“I do not doubt the result,” said Prince Hohenlohe; “I have done much organising in Transylvania, and I know what women can do.”
When we left and dispersed in the quiet streets of Buda, I felt that I had entered on a new path, which might become my path of destiny.
December 4th to 7th.
Henceforth life took on a new aspect. I shook off the paralysis of despair which had made me a passive sufferer of events. Till now, like a cripple deprived of the power of movement, I had brooded deeply over everything that came within my ken, but at last I had become an actor in deadly earnest in the tragedy, and I could waste no more time over details.
The day after the meeting in the Zichy Palace I wrote letters, telephoned and called to my side a few brave, energetic women. We had no time to waste, and we decided that each of my guests should invite to her own home her reliable women friends, and that we should address them, so that they in their turn might spread the idea of the organisation of Christian Hungarian women. There was no other solution, for the Press had ceased to be free. The few Christian and middle-class papers which would otherwise have been at our disposal had begun to be terrorised by red soldiers. Our ideals had been condemned to death by the Social Democrats; they had declared war against patriotism and Christianity. As for the integrity of Hungary’s soil, they had declared in their official paper that it was no business of theirs....
We had perforce to return to the primitive means of olden times. The idea was spread by word of mouth, and we separated so as to be able to do more work. Emma Ritoók visited one end of the town and I the other. Like the primitive Christians, women gathered now here, now there. I visited dingy lodgings, baronial halls, schoolrooms; through dark streets, in the gloom of hostile alleys, I walked in snow and wind day after day. Women understood me, and their souls glowed with courage and decision in these sad times of exhaustion and resignation. With very few exceptions they signed my lists, those who did not had been forbidden to do so by their husbands. Never once did I find among them the cry of resignation “It is all over, effort is useless.” I respected them and was grateful to them, for they were simple, great and faithful. And while I thought of them in my wanderings from one modest home to another, and tormented myself about the misfortunes of our country, one scene for ever kept passing before my eyes. Though the snow was falling and it was dark I could see an eastern city under a burning sky; a house with pillars, the house of Pilate, and in the hall stood Our Lord in bonds. In front of the house a crowd, mad with hatred, clamoured: “Crucify Him, Crucify Him!”
That is what they are shouting against our fettered country to-day. They drag it down among themselves, put a crown of thorns upon its head, smite it and spit upon it. They load it with a heavy cross and drive it unto the place called Golgotha. They nail it to the cross, so that it shall be able to see with its dying, bloodshot eyes, how they cast lots for its vesture at its feet. Then they put it into a sepulchre and roll a great stone before it, sealing the stone and setting a watch so that it shall not be able to rise....
His disciples and followers hid in despair and left His grave alone—they had no more hope. But on the third day, very early in the morning, women went through the blue dawn to His grave. It was women who saw His resurrection.... The memory of that beautiful, sacred vision must have remained in their eyes. For thousands of years it has always been women who have seen resurrection on earth.
Now, too, they see it, or would they follow me?