THE HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT.
Photo. Erdelyi, Budapest.
The Minister of War. He began to wave his hat over his head as if attempting to catch an elusive butterfly. I caught a few of his words. He spoke with a lisp and stuttered slightly. “Soldiers, I expect discipline.... We have faithfully done our duty on the field of battle.... We suffered and we fought.... We imagined that the ideals we fought for were worth while.... I, your responsible Minister of War, declare that these ideals were false!”
I thought he would be knocked down for saying that. Four hundred officers. Just enough....
“There is a new order of things,” ... shouted Linder. The short woman next to me jerked her neck and complained: “I can’t hear anything.” The slim young man, in his thin shabby overcoat, stretched his neck to listen: “He says that we have not been beaten. We have won, the sovereign people has won. We have conquered that false system....”
“I can’t understand,” said the woman excitedly.
We could hear Linder’s voice: “When we had beaten the Russians and there was no more question of national defence, we had to go on fighting for imperialistic, militaristic, egotistic ends....”
“Aha,” said the woman, and was bored.
The voice in the middle of the square continued to shout: “But perhaps we ought not to grumble that this war has lasted so long. We had to demolish the tyranny of a thousand years, the tradition of a thousand years, the servitude of a thousand years.”