“Thus speaks the past to us while the lute of the present is silent, while innumerable, homeless Hungarians wander aimlessly in the streets of the distracted country’s epidemic-ridden capital, whose streets are bedizened with flags fluttering in heart-breaking irony.
“My poor, unfortunate town, is there nobody to tell thee to put thy begrimed flags at half-mast? Hast thou not a single minstrel to rouse thee? Dost thou not see thy disgraced streets trodden by the fugitives of half thy country, by foreign armies, while all around thee the country is dismembered?
“So let the dead come with their lyre to raise the quick, let the grave shout into the dwellings of the living, let the past console the present. For the songs of Hungary’s poets of the past are all our hope; for they alone hold the promise of Hungary’s future.”
So far had I written. In the morning I telephoned to the editor of the Pesti Hirlap and asked him if he wanted an article. It was the first time in my life that I had had to ask for space: up till now it was the papers who had asked me for copy. The editor accepted with thanks, so I sent him the manuscript; but I looked in vain for it in the paper next day, and the day after. I telephoned again. The editor was embarrassed, he apologised and said that he regretted he was unable to publish the article as it was not in accordance with the Government’s views.
“Are the Government’s views so anti-patriotic then?” I asked.
“Please don’t forget,” said the editor nervously, “that the present situation is terribly delicate; this may be the last bourgeois government, and goodness only knows how long it can hold its own.”
“I hope not long. I would rather see destruction declare itself openly. This downfall in disguise is intolerable.”
While we were speaking I heard a curious buzzing in the telephone, as if something were wrong with the apparatus. I wanted to speak to the editor of another paper, but the exchange was unable to give me the connection, though I tried for a long time. Meanwhile I sent to the Pesti Hirlap for my manuscript.
When it came at last I took it to the editor of the Radical Az Ujság. That also was a new experience, but I was determined that the article should appear in print, and refused to give in. Again the editor received my request courteously, and actually carried out his promise next day; the article appeared, though in an obscure corner, and very indistinctly set.
Some day, when peace and quiet have returned, people will wonder how this could have happened under a government which proclaimed the freedom of the press, and at a time when the mouthpiece of the Social Democrats could promise its readers over their breakfast table that “the glorious revolution” would sweep away “bourgeois” society, and could accuse the Hungarian race of jingoism because it would not renounce without protest territory it had held for a thousand years—that a poor essay dealing with Hungary’s sufferings should have had to perform such an Odyssey before a newspaper could be found to publish it. It will perhaps seem just as astonishing that I received in connection with it innumerable letters of thanks, and that a friend of mine who had spent fifty-one months at the front, and who had shown reckless courage, telephoned to me, saying: “Tears came into our eyes when we read your article. I take off my hat to you for having the courage to speak out.”