The great French Revolution was fatally influenced from the day that the people and the rabble of Paris stormed the Arsenal and plundered it. In Budapest no force is required. The Police Commissioner himself has instructed the police and the people’s guards to confiscate all arms and ammunition from those who possess no permit—and nowadays permits are only given to workmen and the mob.
That is another breach in the power of resistance of the middle classes and in the sanctity of the home. Henceforth the people’s guards have the right to search for arms. The citizens are helpless, and I hear that everywhere people are giving up their shotguns and revolvers.
We are a pack of spell-bound sleep-walkers. The wizard glares at us with his big, oriental eyes and pronounces his spell, which varies according to the times: Democracy, Socialism. Yesterday the magic word was Liberalism, to-morrow it may be Communism.
November 24th.
Nights are sleepless nowadays, yet I cannot work. As if every word of beauty had been engulfed by the mire through which I wade in day time, I cannot form a single idea. In the dreary desert of my brain nothing wanders but horrors: the morning brings them, and they are not banished by the end of the day.
BELA KUN (KOHN).
I wrote some letters last night, and this morning I sent out for stamps. The maid put them on the writing table before me.