January 15th-27th.
At the corner of a street I met a couple, a girl and a man. The fair face of the girl was familiar to me. She wore her hair after the Bolshevik fashion and her eyes stared curiously while she talked. Suddenly I remembered her: it was Maria Goszthonyi. She looked untidy, her boots were down at heel, her skirt was ragged and she wore no gloves though it was bitterly cold. Her companion had black gloves and was dressed entirely in black, and as he had black hair too he was a most mournful-looking object. His narrow shoulders bent forward and his back looked humped; he hadn’t really got a hump, but his face gave one the impression of a hunchback as well. He was remarkably pale, and only his big, Jewish nose shone red in his face between his dark eyes. How did a girl like this come to be in his company?
They had passed me while I was still thinking of them and casually I noticed the name of the street I was in, Visegrad Street. The editorial offices of the Red News were in this street and it was a hotbed of Communists, who gathered here for their meetings.
I had heard a lot about Maria Goszthonyi lately. She had learned Russian within the last few years and had translated several Communist works, and under the influence of two Jewish friends, one of them the son of a rich banker, had professed Syndicalist principles. She had some trouble during the war because in the hospital in which she worked as a voluntary nurse she taught Communist doctrines to the wounded soldiers. It is also said that during the stormy days of October she made propagandist speeches in one of the camps of Russian prisoners. She had said one day to a friend of mine: “We shall soon be fighting over barricades in these streets.” Since then she had often been seen with Béla Kún at Communistic meetings. The last time I had spoken to her she had been a mere child. Her parents had brought her up in their castle, carefully guarded, spoilt, and she seemed an artistically inclined, bright young girl. Her mother is patriotic and fond of music, and the best musicians used to stay at their house; her father runs a model farm. How could a girl like that fall into the company of the Communists? There are epidemics of a spiritual nature too in this world! The war itself was one epidemic, and Bolshevism is another. There is a serious spread of the disease at Berlin at present. Its two most violent propagators have been killed, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, and because the woman was the more gifted of the two and had a greater gift for hatred, her destructive spirit was more efficient than his. While Liebknecht organised the German Spartacists he was the link between the revolutionary Jews of Russia and Germany. These two combined with the criminal classes and stirred up the Berlin rabble against the townspeople, for they wanted civil war, and to be masters of ruined Germany. Now the rage of the mob has torn Rosa Luxemburg to pieces, and Liebknecht, who egged on others to face death while he hid under an assumed name, ran when his turn came to show courage—and was shot as he ran.
The Berlin papers said that neither of them knew the limit where political strife ended and criminal action began, but the Hungarian supporters of the Government wrote: “The fate of these two is perilously like to that of the Nazarene.... This day two saints, with the halo of martyrs, have been enshrined in the history of communism....”
The whole existence, foundation, and teaching of communism is based on class-hatred, which means fratricide. Christ’s teaching is love itself. There is no bridge over the gulf separating the two. His kingdom is not of this world, theirs is all of this world and brushes aside all that is not of this world. They take everything, He gave everything. The Nazarene died for them too, and now they crucify Him anew.
At the commemorative service organised by the Communists, Béla Kún and his comrades insulted the teachings of Christ. Foaming at the mouth, they pointed towards the portraits of Rosa Luxemburg and Liebknecht, carried about on poles, called on the crowd for vengeance and vomited such hatred as has never before been heard in this town. At first Béla Kún impressed the mob, then, all of a sudden, it turned against him. He shouted from the platform: “We too are threatened with their fate. But we vow that even if we are drawn and quartered we shall continue to walk along the road on which they led.”
Somebody in the crowd shouted: “Are you going to walk when you’ve been drawn and quartered?” The crowd roared with laughter. It was no good after that to shout “Comrades, don’t weep!” for nobody was weeping, and the speech, meant to produce revolutionary fury, burst like a soap-bubble over the people’s head.
To-day it bursts, to-day they laugh. But on the quiet the Government is playing the Communists’ game. A short time ago a Communist agitator, Tibor Szamuelly, was arrested on a charge of murder. A Lieutenant-Colonel, back from captivity, deposed that this man, who as a prisoner of war in Russia had been one of Trotski’s confidants, had ordered the execution of a hundred and fifty Hungarian officers because they refused to join the Red guards. This Communist Szamuelly had not spent three days in prison when, at the intervention of Károlyi, the proceedings against him were quashed and he was released.