propitious to the assertion of individuality ; but if our intellectual life has declined, bear in mind that it is not our intellectual life but the remnant of the bourgeoisie's organisation of physical tyranny which it was pleased to call literature. "

(Shades of Goethe, Arany, Shelley, Andersen, Flaubert, Dostoyevski, masters of your art, know you all that you are naught but that part of the bourgeois organisation of physical tyranny which is called literature.')

The window near my bed is open. The birds twitter and I can hear the concert of frogs by the Ipoly. A dog barks. Birds, frogs and dogs all speak their own language : why do not the Budapest Communists debate in Hebrew ?

........

June. 16th.

The Soviet assembled yesterday in Budapest and meetings were held from morning till night. The national delegates of our county's Soviet attended. The Red newspapers this morning are bursting with pride, with ecstasy over the opening festivities.

" The labouring people of Hungary have gone to Budapest to lay the foundations of a new Constitution which will create a new atmosphere and bring happiness in its wake. "

As a matter of fact the labourers of Balassagyarmat are indifferent and miserable. Nobody bothers about the Soviets. They have no part in it. The whole thing is strange and distant to them.

" The will of the millions, " say the newspapers. And there it meets, this curious assembly, elected by orders of the People's Commissaries, by the privileged fraction of the population, with lists prepared in advance, under the supervision of soldiers with fixed bayonets.

A theatre was the scene of the opening ceremony. The First National Assembly of Hungarian Soviets met in a suburban theatre in the neighbourhood of the old clothes' market. " Red walls and wreaths, arranged by inspiring, artistic hands, " the Red chronicler reports. " Silence dominates the audience of thousands, the crowded boxes, when the curtain is raised. " On the stage there is a red tribune ornamented with artificial red flowers and a long table where the People's Commissaries assemble. " A historical, grandiose gathering, " says the reporter of ' The People's Voice. ' " The stage is inundated with a flood of light. The strains of the Internationale rise. Everyone feels that this is the beginning of the second thousand of Hungary's historical years. " (A pity it's begun on the stage, though.) " You are burying to-day this country's thousand-years-old Constitution, " said Alexander Garbai, the President of the Council, in his opening speech. But a People's Constitution grows from its soil, like the crops, and no executioners can kill the soil. To-day the soil is suffering in silence : it is the apotheosis of Béla Kún. " The Congress rose for him and applauded him madly for several minutes. " His will is done. He imposes the ' Constitution ' he likes, and the Soviet joins the Third International. Its leader then produced a message from Red Russia's leader :

" Every Proletarian will fight like a tiger ; we shall win or die ! " The factory workers swore fidelity : " We will be the pillars of the Soviet Republic. "

Steps came along the quiet street and somebody said " good day " : it was Mrs. Huszár speaking through the window. The local schoolmaster was outside and wanted to borrow a copy of Marx's works. He has to give a lecture on the Communist Declaration. He doesn't want to, but what is he to do ? He will get two hundred crowns for it, and if he disobeys he will be dismissed ; besides, he has so many children...

I remembered a tale of the country where the hunchbacks lived. Once upon a time there was a country which was inhabited exclusively by hunchbacks. If by any chance anyone with a straight back happened to enter the country he was at once put to death. Everything went on all right till one day it pleased God to give an exceptional year for wine. Hills and vales resounded with the music of the grape harvest, and it so happened that many people got drunk on the new wine. In the land of hunchbacks the ground was shaking with dancing and the air was filled with songs. Then it happened that a drunken young fellow snatched the hump from his back and waved it with joyful shouts above his head. Others imitated him all had regained their courage. So they shook their false humps from their backs and finally it turned out that there was only one genuine hunchback in the whole of the hunchbacks' country.

The steps receded from the window : the teacher went off with Marx's writings under his arm.

Wait till the grape harvest, land of Hunchbacks !

........

June 19th.

This is Corpus Christi but I know it only by the distant sound of the bells. Now the procession is passing with doffed hats, gravely, silently, under the church banners. The villagers have come to town, there is a sea of people and the organ sounds in the distance. In a cloud of incense the Host is floating down the church, out under the open sky, and it glitters in the sun. As it passes the people kneel. Christ walks among His people. He walks everywhere in the country and they dare not interfere with him. Only when the procession had returned to church did little Jew boys rush up and throw thousands of handbills among the people. One of them flew to me through the window.

" Proletarians of the world, unite ! Read this and pass it on ! The Revolution cannot indulge in sentimentality and must not know pity. Gallows or bullets ! It will be wise for the bourgeois and hooligans not to try to attack the Revolution, because at the first attempt iron fists will stifle their souls in them with unrelenting deadliness. The Revolution is prepared for everything, all means will be employed by her to preserve her glorious purity as an eternal purity. Woe to those who attack her treacherously !

........

June 20th.

In Budapest, too, the victors made preparations for Corpus Christi day.

It happened in Buda, in front of St. Matthias' church during the procession. I have it from an eyewitness. Round the banners thousands of children were thronging, among crowds of their elders. A motor-car came racing down Tarnok Street, a Commissary's car, the son of a political delegate sitting in it. His sweetheart, a waitress, stood in front of a shop and waved her hand to him. The young Jew wanted to show off his power, so he shouted to the chauffeur : " Run them down ! " The car made straight for the procession, which fled in panic. When the car reached the Host the Jew boy spat on It. The crowd raised a shout and would have lynched the blasphemous wretch if Red soldiers had not rescued him, dragging him under a doorway. The crowd attacked the door, but before the Terror Boys could arrive the soldiers themselves had settled the aggressors with their bayonets.

And at the same time a similar incident took place at the bottom of the castle hill near St. Christina's church. A Jew drove through the multitude and before he could be prevented spat on the Host. In this case the crowd fell on him and beat him to death. Later on shots were fired into the church. News of this kind comes from all quarters.