Those who had been present told me afterwards that early in the day the trade unions proceeded from their meeting place to the House of Parliament. They carried red flags, big placards, and a black coffin marked “Kingship is dead.” The brass bands of the workmen and of the postal workers blared, bands of gypsies and choral societies gave voice. Red insignia everywhere. The nation’s colours had disappeared even from the caps of the national guards and they too sported red labels with “Long live the Hungarian Republic.” The only two Hungarian flags, and small ones at that, were placed on the front of the House of Parliament. Over the porch of the central entrance a huge red flag floated in the breeze as if Internationalism from its newly conquered home were putting its tongue out in derision at the crowd, which it had beguiled so far by means of cockades of the national colours and with white chrysanthemums. Opposite, on the buildings of the High Court and the Ministry of Agriculture, red drapery was displayed all along the first storey. It looked just as if a gaping wound, inflicted with a giant axe, had cut them in twain. The shops were closed. Trams were not running. Traffic had stopped like a breath withheld, ready to cough itself again into the streets of the town. A cordon of sailors lined up in front of the House: rather a painful surprise for the government, this. Heltai had come back from Pressburg with his men in a special train: surely the Republic was not going to be proclaimed without him! So the defence of Upper Hungary is now suspended for the time being while Heltai adorns himself with the national colours: he entered Pressburg under the red flag. There are rumours that his sailors are connected with certain robberies. In Pest it is murmured that he knows something about Tisza’s murder. Five aeroplanes circled over the square, the crowd kept increasing, and then a giant advertisement on a long stretched canvas was brought out on poles from a side street. The wind blew it up like a sail and made fun of its inscription: “This morning in Parliament Square we shall proclaim Count Michael Károlyi President of the Republic!” It was ten o’clock. The Speaker’s bell rang. And the Hungarian House of Commons, to its eternal disgrace, without a word of protest, dissolved itself in impotence. In the other wing of the building the Lords had met at the same time. Only thirty-two were present. They too had forgotten the old classical cry: “_Moriamur pro rege nostro!_” Only Baron Julius Wlassics, the president, spoke. He did not pronounce the dissolution of the Lords. He said as little as possible, and ended his address with the words: “Our constitution decrees that the dissolution of the House of Commons as part of our two-chamber legislature will naturally render the further constitutional functions of the House of Lords impossible, consequently I hereby suspend the sitting of the House of Lords.”