There was no doubt whatever about it. The man on the garbage box and the man whom the people pointed out as Béla Kún were one and the same.
I heard later what had happened in the barracks. There too Béla Kún made a revolutionary speech. Before he started, two Jewish corporals had attempted to prepare the soldiers, but the soldiers threatened them and they were lucky to escape. Then Béla Kún tried to speak. The soldiers arrested him, boxed his ears, shoved him into the lock-up and turned the key in the door. Everybody was pleased; the soldiers cheered their officers, and it seemed for a moment that the soldiers of the Maria Theresa barracks would stand their ground and beat anarchy. Then Joseph Pogány arrived in a motor car with his escort. He inquired excitedly what had happened, cursed both officers and men, and hurried to Béla Kún. They had a long conversation in the lock-up, then Pogány solemnly released the Communist and drove him off in his car. Meanwhile the mutinous soldiers from the Francis Joseph barracks arrived. It was quick work. When Pogány’s motor started with Béla Kún in it the soldiers were already shouting with all their might “Long live Communism!”
In the afternoon Countess Károlyi, escorted by her husband’s secretary, an officer called Jeszenszky, visited the barracks. In the evening it was the talk of the town that there was going to be a mutiny, and that the citizens were going to be massacred at night. Explosions were heard now and then in the dark, and the rumour spread that the communists had blown up a munition factory and the railway bridge. They were all false; it was only the soldiers out on a spree. They fired the heavy guns, threw hand-grenades, dragged machine-guns into the street and fired them just to pass the time away.
BELA KUN,
ANNOUNCING, FROM THE STEPS OF THE HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT, THAT THE PROLETARIAT HAS TAKEN OVER THE GOVERNMENT.
Midnight drew nearer amid the clatter of fire-arms. As at Christmas, we again gathered at my sister Mary’s. The New-Year’s punch was standing ready in long fluted glasses, and the children kept looking at the clock.
I had a letter in my hand; it had come from the capital of Transylvania with the last Hungarian post, behind it the barrier had crashed down. It was just like getting news of the death of a relation during the war, and after he had been buried receiving the last letter from his hand. My heart bled, though I did not know, and had never seen, the writer of the epistle. I read it out aloud:
Kolozsvar, December 23rd, 1918.
I have just read in the Sunday issue of ‘Az Ujsag’ your article ‘Awake.’ I cannot describe what I felt when I read your lines, and yet I feel I must write to you. Every word of your terrible, biting truth has engraved itself upon my heart. It is this tone, this hard, bitter language, that we need to-day; we need it as much as a starving man needs a bit of bread, as a drowning person needs something to cling to. That is what we want: the proclamation of our confidence, our self-respect, to a world in which every nation boils with patriotism while we Hungarians, alone, proclaim internationalism, humility, and resignation—far beyond the necessities of our miserable condition.