I met Stephanie Türr once more before she left, and talked to her in the hall of the Hotel Bristol. She gave me a solemn promise; she will try to help us when she gets home. The Italian officer who had been given her as an escort for her personal safety, said nervously:
“Signora, you are watched. There are detectives here.” Then he spoke so low that I could hardly hear him. “E pericoloso,” and he winked and nodded to me. “Be careful, we can leave, but those unfortunates who remain here are playing with their lives.”
I felt as if there were only two kinds of humanity in the world: those who are happy and those who are unfortunate. And these foreigners look upon us as if they were looking, half in pity, half in curiosity, through the grating of a mortuary.
CHAPTER XVII.
March 1st-5th.
Winter is still with us, but the winds bring signs of awakening from afar. March ... the month of fevers and commotions. On the earth fatigue and restlessness chase each other. Flooded rivers race along. There is no visible sign of it, yet spring is there somewhere over the horizon.
Whose spring is this to be? Ours or theirs? Signs of evil omen prophesy against us. The monster, raised from the dark by Károlyi’s party in October, shows its head daily more boldly and now grips the city with innumerable tentacles. Its suckers pierce the flesh of Budapest, and where they fasten themselves the streets become convulsed, and, like blood, red flags trickle out of the houses.
The Galileists openly avowed at their last meeting that they are Communists. At the instigation of Maria Goszthonyi and a Jewish Communist woman the Socialist women demonstrated in the Old House of Commons against the religious and patriotic spirit in the schools. On the initiative of John Hock, himself a priest, orators clamoured in favour of abolishing the Catholic priests’ celibacy. Revolutionary orders from the War Office and the Soldiers’ Council spread all over the country. Pogány has sent instructions to the various military detachments that they should, with the help of the confidential men, elect officers of the most advanced political opinions and dismiss the others.
In the Town Hall the Workers’ Council has now passed sentence of death on the system of small holdings and on the distribution of land. This distribution would at least have left Hungarians to some extent possessed of their birthright. But that would have retarded the plans of our new conquerors. So they want to socialize it and create producers’ co-operative Societies, controlled from Budapest, and directed, instead of by the old Hungarian landlords, by people who, as Kunfi said: “are inspired by the new spirit of Hungary.” They want to achieve the revolution of the soil even as they achieved their political revolution. After the wheel, they want to lay hands on the ship itself.