CHAPTER XIV.

July 21st.

People call revolutions ' youth ' and ' dawn. ' But revolutions are not daybreaks, nor are they the chaos out of which comes the beginning of all things. They are not the first hour of a new age, but the last decaying hours of a senile age in which the features of the times have become distorted.

This is not dawn ! Revolution is the midnight agony of a passing age, when the vision of the future appears only through the blood and sweat of the dying. The senile age dies in the revolution. And when the disorder of dawn has passed and morning breaks, man becomes a child again and an autocratic power takes it by the hand and leads it back to order, to law, to church, to early Mass, into the presence of God. Then comes the youth of the age, the period of dreaming idealism, of fights for freedom, of Art. This age gathers flowers, ploughs and reaps, sings and follows the footsteps of the beloved. Then comes the age of manhood. It creates industry and commerce, it goes on board ship, weighs anchor and brings treasures from beyond the seas. The treasures increase, the superfluities accumulate and flow into a few hands, the reign of gold raises its head above the misery of millions.

The evening comes over a pale world of ill omen. The nauseous scent of faded flowers pervades the air. In saturnalian revelries the cups are emptied to the dregs. These are the hours of wild, dissolute orgies, old faces painted to look young, derisive laughter. The bells of the churches only mark time, law is only respected by the simple and regarded no better than stupid, traditional nursery tales by the cunning. The tired incapable crowd is ruled by degenerates, hereditary wrecks, criminals and lunatics. Respect disappears, the hand that worked drops its tools and the hour of midnight approaches.

Then comes the agony of the senile age. Blood is shed, flames rise to the sky and between fire and blood the age dies. Revolutions are not mornings. They are the death-struggles of the midnight hour. And we poor Hungarians have been for months the witnesses of such an artificially provoked agony. It ends the age, but, above my sufferings, I feel that the real dawn is coming towards us.

........

July 22nd.

The day of the heralded world-revolution has passed. The Red press gushes over the strikes in other countries, but reports that the Dictatorship will summon before the Revolutionary Tribunal any Hungarian workman who dares to stop work. In a fortunate country like Soviet Hungary there is no longer any need for strikes. In Russia, where happiness has been attained to an even higher degree, workmen who strike are executed. None the less there is no work being done in town to-day. Nor is there any on other days. Why work ? For forged bank-notes ? World-revolution ! That is the word which is being whispered to-day at street corners. A mad hallucination ! Yet, if it were to come ? What if man's evil spirits were powerful enough to send millions in the same hour to the assault of their God, their country, their home and humanity ? Or if Béla Kún's word is just successful enough to induce the Proletariat of the Western Powers to tie their Governments' hands so that things may continue here as they are for months and years, till the fire has burnt out ?

A solitary figure came through the silence, came quickly, with an elastic gait, though the bag on his back seemed heavy. He turned his head constantly to right and left, and his eyes, widely opened, had a stare in them which reminded one of the demented. He looked round, then again started quickly towards the Ipoly. Then he disappeared.

This stranger passes here frequently nowadays, though he is not always the same. Sometimes he is young, sometimes old. He is fleeing from gaol and death, and dreams of Szeged. Two friends of my brother Geza escaped this way, across the river. They came to the house, on their way to Szeged. They had no idea I was here, but they brought news of my brother. He is hiding in the hills of Buda, like the others who have not escaped abroad and are not yet in prison.

They also told us that Stephania Türr had been in Budapest in June, looking for Count Stephen Bethlen and me, to take us to Italy.

One evening there was a knock at our gate at an unusual hour and a newcomer stood in front of us like a shadow—Count Stephen Keglevich, fleeing from his property in Abony. His wife and children are coming to us too, they have had to flee separately, so as not to attract attention.

They were driven out by hunger and the children were on the verge of starvation, for the only food they could obtain was what the peasants succeeded in bringing them by stealth from Count Keglevich 's own farm. Since May, when Számuelly suppressed the Counter-revolution in Abony, that region has been like a mortuary, and now war is beginning again there. So they are escaping to Ipolykürt, beyond the Ipoly, to the plundered castle. There they will, at any rate, be able to sleep on the bare ground—the one thing the Reds and the Czechs could not take away.

The patriotic Counter-revolution of the faithful Vends in Western Hungary has been defeated by the Reds and the Vends have fled into Austria. They have been interned in Feldbach and many Hungarian officers have joined them. Baron Lehar is their commander. In Szeged the legendary hero of Novara, Nicolas Horthy, is Minister of War. Paul Teleki is Foreign Secretary. General Soós and Gömbös are organising the national army. When I took leave of the latter in March, I knew that I should hear of him if I lived.

It is said that Colonel Julier, the new Chief of Staff, who was forced to take Stromfeld's place at the point of the revolver, will be Red only till he has crossed the Tisza. It is also said that whole battalions of the Red army are deserting to Szeged. In our imagination that town, like a mirage, is floating amidst national coloured flags on the banks of the Tisza, above the Great Plain. We see the three colours, we hear the National Anthem whenever we think of the town. Our proscribed flag, our proscribed hymn ! I am a beggar, for the property of the dead and the condemned reverts to the Soviet. But when my imagination sees the three colours floating against the sky, when the great prayer of my race echoes in my mind, I am the richest woman in Hungary.

A hand has put ' The Red Newspaper ' on the table : big type again :— " Revolutionary outbreaks in Paris, Berlin and Turin. Demonstrations of the foreign Proletariat in favour of the world-revolution. " Then, set in small type, a short notice :— " Kiel... The demonstrations have passed without the slightest disturbance. "

That is the history of the world-revolution. It is finished and the door is still open.

........

July 23rd.

The news is in everybody's mouth : the Reds have won a decisive victory on the Tisza and the members of the Directorate have regained their confidence. It is from the attitude of these people that the town reads the position of the Dictatorship. Their star is in the ascendant and the Proletarians treat us with more rudeness than ever. Red colour has again blossomed out on the soldiers' caps, but they do not feel too sure about it, and instead of ribbons they wear geraniums. That generally means that the position is doubtful : a ribbon cannot be removed suddenly, a flower is quickly torn off.

Goodness only knows how often I have wandered round the little back-garden. If it is really true that the Reds have crossed the Tisza ! Those who have seen their bestial destruction in their own country, and observed them returning with booty stolen from people of their own blood, must falter when they think of their victims.

" What news ? "

In Huszár's hand the journal's yellow, mean paper rustled. " They have crossed... " he paused, then went on : " ... On July 20th we crossed the Tisza at various points... From Tokaj to Csongrád we are pursuing the beaten Rumanian troops everywhere... "

So they have won a victory with our blood against our own blood ; for this is not a question of Rumanians. A defeat of the Rumanians, the re-occupation of the torn-off territory, the release of our Hungarian brethren, were not the objects of the Dictatorship's ambition, but a new larder and a new field for robbery, new slaves and new legions. And we cannot even deceive ourselves with the belief that the news is untrue. It is true, it must be true, because Béla Kún, who loses his head when in despair and is impudent after success, has sent to Clemenceau, the President of the Peace Conference, the following ironical, provoking message : " We have been obliged by the Rumanian attack, which was undertaken against the wishes of the Entente, to cross the Tisza, and to enforce the wishes of the Entente against the Rumanians. "

Our thoughts travel wearily to those parts where, behind the receding Rumanian flood, foreign energy will set against each other the few remaining Hungarians. Számuelly's train is under steam, and if it starts it will plant the further shore of the Tisza with gallows.

A tightly-shuttered house has been burning here in Hungary for months. Nobody tried to extinguish it. At last the smoke choked itself, the fire burnt itself out. Who troubled about those who were in the house ? Those outside cared only that the fire should not spread to the adjacent houses. Now the windows of the house on fire have burst, the fire has been revived by the air, the flames lick the palings, spread, flare up, run. What if they were to ignite the Great Plain and unite with the Russian conflagration ?

Evening came. Hours dropped into space. One of us picked up the paper and we now noticed something for the first time. Below the news of the passage of the Tisza, three words darkened the page : " Sentence of death. " At Saint Germain the victors presented their peace treaty to the remnant of Austria.

Our quarrel with Austria has lasted for centuries, and she brought us hard times, yet there is no people on earth to whom her fate causes as much pain to-day as to us. We have fought and fallen together on the battlefield. Now they hang a beggar's satchel round the neck of unfortunate, torn Austria, and out of irony, with devilish cunning, send her to take her share with her own predatory enemies, in the plunder of Hungary. They compensate her with Western Hungary, with a piece of land that promises endless revolts and is meant to act as a living wedge to prevent for ever an understanding between the two despoiled peoples. It is a devilish plan, the most perfidious part of the terrible Peace Treaty. It pretends to be a present, but it is a curse and a disgrace.

A single candle was burning on the table, and by its light we could see a map on the wall the map of Hungary ! That unit of a thousand years which was not created by man but was made into one country by nature. The thing I could never believe, which was always deemed a threat meant only for the Revolutionary Bolshevist Government, the frontier of Hungary as delineated by Clemenceau, has disclosed itself in the Austrian treaty as the real aim of their vengeance. In the name of peoples and nations the men at the Peace Conference are preparing a crime which is only paralleled by the partition of Poland.

Suddenly I see, like a train of misty ghosts, a shackled procession pass before my eyes : the granite walls of the Carpathians ; the mysterious rushes of Lake Fertő ; the sea under the Carso ; the Danube rushing through the Iron gate ; the summits of Transylvania ; the forests of Mármaros all of them under a foreign yoke ! I did not own an inch of that ground, and yet it was all my own. They take it from me, and equally from everyone who is Hungarian. Aladár Huszár has drawn upon the map the frontiers fixed by the Paris Peace Conference. It is as if a knife were passing through our flesh, leaving a line of blood wherever it passes. The ancient frontiers are all left far beyond the line and deep in the country there is an awful gash. The red line proceeds on the map, staggers now and then as though in horror, stumbles, recoils and then goes on, leaving ancient Hungarian cities without, cutting pure Hungarian regions in two, leaving a miserable, truncated body the Hungary of the Peace Conference ! Those who have never leant over the map of their own country, those who have never drawn with weeping eyes new frontiers within the old historical boundaries at the bidding and according to the predatory desires of enemy peoples, those are ignorant of the meaning of torture, of lust for vengeance, of revolt, of hatred, of patriotism.

" We shall take it back !... "

Which of us said it ? It matters not. It is not the saying of one person, it is the word of a whole nation. Even in our misery and destruction we had the strength to say it. " We will take it back ! " That is the phrase which all our coming generations will breathe. That is the phrase mothers will teach to their infants. Bride and bridegroom will pledge each other's troth with that phrase before the altar. Those who go will leave this phrase as an inheritance, those who remain will take their oath upon it. We will take it back ! The last clod, the meanest tree, every spring, every blade of grass, every stone.

Nothing moved in the silence of the night. Only the flame of the burnt-out candle flickered.

" Let us go... we must sleep. This is the last candle in the house... "

........

July 24th-29th.

There is one piece of news to-day that gives us some hope. Even if the ship seems still afloat, it is sinking, for the first rats are leaving it. Michael Károlyi, who proclaimed he would hold out to the last breath, who has betrayed Hungary and has driven her into Bolshevism, has been arrested with his wife and secretary at a Czech frontier post and sent to Prague. Retribution must be near, for he was afraid and fled. It is reported that since the banks refuse to pay more than two thousand crowns to any one individual, he provided himself with several millions of Austro-Hungarian Banknotes and a false passport. He wanted to go through Vienna to Milan, but Italy did not desire his presence. Bavaria refused to admit him, but Prague offered him an asylum. They owed it to him. Without Michael Károlyi the Hungarian Highlands would never have passed into Czech captivity.

He has gone, fled from the nation's just vengeance, but he cannot escape the long arm of God's justice. Millions of Hungarians driven into slavery and homelessness, seas of spilt Hungarian blood, miles of Hungarian land, cry out to heaven against him.

A mean man, a debased politician, and one of the greatest traitors in the world's history.

Iscariot has passed.

........

July 29th-31st.

Sometimes one can learn a town's news by watching its street corners. To-day some soldiers gathered opposite the house. One of them said something, gesticulating, while the others stood and stared at the pavement. There were no red flowers in their caps, though I saw some in the gutter. Shortly afterwards I saw them leave the village with their bundles on their backs and disappear through the corn-fields.

Everybody is talking about the tremendous losses of the Red army. The official papers try to screen them : " Our victorious armies... The whole of Rumania's forces opposing them... We withdrew our troops behind the Tisza, in perfect order, without any losses in men or material... " " Twenty-eight thousand dead, " says rumour, and ten thousand men are reported drowned in the Tisza. Soma Vass need not plant his nurseries for gallows, the wholesale murder of Hungarians has been successfully accomplished on the banks of the Tisza. And while they died, Comrade Landler, the Commander-in-Chief of the Red army, and other comrades watched them from a safe place through field-glasses. The Rumanian victory and the defeat of the Reds are both paid for in Hungarian blood. Never have Hungarians died a more tragic death.

If this sort of thing lasts much longer there will be no one but lunatics left when the end comes. Every hour brings new tales of terror. In Budapest Tibor Számuelly is gaining more and more power. He wants to become Dictator. Hitherto the Dictatorship has been too lenient, so the terrorists are going over to his side. And their one idea, before they lose their power, is to be revenged on the nation. Already the Directorates have received secret instructions and are drawing up lists. " Számuelly is preparing for a massacre of the citizens. None shall be spared, neither artisans nor peasants.

News comes from the other bank that the Czechs are returning. They say they have orders to occupy Vácz on the 3rd. More and more soldiers are disappearing from the village, and Terror Boys are continually flowing in from Budapest to take their place. There are already eighty here.

After the arrival of the evening train people steal in the dark towards the Ipoly. Hitherto it has been Hungarians who were escaping, now it is mostly Jews who slink along the walls carrying parcels. In the town hall they are feverishly packing up the archives of the Directorate ; the Jewish comrades have again withdrawn into the background.

Szíjgyártó has now become the absolute master of the town. Among other things he issued an order to-day that every individual who is not registered and whose stay is not considered justified by the Directorate must leave Balassagyarmat within twenty-four hours, on pain of being summoned before a Revolutionary Tribunal. Those who come from Budapest will be sent back there under police escort. Once more there is talk of searching houses : the terrible hand groping for me has returned. It will be bad luck if it catches me now when its days are already numbered.

We discussed the matter and the old plan of escape was revived across the Ipoly, somehow to Vienna, to Szeged ; but again the horror of asking hospitality from the Czechs in my own country, my poverty, my illness, interfered.

" Let's wait and see how things develop, " said my friends.

How often have they said that !

Suddenly I thought of the house in Szügy : I could not leave without bidding it farewell ; so I walked over to it and saw the garden and its mistress once more.

When I was there last the crops were still standing ; now the wheat was in sheaves and summer walked between their gold over the fields. Then I came to the garden and found that the clean-swept courtyard was no longer a soldiers' right of way. Crimson ramblers were blooming on the walls of the house, and round about the pump the down-trodden grass had sprung up again. On the terrace, green plants and garden furniture had taken the place of ammunition boxes. How rapidly the ruts of ammunition carts and service waggons and dirt and garbage disappear. Will it be like this elsewhere too ?

Before I left, Mrs. Beniczky walked through the garden with me and we stopped for a moment near the trees between which I had caught a glimpse of the hussar bugler among the Red soldiers, near the bushes whence I had watched Pogány's car. How much had happened since then ! The trees had become dark green and grave ; the garden had passed its nuptial glory. Its wreath had faded, its most beautiful flowers had gone.

When I reached the small railway station of Balassagyarmat I saw that soldiers were running about, throwing their arms into waggons. " They are evacuating the town, " said a railway man, laughing scornfully. On the open track, amidst piles of boxes and bags, carriages, bedding, machine-guns, and pianos were standing near the waggons, ready to be loaded. The streets were quiet, but carts were standing at the doors of some of the houses and people were hurriedly packing things at random into them. They are running away ! Yet Comrade Landler reported in ' The People's Voice ' of the 29th that : " There is no change in the situation at the front. "

The Red press is indulging in paroxysms of fury against the Szeged Government. " Cheats, scoundrels, Jingoes," are the epithets bestowed by Béla Kún's newspapers ; and all the time little handbills are being secretly passed from hand to hand. They were dropped by an aeroplane from Szeged : " The hour of delivery is at hand ! Prepare to support the National Government ! "

The village listens, tense under the Red posters which disfigure its walls. It listens abstractedly, as though trying to hide its thoughts, and behind closed doors and windows people put their heads together. Stories born of desire are spreading, but the insufferable thought that we are in need of help from the Rumanians dominates our imagination and hopes : " The national army has already left Szeged !... Whole Red regiments have passed over and have laid down their arms. White Hungarian troops will come with the Rumanians. Perhaps to-morrow... In Budapest the commander of the garrison has prepared the population for a general alarm should the Dictatorship of the Proletariat be in danger. The whole town is covered with posters... An hour after the alarm has been sounded nobody must be in the streets. Soldiers must hurry to their barracks, workmen to their respective headquarters. Within an hour from the alarm all electric trams must be withdrawn... All shops and public offices must be closed at once, as well as the doors and windows of houses. Simultaneously with the alarm martial law will be declared. "

Such preparations have never been made before, either in May when the Rumanians attacked, or in June during the Counter-revolution. Those who come from Budapest speak of the disruption of the Red army as it retires, of its anarchy, of mutinies of Terror detachments, of Számuelly's autocracy. It is impossible to get a clear picture of what is happening : " The White army is approaching ! The Rumanians are advancing from the Tisza ! " One can hear the crackling and collapsing of the Dictatorship. The powers of the Entente have sent a note, and the Cabinet has felt obliged to publish it in its press. This note is no longer addressed to the Soviet or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. At last, then, the Allied and Associated Powers are going to address themselves to the Hungarian people ! Under the title : ' Declaration of the Entente on the Blockade ! ' the Red press screens the Note of the Powers in which they declare : " We sincerely desire to make peace with the Hungarian people... " But peace can only be concluded if the Hungarian people is represented by a Government which " represents really the will of the people, and not by one whose power rests on terror. "

It has taken the Entente Powers four and a half months to come to this decision ! No wonder they have been slow to discredit Béla Kún, for, after Károlyi, he has rendered them invaluable service. He has ruined and robbed Hungary of her last sources of strength. Now they can take possession of the booty which is no longer capable of offering resistance and can pay with our thousand years' old possessions the war bills presented to them by their little allies.

........

August 1st.

The news reached the village last night. The Red army has gone to pieces. Comrade Landler reports that after " the unchanged situation at the front, we are attacking the Rumanians who have crossed the Tisza... The Red army is in perfect order and has gained a victory over the Rumanians... We have retired, unbeaten, of our own accord. "

The members of the Balassagyarmat Directorate are unable to disguise their nervousness, the comrades are rushing about the shops clamouring to buy no matter what so long as they can get rid of their white Soviet banknotes. But however much they pester and threaten, the shopkeepers refuse to sell. The shop windows are empty, only the propaganda shop of the Commissariat of Education still offers its wares pamphlets, portraits of the Commissaries, Red stars, badges with the ' Red man ' and plaster busts of Lenin and Marx. But these are at a discount to-day. The town is practically without traffic and the telegraph wires bring incessant orders from Budapest : " Let everyone remain at his post, Let none dare to run away... "

Steps halted outside and I heard a Semitic voice say : " Let us lead it into other channels... " What did that mean ? While I was pondering the front door-bell rang. The Sub-prefect has come with a wire from Budapest. Béla Kún's rule is over ! Something snatched at my heart and I felt that I wanted to shout.

" It's certain to be true," the Sub-prefect said. " A purely Socialist Government is being formed." And he folded his hands carefully as if he were afraid of committing himself.

A purely Socialist Government ! That was not what we had expected ! Now I remembered the rumours that the delegates of the Entente had not been negotiating with the Viennese committee of Count Stephen Bethlen, nor with the Government of Szeged, but had been exchanging pourparlers for days, not with Hungarians, but with William Böhm, Kunfi and with Károlyi's henchman, Garami.

I thought at once of what I had heard outside my window : " Let us lead it into other channels... "

So the Jews are still to be our leaders : the Red hangmen of yesterday are resuming their old garb of moderate Socialism and are preparing to pass the power from one hand into the other. The world-revolution has not come off, and there have been other mistakes in their calculations ; they reckoned every item as they thought—the threats of the Entente, the attacks of the Rumanians—but they forgot to take into account that dying Hungary might have energy enough to cross its arms over its torn breast and undermine Bolshevism from within with its old weapon, passive resistance, despite the failure of the Entente and Rumanian arms.

There were shouts in the guard-room opposite :

" Who said that ? Arrest him ! " And Red Guards and Terrorists rushed towards the post-office. If the post-master said so, he must be arrested. But instead of answering them the postmaster called up Budapest, a Terrorist meanwhile holding one of the receivers. And along the wires the question rang to Budapest. The answer came at once : " The Government has resigned, the Soviet exists no longer. Budapest is mad with happiness. "

The Terrorists glared at each other terror-stricken, but they did not arrest the postmaster ; instead they went to the Directorate for instructions. But the Red offices in the town hall were empty and the comrades had disappeared. Some of them had been suddenly taken ill and had been obliged to go home. The news rushed along the darkening streets and in a few seconds it had spread all over the town.

Peace on earth and goodwill among men !

The house became too narrow for me. So did the garden. A violin was being played next door, sobbing to the accompaniment of a piano. Then, in spite of ourselves, we all burst into the forbidden, outlawed, Hungarian hymn. We just stood and sang, and the National Anthem went up in that summer night, to the starlit firmament.

Below, in the dark, on the other side of the street, noiseless dark figures slunk away. In the light streaming from open windows the neighbours stood bare-headed. They were praying too.