CHAPTER XIII.

June 28th.

The Counter-revolution has been beaten everywhere. The power of the Dictators seems never to have been greater.

When they first came they had to share their power with the trade-unions, the Soldiers' Council, the ' confidential men, ' the Peasants' and Workers' Councils and later on with the National Soviet. Within three months they have freed themselves of all these. First of all the peasants disappeared as a deciding factor. They were followed by the ' confidential men ' and these by the Soldiers' Council. The Workmen's Council was reduced to a shadow, the trade-unions were transformed and subdued, the Soviet was sent home, and of the remnant of these three they made a dummy, the ' Economic Council, ' in whose hands the new constitution was placed. The beginning and the end of this Constitution is the domination of their race over the ruins of the destroyed power of the State. The edifice of tyranny has been perfected. All means and all power are in its hands. It has absolute sway over life and death. Law-giver, executive, judge, gaoler and executioner, all in one.

The red flags of victory are floating over seas of Hungarian blood. The Dictators are revelling. Complimentary addresses and telegrams are pouring in. Among the first, Comrade Frank pays his homage to the Cabinet in the name of the Directorate of Balassagyarmat. The County of Nográd ! Its people bite their lips with shame and hatred. At the recruiting meeting of Balassagyarmat not a single man presented himself for enlistment, so the meeting had to be closed, and the Directorate asked the Government for Terror troops, so that violence and rifle butts may be used to force men into the army.

Meanwhile the Red press reports a sequence of congratulatory addresses. The women raise their voices too. What may they have to say ? In the name of the national organisation of Communist women, Sarah Goldstein, Mrs. Elias Brandstein, Maria Csorba-Goszthony, Ida Josipovich and Vera Singer, the women whom the unfortunate inhabitants of Budapest called ' Lenin Girls ' after the defeat of the Counter-revolution, " greet with love Comrade Haubrich and request him to present their heartfelt gratitude to the others. " Meanwhile demented mothers and sisters weep for the captive pupils of the military academy and the shadows of horrified women roam under the acacias on the banks of the Danube.

" The country honours the victors of the Counter-revolution. " So the comrades of the Frank type swear to fight to the last breath for the victory of the Revolution, and Sarah Goldstein and those of her kin send their " loving thanks, " their warm gratitude. Otherwise there is silence. Awful silence. And the summary tribunals of the Revolution are sitting permanently.

Colonel Romanelli prevented the executions at the Octogon, but hostages are strangled secretly, quietly, on out-of-the-way building plots, in the deep recesses of dark yards. There are frequent executions in Parliament Square : the rabble hangs about there for hours on end ; women sit on the kerb and wait.

" What are you waiting for ? " someone asked. " For an execution, " a surly woman answered.

It is so simple, the Entente sees nothing of this. Soldiers with fixed bayonets bring a victim. The hearse follows. The crowd turns to the steps. A volley is fired. The stones beneath the lions are battered with bullet marks. The hearse goes off slowly and the square becomes empty. There is nothing more to be seen.

In the House of Parliament, on the side reserved for the Peers, are officers of the Political Investigation Department, modelled on the Russian Cheka, and Otto Korvin-Klein sits there in judgment. Since the representatives of the Entente have invited Béla Kún to disband the terror detachments, the Lenin Boys have transferred their quarters from the Batthyány palace to this place.

In the adjoining houses people only sleep in the daytime : at night they look trembling towards the House of Parliament from behind their darkened windows. Above the entrance of the House of Lords shines a huge arc lamp. Motors pass incessantly. This is the time when the terrorists collect the hostages, the material for Korvin-Klein. The cars stop under the lamp. The light shows leather-coated men dragging along their miserable victims, whom they push into the entrance. Now and then a scream filters through the walls of the House of Parliament. Then, as if by word of command, the engines of the motors begin to purr, the horns are blown to drown every groan, every death-rattle. Armed Lenin Boys emerge from the gate, dragging a form with them. The group proceeds to the lower quay. Arms clatter, the steps die away in the distance. There is a splash. Then the black group returns, but there is no longer anyone in their midst. Romanelli has protested against public executions. But near the House of Parliament people cannot sleep at night.

The streets are dark and empty. In the whole town there is but one other doorway lit up : under a red canopy an arc lamp burns above the door of Soviet House. Beside it is a small trench mortar and terrorists stand on the pavement in front of it. On the balcony a huge red flag hides the machine-guns, and the entrance is vividly illuminated. The People's Commissaries arrive in motor- cars. The terrorists line up. Present arms ! Mrs. Béla Kún receives the same honours. And within the walls of Soviet House the comrades insist on being called ' Excellencies.' A country gentleman told me about this ; ignorant of the change he went straight from the station to the Hungaria Hotel. The guards mistook him for somebody belonging to the place, and only when he wanted to pay his bill did they discover that he was an outsider. Afraid of being punished, the frightened servants smuggled him out and the news of the orgies in Soviet House escaped with him. Michael Károlyi and his wife spend an evening there now and then.

For a long time I had not heard of them. In the first week of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Michael Károlyi stood as an invisible power above the Revolutionary Cabinet. The People's Commissaries treated him with respect. But after the Soviet elections, when Béla Kún and his followers had obtained full control, Károlyi was thrust into the background. They wanted to send him to Gödöllő, the former royal residence, as Commissary of Production, and later they placed their former protector with a Communistic co-operative society. For appearances' sake Károlyi pays occasional visits to his office, but he does no work whatever. He has had a gramophone installed in his office. Detectives guard the peace of his villa in the hills of Buda, while motor lorries pass between the starving houses to carry food and ice to him. But the hospitals have no ice for their patients. His wife is often seen in a glaring red hat, driving through the quiet streets in the car of the People's Commissaries. At night they partake of the festivities of Soviet House behind locked doors, in company with Béla Kún, Comrade Dovcsak, Pogány, Landler and their womenfolk. The Gipsies who play to them spread the tale. The revels go on and the music never stops. Disregarding prohibition, French champagne flows freely. Tibor Számuelly pours some into Countess Károlyi's glass, pouring it with the hand that fixes the rope round his victims' necks. They drink to the eternal prosperity of the Soviet, and costly banquets are consumed in illuminated halls while the dark town is starving. The evening ends in voluptuous dancing. Then the music dies away...

........

July 2nd.

People are being stopped in the street.

" Your purse ! "

The 91st order of the Revolutionary Cabinet is being put into execution :

" The banknotes of the Austro-Hungarian Bank, of the denomination of 50, 100, 1000, and 10,000 crowns, are withdrawn from circulation on the 1st of July of this year.

Anyone using them after that date for payment, accepting or proffering them or exchanging them, will be charged before a revolutionary tribunal. Besides the punishment, all notes found in the possession of the culprit will be confiscated. The informer shall receive half the value of the confiscated amount. " Detectives are about and the Red soldiers are confiscating on their own account. They present their bayonets :

" Your purse ! Get it out of your pocket ! Blue money is prohibited ! " and they take the notes of the Austro-Hungarian Bank. Some of them keep the purse too as a souvenir. But the white-backed Soviet money is returned with derision to the owner. Red posters on the walls proclaim : " Social production is the source of prosperity ! " The Soviet system, after despoiling the treasury, the safe deposits and private dwellings, has now started to ' produce ' from people's pockets.

Just as Marxism was incapable of realising its political conception, so it is incapable of realising its economic ideals. In its attempt to alleviate the want of small change the Cabinet ordered six locksmiths' shops in Budapest to manufacture twopenny iron coins. The cost of production of each of these coins was over a shilling. The Marxian pamphlet theory has collapsed in the light of the sun ; its political application has resulted in unheard-of tyranny and slaughter, and its economic application in bankruptcy and robbery.

The Jews have been spreading the news for days that the ' blue ' money of the Austro-Hungarian Bank is going to be valueless. This morning at dawn their wives went to the bridge over the Ipoly and stopped the peasant women who were bringing their baskets to town. An old woman from the other side came into the yard and told us that the Jewesses were, after all, kind to the poor people. They read out at the bridge the new law about the ' blue ' money. Those who did not turn back at the news had theirs exchanged by the Jewesses, out of sheer kindness, so as to save them from the Revolutionary Tribunal. For three two-hundred-crown bank-notes they had given her a thousand-crown Soviet note. Of course it was a ' white ' note and her husband would not have such things in the house, but in any case the soldiers would have taken the blue notes and the white ones are better than nothing.

Aladár Huszár came in.

" What has happened ? Anything wrong ? "

" No, nothing. " He was looking for his wife. They talked for some time, then came back. I felt that they had read the anxiety in my eyes.

" A reliable carriage has come from the other side of the Ipoly. You can escape by that." So we need worry no longer. Fate has decided.

" We have no right to detain you. You are safer there. " And tears stood in their eyes too.

Aladár Huszár went to bring the carriage to the door while I packed my meagre belongings. It was slow work ; every trifle reminded me of something and every movement reminded me that I was still convalescent. Where shall I rest to-night ? To part from good friends to go on the road again, further from home, to knock again at strangers' doors ? To ask the Czechs for protection ! I shuddered.

When I had finished packing I sat down on a chair and held my breath. I wanted to think hard what I should have to do. I had little money and my boots were worn. Yet, somehow I must get to Nyitra, whence I could escape to Vienna. If I got well I might find some work. Or perhaps at Szeged... It tired me out to think of it.

Noon came, then afternoon : Aladár Huszár came in with great glee, a smile in his eyes. " You've got to stay with us ! The carriage has gone, I could not find it. Fate has decided. "

" You stay at home with us, " his wife said softly.

Fate's carriage had gone. Goodness knows where it is now. It may be a good omen, it may mean that these things will not last much longer.

" We have lived through bad days together, " said Aladár Huszár. " We will share the good ones that are coming as well. " We smiled at each other. We know by now that sufferings unite people more than joys.

........

July 5th.

Everybody says that Balassagyarmat will be in the neutral zone. Its military evacuation is expected for to-day and people are so excited they hardly know what to do with themselves. They stroll about in the street with their hands in their pockets. There is no work, no food ; the shops, even the chemists, are empty. Women gather at the street corners. And from the other bank there comes an uninterrupted stream of heavily-laden carts. Fine old furniture, bedding, mattresses, old family portraits, are heaped pell-mell on them. On one, amidst torn silk curtains, on empty bags, I caught sight of a beautiful bracket clock, the jolts of the car making its soul hum.

" The famous Balassa clock from Kékkő Castle," said Aladár Huszár.

There came a flock of sheep, followed by a troop of singing soldiers, then a herd of pigs, and some cattle. Valuable Swiss milch cows with huge udders were being driven to the slaughter-house.

The people glared gloomily at the plunderers.

" The main roads are littered with books, " a young man said in front of the window. " Everything you see has been stolen. " The loafers shook their heads and swore. " The whole of the highlands is ruined. They did not rob the gentry only ! "

" Who is all this going to belong to ? " an old peasant inquired.

" Who ? " said a frightfully shabby man with a gentlemanly appearance. " Listen to this ! It tells you who : ' The Red soldiers' Ten Commandments. 10th commandment : Don't take rich people's houses, cattle, land or jewellery. Leave those to the Soviet. ' "

........

July 6th.

They are coming ! Somebody said so and the news ran through the town and blossomed out in every little house.

They are coming ! How often have we said these words with horror within the last terrible nine months. The soldiers are coming from the front and are no longer defending our frontiers. The French, the Czechs, the Rumanians, the Serbians, are coming. The Communists, the Red soldiers, the searchers, the detectives, are coming. They are coming, the terrorists. Then again we said, ' the Rumanians are coming. '

And now the words are in our mouths again and they sound joyful and great. Hungarians are coming ! From Szeged ! Everybody says so. It is simply a question of days.

The Red press splutters with rage. It foams with vulgar, coarse words against the Entente and Count Stephen Bethlen, because it has heard that even in occupied territory Hungarian White Guards are allowed to be enlisted. But, according to ' The People's Voice ' : " The comic-opera Government of Szeged has not strength enough to organise the rabble of the bourgeoisie, it has not even the power to form an armed force from its hooligans, cut-throats and gutter mob, for the realisation of its sinister projects. "

We really know nothing at all, we do not even know whence the news came, yet we keep saying to each other : " They are coming... "

When darkness fell I took a walk in the little back garden. Suddenly somebody rose from among the shrubs, it was the wife of Gregory, the coachman :

" Do tell me, please, Miss, what is happening ? "

The question came suddenly and I answered instinctively : " Our own people are coming ! The Hungarians have started from Szeged ! "

The old woman looked me straight in the eyes, as though seeking confirmation. It was obvious that she had something to say. Then she folded her shrivelled old hands, and, in a devout, humble attitude, which words cannot express, her voice rose through the silent night :

" Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name ! "

........

July 7th-10th.

The fleeing Directorates from the Highlands are flocking in and requisitioning houses for themselves. Female detectives have come from Budapest. The escaped Directorate of Losoncz has quartered itself on Balassagyarmat. Its chief, Comrade Szigyártó, terrorises and issues orders right and left. He wants to dismiss all the officials who had been left in their places and threatens that he will not allow any bourgeois family more than one room whatever be the number of its members. He commandeers whatever he wants—take everything from the bourgeois ! They are taking even from the poor. Orders have been received that sixty head of cattle have to be sent to Budapest ; they will not even leave the milch cows.

There is no food : the Government has stopped all supplies for Balassagyarmat, it being in the neutral zone. For days the bakers have baked no bread, nobody will cart wood, and there is no salt. A peasant offered four chickens for two pounds of salt, although he would not sell them for two hundred and forty crowns. One cannot buy anything for money. Our Sunday dinner cost us a towel and a sheet : everything is done by barter, money has disappeared from circulation.

In vain has the Cabinet decreed under the pain of severe penalties that the ' blue ' money (of the Austro-Hungarian Bank) must be exchanged within nine days for their own ' white ' banknotes. At ' The People's Bank ' of Balassagyarmat the people of the whole county have so far exchanged twenty crowns. The peasants hide their money and say : " What good is it to pay it into the bank if it is worthless ? Let the worthless things remain in our trunks. " The other day a soldier stuck the white money he had received for pay on the wall. It has no purchasing value.

The peasants laugh among themselves. They are hiding their crops, they did not enlist, and they will not give their money to Béla Kún. As for the propaganda speakers, they say : " We sent them back to the Government in blankets. " Since things have taken this turn, the three hundred crowns daily wage fails to revive the enthusiasm of the Jewish agitators engaged by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The Commissary for Education has now decreed that henceforth the teachers will have to speak to the people in the villages.

........

Voices in the next room. Railwaymen, postmen, simple citizens now frequently slip in by the back door ; they come for advice and bring the news.

The Czechs have again entered Kassa, but the Rumanians have not withdrawn from the Tisza, whatever Clemeneeau may have promised. The heroic pupils of the military academy escaped death at the last moment : the Terror tribunal sentenced them to hard labour. This is to Romanelli's credit. It is said that it was he who delivered Baron Perényi and his patriotic companions from gaol whither the Counter-revolution of June 24th had brought them.

A deep sad voice spoke : " Fourteen counter-revolutionaries have been sentenced to death in Budapest... " I strolled out into the little back garden but even there I could not breathe. The trees did not move. The soil was hot and above it the air trembled like leaves above an open fire.

........

July 12th.

They came slowly round the corner, talking with an air of importance. Then they stopped, as though quarrelling. They had Soviet caps on their heads and were dressed, regardless of the heat, in leather coats and black leggings. Then I noticed the hand grenades in their belts. They had a bestial look about them, with faces that betrayed a familiarity with gaol. The hand of one was covered with black hair and he had a costly ring on his finger. Where did he get it from ? I shuddered.

They have been coming for days, their number has increased since the Entente insisted on the evacuation of Balassagyarmat. The forsaken town listens trembling at night when their nailed boots clatter along the pavement and stares at them with horror from under doorways, from behind drawn curtains. They laugh, boisterously, their mouths wide open...

I looked after them. As they lifted their feet I saw the heavy nails on their heels. How many human faces have they crushed ?

The Lenin Boys, escaped convicts, miscreants ready for any mischief—these are the props of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. These are the men who take hostages. These are the judges presiding over the terrorist tribunals of Bolshevism. They judge and hang when and where they like. They can do as they like. Their commander is a sailor called Cserny who was a leather-worker before the war. His car is constantly racing through the streets of Budapest. Several people have described him to me. He always wears a cap drawn deeply over his face and goes about in a leather waistcoat with long sleeves, a red scarf round his neck. His face is clean-shaven and his eyes are animated by the soft, greedy expression which is characteristic of a bloodthirsty feline playing with its prey. There are many rings on his red hands and he uses scent. His appearance is that of a footman dressed in his master's clothes. His decisions are rapid, he does not waste time on his victims, and when he has finished with them he spends hours looking at the artistic frescoes of the House of Parliament. He is sentimental and without mercy. He purrs and claws.

It is said that this man got to know Károlyi when the sailors mutinied in Cattaro. After the mutiny he fled to Budapest. He was given money by his friends and sent on a tour of instruction to Bolshevist Russia, where he made the acquaintance of Számuelly in a school for agitators in Moscow. Soon after the October revolution he came to Budapest and during the whole Károlyi regime he agitated undisturbed among the sailors. On the night of March 21st he commanded the plunderers.

And since then this brigand[5] is the absolute master of the nights of Budapest.

........

July 13th.

If bread runs short in a town the Revolutionary Cabinet at once despatches a propaganda speaker to the place.

Comrade Soma Vass has arrived.

The people taking their Sunday walk stopped in front of the town hall. Comrade Vass (Weiss is his real name) appeared suddenly on the balcony, near the red flag. But he wasted his time with his threats and incitements, the public remained cool and indifferent.

A labourer shouted to him : " Give us bread ! "

The speaker waxed hot : " That is not the question to-day. The question now is the preservation of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. We will not tolerate the Counter-revolution !"

" Is bread a counter-revolution ? " the labourer heckled.

" Don't interrupt, comrade ! We shall crush the Counter-revolution. We shall exterminate it. We shall hang every bourgeois. If there are not enough gallows in this Soviet Hungary, we will grow them. Yes, comrades, we will grow them ! "

The heckler swore. One man lit a cigarette and several cried, " Shut up, " but Comrade Soma Vass went on talking. Nobody paid any attention to him, the people chatting among themselves. " He will grow gallows... a nursery of them... grow them, shape them... Well, at least he has a programme of a sort."

And thus, after all the destruction, Béla Kún's spokesman has nailed down the only creative policy of Hungary's Socialist production. They are going to grow gallows.

........

July 14th-20th.

Béla Kún has sent a note to Clemenceau asking for the evacuation of the Tisza as promised in compensation for the abandoned offensive against the Czechs ; he received the following answer :

" Béla Kún, Budapest. In answer to your wireless which you sent on the 11th inst. to the President, the Peace Conference declares that it cannot negotiate with you as long as you fail to observe the conditions of the armistice. "

For a time I stared at the text of the telegram. How much blood, shame and suffering would have been spared to humanity if the victorious powers, instead of sending propositions through General Smuts to Béla Kún's band of murderers and dangling before the Soviet's eyes the possibility of its admission to the Peace Conference, had sent from the start a reply to this effect. Let the spilt blood and the inhuman tortures fall on the heads of those who wanted to bargain when conscience, honour and charity forbade any bargaining.

It is all clear now. The victorious Great Powers did not enter into negotiations with Béla Kún because they were pressed to do so by their own Proletariat, for that pressure would still exist, but simply because he made light of the integrity of the country to which he had not the slightest title. This shame can never be wiped out. The frigid, tardy note cannot restore the lowered dignity of the victorious States.

Béla Kún answered, his reply couched in provocative, ironical terms. He made little attempt to disguise the doubt he had of Clemenceau's veracity and derided his impotence to impose his will on the Rumanians and Czechs.

Orders for mobilisation are again covering the walls of the town, and the village criers are walking the streets and beating their drums. Huge posters have made their appearance, representing the running figure of a sailor, his mouth wide open. His head is about two feet long, his arms about three yards. Above his head he stretches a red cloth inscribed with the words : TO ARMS ! And while this frightful poster-sailor overruns poor, truncated little Hungary, deprived of its seashore, Béla Kún puts out his tongue at the peace conference. At the meeting of the ' Committee of 150 ' he rang the tocsin with one hand : " The Proletariat in Hungary is going through its crisis ! " The other he waved in triumph : " To-day the Hungarian Soviet is an important factor in international affairs, more important than old Hungary ever was ! This is proven by Clemenceau's last despatch... " He had a word for everybody, but through his boasting one could hear the chattering of his teeth. The Bavarian Soviet has died, the Austrian Soviet was never born, the armies of the Russian Soviet did not come to the rescue. And throughout Hungary his enemy Counter-revolution raises its head. It is there on the edge of the scythe as the stone sharpens it, it is in the glaring emptiness of the recruiting offices, at the idle writing desks of the offices, in the movement which hides the blue banknotes and refuses the white ones, in the stroke of every oar that crosses the Tisza at Szeged.

The Dictatorship is groping about, seeking something to cling to. As a last hope it is clinging to the phantasmagoria of world-revolution, which, after all, was from the beginning the foundation of its politics. So the Soviet Cabinet has addressed an appeal to the Proletariat of the world, calling on it to demonstrate in favour of the Hungarian and Russian Soviets and to proclaim world- revolution on July 20-21st.