February 25th.
What are they waiting for? The night has passed, so has the day, and I am still free. Nobody has been arrested yet. Pogány insisted on the arrests being made, and Böhm proposed them to the cabinet council, which accepted the proposal unanimously. The fate of the arrested Communists was settled unanimously too. They were to be detained only for the sake of appearances, not to protect the town from them, but to protect them from the vengeance of the police.
Since Baron Arco’s bullet laid low Kurt Eisner, the Jewish tyrant of Bavaria, the Government has been getting more and more nervous. Since the Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council in Munich decided for the Dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communists party here is getting more audacious every day. Red news comes from Berlin, from Saxony, and, like a distant earthquake, it shakes our town.
Notwithstanding the request of the Entente, the date of the elections for the National Assembly has again been postponed. Perhaps in March, or in April.... If it’s delayed so far the fight will be hard. The party at present in power is employing unheard-of stratagems. The achievements of the revolution: freedom of the press, freedom of thought and of opinions, freedom of association and meeting, all these exist only for them. Our opinion has no longer a press. One newspaper dared to raise the question of shirking work, and the gigantic amount paid out in unemployment doles; the Communists demolished its offices. Then came the turn of another which had attacked Hatvany’s book, the chronicle of their revolution. Others followed, and the plant of their printers was wrecked too.
The same sinister spirit which directed destruction fell like a strangling nightmare on the mind and brain of the press. Even journalists, whose patriotic feelings were opposed to it, were forced to join a Trade-Union. By means of the Trade-Union, three Jews became the dictators of the written word. All the well-disposed papers and printers were silenced, and the Hungarian spirit was banished from the journalists’ club. When the Markgrave Pallavicini tried to make a breach in the Communist and Social Democratic stronghold by purchasing an existing paper, the terror had already reached such a pitch that Fényes turned up with his armed sailors to prevent him from taking possession of it. After this it was obvious that abolition of the freedom of the press was being achieved with the aid of the same Government which had crushed the freedom of assembly by means of Red soldiers, and the freedom of opinions by the means of the ‘popular law’ of internments. We are not even allowed to assemble: our meetings are broken up by the same Red soldiers who demolish the editorial offices. And yet the Socialists dare not appeal to the country, for who knows what answer it might give?
They promised to bring the country happiness. Hungary has never been unhappier than now. Public opinion in the Provinces has lately turned entirely against them. They had to do something, so they produced the mirage of land distribution; and Károlyi, who had previously taken up a mortgage of several millions on his property, went out with a noisy following to his estate at Debrö and, before a kinematograph camera, received the claims of tenants on the land which was laden with debts and did not really belong to him any longer. An old peasant was elected to present his claim first: an old servant of the Károlyi estate. In a lofty speech Károlyi sang his own praise. The old peasant answered. Unfortunately he was not allowed to say what he wanted to: he had been carefully coached, but even so he made a slight slip in his address. “I have served the Károlyi family to the third degeneration....” They stopped him then. The Social Democrats sent their delegates to this theatrical distribution of land. They feel that if they don’t succeed in fooling the level-headed agricultural population of Hungary they will lose the election. In many villages the Social Democratic agitators are driven away with broken heads. It is the women who enrage the people against them: “Blasphemers, sans patrie!”
But a thing like that does not embarrass the Social Democrats: they adopt a disguised programme for the rural districts. Since one of the leaders of the broken-up small-holders party, Stephen Szabó of Nagyatád, has joined the Károlyi government in Budapest the Socialist propaganda has appropriated the patriotic and religious mottoes of that party. The Red Jewish agitators, before addressing the people, kneel down on the platform, make the sign of the cross and pretend to say their prayers. Then they start like this: “Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ, we too, Social Democrats, believe in the all-powerful God....”
Notwithstanding the threats of the new ‘popular law’ the various Protestant and Catholic women’s organisations bravely carry on their work. The National Association had a meeting this morning. The whole committee was present, not one was missing; it seemed like a deliberate demonstration. These women can be great and noble. Is this to be our last meeting?
“If anything happened,” I said, “and I were prevented from coming again, I should ask Elizabeth Kállay to take my place. If her turn comes, and she cannot be here any longer, let someone else take her place, and so on. The links of the chain must not be broken.”