A press dispatch dated Buda-Pest, April 4, 1919, said that "in Transylvania, following the practice in Moscow, the churches have been converted into music halls, the best seats being reserved for the proletariat. The government officials do not pay house rent and have priority on foodstuffs and clothing."
The American Socialists boasted about the absence of bloodshed in Hungary during the early part of Bela Kun's regime. Whether or not he had been cautioned by Lenine not to wear out too many rifles in the beginning, lest there be a dearth later on, we do not know. At any rate, by the latter part of May, 1919, the Hungarian Communists also began to manifest their true color. They were not satisfied with "painting everything red" in Buda-Pest, but also wanted to see red blood flowing in the gutters. In confirmation of this we have the following Associated Press report, dated Vienna, May 20, but not appearing in the "New York Times" till May 23:
"Many persons accused of being counter-revolutionists are being executed by the Hungarian Communists, according to despatches received here. The victims are usually shot in front of the Hungarian Parliament House in the daytime or in the school-yard in the Markostrasse at night.
"Among those who are said to have been executed are Herr Holan, manager of the Kaschau-Oderberg Railway; Bishop Balthasar, a hostage from Debreczen, and Colonel Dormany of the General Staff, who was taken from a hospital. Several girls, who were accused of making tri-color rosettes for the counter-revolutionists, also were executed. The presiding Judge of the Revolutionary tribunal, which orders the executions, it is said, is a former locksmith, 22 years of age.
"Many bodies of men and women and girls of the better classes have been found on the shores of islands in the Danube below the city. It is reported that they were arrested in the residential quarter of Buda and thrown into the Danube by guards who were taking them to prisons in Pest."
In the summer of 1919 the Hungarian Communists lost control of the country. Not only had internal dissensions broken out at home, but they had been attacked for a long time by the Rumanians, who had caused them endless trouble. If they had succeeded in remaining in power long enough, they would, no doubt, in time have shown themselves proficient in murdering their fellow-countrymen and as skilled in the use of the rifle as the Bolsheviki in Russia, the Spartacides in Germany and the Communists in Bavaria. These four groups of European Socialists of the extreme Left--ruffians, brutes, murderous thugs, half barbarous savages, slayers even of their own Socialist brethren--have long been in a "position" to teach the "gentle art" of plunder and murder to their admiring comrades on this side of the Atlantic, that "poor," "persecuted," "workingman," Eugene V. Debs, and his crowd of "honest," "scientific," "evolutionists."
With these European thugs Berger and Hillquit deliberately "lined up" the Socialist Party of America in the words of their Chicago manifesto of September 4, 1919:
"The Socialist Party of the United States at its first national convention after the war, squarely takes its position with the uncompromising section of the international Socialist Movement. We unreservedly reject the policy of those Socialists who supported their belligerent capitalist governments on the plea of 'national defense,'" etc.
There is no breath of patriotism in these dogs.
The above "line up" was confirmed by the rank and file of the Socialist Party of America in their referendum vote identifying their party with the Revolutionary Third (Moscow) International. (See Chapters V and XVI.)