Károlyi informed him that he could not leave in any case, as he, with his whole army, was going to be interned in Fóth.
“I did not expect that!” said Mackensen. And hard words were spoken between them. The Hungarian Government, however, had left itself a loophole. At first Károlyi threatened to intern the whole army, but at length he conceded that disarmament would be sufficient, and this Mackensen accepted only conditionally with the consent of the German Government.
During the debate Károlyi stuttered more than usual, and when this painful meeting came to an end he proffered his hand hesitatingly to Mackensen. The Field-Marshal measured him with contempt: “I have had to do with many people in my life, but I have never before met a man who was so devoid of all honour as you are.” Then, with a slight nod, he turned his back on him. And the hand of Michael Károlyi, which had already been contemptuously ignored by the French General Franchet d’Esperay, was left empty in the air.
It was thus that Mackensen became a prisoner of Hungary.
Was it a long time ago? Was it in my childhood that I heard the story that once upon a time the shout of “Mackensen, Mackensen!” resounded victoriously at three gates of Hungary?
December 17th-22nd.
We walk in the gutter of shame between two close, high walls, whence there is no escape and no rest. In this deadly atmosphere we sink deeper and deeper at every turning.
Yesterday evening was even worse than usual. It was late when I said good-night to my mother, and I could get no sleep. Nations carry their misfortunes in common, and that is why they can bear the worst, but the shame which has now befallen us is so colossal that it seems to belong to us alone. It isolates us from humanity. I had been lying motionless in the dark for a long time and could think of nothing but how Károlyi had sinned against us. To-morrow the whole world will know it and even our enemies will despise us for it.
Our enemies?... The face of a German soldier seemed to stare at me from the dark. He was wounded; a shell had torn off both his legs. He had been brought from Transylvania about two years ago. I had spoken to him in the German hut at the railway station. And then there appeared another, and, as in a mad feverish dream, they came, and came, through the dark, pressing on in endless array, covered with blood, lame, mutilated, all those I had met in four and a half years’ of war. One looked hard and scornful, another reproachful, and all stared at me pitilessly, and in my dream I could hear their moans.