November 28th.
The protests from our outposts have died away and the tragic ray of light has been swallowed up in the general gloom. As long as the despoilers of the nation are in power it will always be like that. The Government has given millions to the Transylvanian Roumanians and has supplied them with a profusion of arms, taken from Hungarian soldiers, while it leaves the Hungarians and Széklers in sweating terror, defenceless in the midst of an enemy that clamours for their lives.
Károlyi’s Government supports everybody who is against us. To-day, for instance, while I was on duty at the railway station, I saw special trains being put together with feverish haste. Roumanian agitators are calling together in Gyulafehérvár a Roumanian National assembly which intends, it is said, to declare for the separation of many purely Hungarian counties of Transylvania. And to facilitate the business the Hungarian Government puts special trains at the disposal of our enemies! The whole thing is as though someone were grinning maliciously over a body writhing in agony.
There was great activity at the station to-day. The old refreshment shed of the Red Cross has been transformed into a refreshment room for returning soldiers. We who had for many years worked there with the Red Cross offered our services in vain. White bread, which we had not seen for a long time, and sausages, were distributed to the soldiers by Jewesses who wore neither hat nor cap and looked unkempt and untidy. They had been sent by the Social Democratic party, and care for the soldiers was only a secondary part of their duty: they distributed handbills and talked propaganda to the returning men. Notwithstanding our Red Cross and our papers one of the women came up to us and asked us to leave the place, as they had been put in charge of it.
With my sister and a friend we went back to the other refreshment room. “We have been kicked out,” I reported. We were now told that the Government, after having dismissed those who had directed the work of the Red Cross during the war, had appointed Countess Michael Károlyi to the head of the Red Cross—as Delegate of the Government. This position had always been filled gratuitously by grey-haired noblemen, but now Countess Károlyi voted herself a salary of eighty thousand crowns and had it paid out to her for a year in advance.
“One of her assistants has already been here,” said someone belonging to the Red Cross. “She made a great fuss and declared that Countess Károlyi would turn out all the ladies who had formerly done the work.”
“It will be a noble sight,” I said; “I shall stay and see it through.”
At this moment the sergeant with the red ribbon came in. Two soldiers with fixed bayonets followed him. They came straight up to me. “We have found some suspicious leaflets on the platform, royalist muck....”