So he stood on the platform in the hall, filled with applause, after having proclaimed the republic and having proposed that: “the holidays of royal paraphernalia should be abolished and that the glorious days of the revolution and the republic, the 31st of October and the 16th of November, should for all times be declared National holidays.” Then he read out a declaration, imposed on Károlyi by Jászi, Kúnfi, Kéri and Landler, “in the name of the Hungarian nation and by the will of the people ...” by which it was decided that Hungary was a Popular Republic, independent and separate from any other country, the supreme power being provisionally in the hands of the popular government, headed by Michael Károlyi and supported by the National Council. It declared that the popular government must urgently legislate and adopt general, secret, equal, direct suffrage, including women in the electorate, for elections for the National Assembly, Communal and Legal councils; decree the freedom of the press, trial by jury, freedom of assembly, and take the necessary steps for the agricultural population to obtain possession of the land. [Illustration: FATHER JOHN HOCK, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL, OPENING THE REVOLUTIONARY NATIONAL ASSEMBLY AFTER THE DISSOLUTION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND THE LORDS. (_To face p. 138._)] The public in the hall shouted its unanimous assent after every point. Then Károlyi rose to speak, to speak with that frightful voice which is the natural consequence of his infirmity. He proclaimed the deposition of the Hapsburgs, declaimed Wilson’s sacred principles, the League of Nations, the right of peoples to decide their own fate, of eternal peace, and wound up in a pathetic stutter: “only through sufferings, only through the sea of blood caused by the war, could the peoples of Europe and the people of Hungary understand that there was only one possible policy: the policy of pacificism.... The policy of pacificism was no more a restricted local policy, but the policy of the world.... The Hungarian nation, the Hungarian state and the Hungarian race must cling to this world-policy, because only such nations will prosper, only such nations will progress, as can adapt themselves to, and adopt, the world-policy which is expressed in the single word _Pacificism_.” The hour was tragical and I had suffered much, but I could not help laughing. Never did pitiable blabber say anything more stupid than this, nor anything more wicked, for while he is proclaiming pacificism, militarism armed to the teeth is invading Hungary from all sides. Is it mere stupidity or the last service to a horrible treason? Whatever it be, after this it is useless to analyse Károlyi’s mentality.