The Admiral leant forward, gazing at me keenly. “Patience,” he said. “In the world, constituted as it is today, injustice cannot triumph. Least of all economic injustice. My job at the moment is to sit on the lid and prevent men who do not know that it will hurt, from ramming their heads against a wall.” He made a soothing gesture with his hands, “Keep quiet and wait, I say.”
“But while they wait your people are starving,” I suggested.
“Yes.” He shuddered as though in some spiritual way he had known the agony of starvation. “Yes, they are starving; but it will not be for ever. After the war there was a great lethargy. The nations who had won only thought of themselves. Now they are beginning to think on broader lines—this drive to save our children that you are having in America is proof of that. Next you will begin to enquire into causes and then you will revise the hurried misinformation of the Peace Conference. If you don't, there is always Bolshevism.”
“Bolshevism!” I exclaimed. “Do you mean that Hungary would go Bolshevist again?”
“Never,” his face clenched like the fingers of a hand. “But if the spring drive of the Russians succeeds, Poland will be overwhelmed. If that happens, many States of Central Europe will go Bolshevist; Hungary will be the only State you will be able to trust. Poor Hungary, whom you have shorn of her possessions, she will be your bridge-head against the tide of anarchy. We shall get our chance to prove then that we are your friends.”
“But is there no other way of righting Hungary's wrongs save through violence?” I asked.
“Yes.” He spoke seriously. “Through justice. We are a proud people. We don't want charity. We want an opportunity to work. But our hands are——” He broke off and pressed his hands together as if they were manacled. “How can we work without coal? Our factories are closed. Our people are starving. It is not safe to let people starve too long.”
I went away from my interview with Hungary's strong man with those words ringing in my ears, “It is not safe to let people starve too long.” On returning to the American Relief Station I heard an uproar of piercing wailing. There was a crowd about the door where the candidates for relief enter. My liaison officer, by virtue of his uniform, elbowed a way for me to the front. On the cold stone floor a man in a cassock was kneeling. He held a crucifix. In a secret, murmuring flow of words he was praying. Before him lay a human wax-work, who was newly dead; he had collapsed when help was within handstretch. He was a young man, certainly less than thirty, bleached with under-nourishment. He was neatly clad in clothes which were thread-bare; he might have been a shop-keeper or a clerk. The priest continued to pray—the wailing dwindled into the distance down the corridor as a woman was led away. At last a door closed behind her and there was nothing but the silence of the crowd and the murmur of the praying. I glanced at the peering faces, and I knew that it was true, what the strong man of Hungary had said. It is not safe to let a nation starve too long.