A curious picture.... I now thought of the police of the capital. The day before yesterday it had adhered to Károlyi’s National Council. The famous police force of Budapest had forsaken its high ideals of duty and had gone over to the wreckers. Never before did I realize the importance of this betrayal. I shivered. The fog drifted as if the very atmosphere had become unstable. The walls of the houses near me seemed to waver too; and I seemed to hear the cracking of the plaster, as if they also were preparing to collapse. The noise came from the very foundation of things. Something invisible was collapsing in this city already undermined. “Hungarians” ... then silence. A little further it went on: “National” ... then it started again all along the street. My unwilling eyes were reading the posters over and over again. “National Council”.... What is this obscure assembly after all? How dare it call itself the council of the nation? Who are those who incite against the state and collect oaths of allegiance for themselves? Who are those who from the room of an hotel appeal to the nation and promise “an immediate Hungarian peace, the equal right of all nations, the League of Nations, the freeing of the world, a social policy which will strengthen the power of the workers”?... They have not got a word for our frontiers established a thousand years! What happens in the background whither our eyes cannot penetrate? Do the secret allies of the Entente work among us, or only our own enemies who, by means of their proclamations, shout in their Ghetto-lingo that “this programme, which is to save Hungary and free the people, has the whole-hearted support of the Hungarian army?” Who says that? Who proclaims himself the saviour of Hungary in the hour of her greatest peril? Count Michael Károlyi and Rosa Schwimmer? Martin Lovászy, Baron Louis Hatvany-Deutsch, John Hock, Sigmund Kunfi-Kunstätter, Ladislaus Fényes, William Böhm, Count Theodor Batthyány and Louis Bíró-Blau? Dezsö Abraham, Alexander Garbai and Ernest Garami-Grünfeld? Oscar Jászi-Jakobovics, Paul Szende-Schwarz and Mrs. Ernest Müller? Zoltán Jánosi, Louis Purjesz and Jacob Weltner? Eleven Jews and eight bad Hungarians! My soul is racked with indescribable pain. Good God, where is the King? Where is Count Hadik and his government, the officers, the still faithful troops? Are there no longer any fists? Is there nobody to strike at all? After Gödöllö the King now gropes in Vienna. Hadik remains inactive while the fateful hours fly by. The officials do not lay down their pens, but incline their heads meekly under the new yoke. And, worst of all, the military command surrenders its sword without an attempt to draw it. There is no resistance anywhere: dark, underhand forces by careful labour have prepared the ground long ago. They have demolished everything that is Hungarian. And now, one stitch after the other, with deadly rapidity, the fabric that has endured a thousand years is coming undone.