An officer swore in the name of the Székler commando: “Our bodies and our souls for the Széklers’ Independence.”
“We have had enough war!” shouted a Budapest pacificist. He was expelled noisily from the place. Angry cries followed him down the stairs, and then a thousand voices shouted the curse: “May God forsake him who does not help the Széklers in their struggle!”
I raised my head. It seemed to me that at last the town of silently suffering Hungarians had regained her voice, that the Széklers had given it back to her; and the cheers, rising, gigantic, in the garden, spread over the streets like a great, solemn oath.
December 9th-11th.
A black tablet has been hung under the glass roof of the railway station upon which the names of towns have been written with chalk: Ruttka, Kassa, Körösmezö, Kolozsvár, Arad, Orsova, Szeged-Rókus, Pécs, Esszék. There are no more trains for these from Budapest. Passengers wait in vain. No more trains will come from the capital of Hungary. The nerves are severed, the arteries are cut, life-blood is oozing slowly out of them. Communication has ceased; tracks are covered with snow and the signal lamps are extinguished. Silence reigns in the distant little stations, the silence of a shudder. Who knows what may happen before the connection is renewed? Foreign rule occupies our towns, it spreads further and further, always nearer to the centre....
And as each day passes, here in the isolated heart of the country everything is getting more and more antagonistic, dividing even those who have the power in their hands. The proposed law of land reform has lit a fire which shows up both extremes. Even in Károlyi’s party there is a split. The radicals and socialists go hand in hand, and the Hungarians, notwithstanding their miserable position, are opposed to them.
It is said that the Government is tottering. By means of the Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council the power of the Socialists is increasing daily and they now claim the portfolios of War and of the Interior for themselves. Two Jews are their candidates. They accuse Batthyány of reaction and attack the Minister of War because he opposes the Soldiers’ Council system, desires to diminish the socialist local guards, and recruits peasant guards in the country. They accuse him of supporting royalist movements and of forming officers’ corps and emergency detachments.
The Counter-revolutionists!
This word is now beginning to raise its head in determination to break down any patriotic attempt, to stand in the way of every honest endeavour. We have reached the stage when it is counter-revolution to complain of the foreign occupations, to speak of the integrity or defence of the country’s territory, or to say: “Let us work that we may not starve.”