I looked involuntarily at the window. Out there beyond, a big town was breathing, but it was impossible to get information from its chaos. The scum had got the upper hand; was any resistance being organised? It was impossible that things should remain like this! One regiment coming back in order, one energetic commander, and Károlyi’s band will tumble from power.
Newspapers lay on the table, and my eyes fell on a proclamation of Károlyi, which he had made in the presence of the representatives of the Budapest press: “From the 1st of November Hungary becomes a neutral state,” he declared. “This tired government....” He did not say what the Entente powers would say to this neutrality. Further on he spoke of the Minister of War.... “He had immortal merits in obtaining peace. History will not fail to recognise the credit due to him; Linder has rendered to the Hungarian people services of eternal value and usefulness....”
I remembered the disgraceful scene in front of the House of Parliament, a scene cunningly contrived by those in the background.... “I do not want to see any more soldiers....” I had heard since that it was for this sentence, promised beforehand, that the social democrats gave the Ministry of War to the obscure Linder. The price of his portfolio was the disruption of the army. And Károlyi spoke of history’s gratitude!
On the last page of the paper I found accidentally an extract of the conditions of the armistice.
Immediate disarmament, the withdrawal of our armies from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier.... When I read on my eyes faltered. Then they were filled with alarm. The last terrible condition (unknown in modern warfare) followed: Prisoners of war to be returned without any reciprocity! This seemed incomprehensible. Our enemies want to retain as white slaves soldiers, heroes who had faced them armed in open battle. Then another pain stabbed me: We must lose the coast, Dalmatia, the dreamy blue islands, the fleet to whose flag so much glory was attached, the monitors of the Danube. We must deliver up all floating material, the commercial harbours, and ships.
FIUME
(HUNGARY’S ONLY PORT—TAKEN FROM HER BY THE PEACE TREATY).
Photo. Erdelyi, Budapest.
The scorched, lifeless Carso, wild tracts of rock under an azure sky, great murmuring forests, and there, down below, the sea, and, like corals and shells on the shore, Fiume, Hungary’s gate to the seas. It was indeed a bitter thought. Italy, with thy hundred ports, why dost thou rob us? We have only this one! It was a tiny fishing village, like so many others in the bay of Quarnero. We made it what it is: it sprung up from Hungarian labour, the gold from Hungarian harvests of corn and wine has flowed there to raise dams, to build quays, to work a wonder among the stones. Fiume is our only port....