Hungary -- History -- Revolution, 1918-1919 -- Personal narratives; Tormay, Cécile, 1876-1937 -- Diaries
Among the parties which support the government differences become more
manifest every day. They have practically formed two distinct sections,
on one side the guilty, misguided Hungarians, on the other, the
Socialists and Radicals, the foreign race. The latter are the stronger
because they are better organised, and know what they want. Michael
Károlyi is entirely under their influence, caught in the meshes of a net
that is being drawn rapidly towards the extremist side.
Unity in politics only exists as long as it is a question of attaining
power. The power, once attained, itself serves to divide the
victors—swollen with pride and insolence. That is the moment to smash
them.
“It would be premature,” Count Dessewffy told me, when I met him to-day
in the street. I had only a short talk with him, for he was due at a
meeting. They are forming an agrarian party, and hope to organise the
peasant proprietors of the country.
“I have just remembered,” he added with a laugh; “only think of it.
Károlyi means to send you on a political errand to Italy....”
“Does he always choose with such discernment?” I replied, and I could
not help laughing myself. “Let him get me a passport and I will use my
Italian connections—on two conditions.”
“What are they?”
“Firstly, that I travel at my own expense, so that I needn’t accept a
penny from them; secondly, that I do not go in the interest of their
republic and their government, but exclusively in the interest of my
country. But that, I fear, won’t suit them.”
As I walked on I reflected on what I had heard. Dessewffy had information
of the country’s mood, and he had said:
“The peasantry and the provincial towns do not take to the idea of this
disguised communist republic, suggested by Pest. There are considerable
parts of the country which are restrained with difficulty from openly
espousing the cause of monarchy.”
“Don’t hold them down, let them raise their voice and sweep the board
of this scum!” I had cried. But Dessewffy only repeated: “It would be
premature. Let this crowd die off first.”
I ran into a ladder standing across the footpath; a man was sitting on
top of it, scraping the wall diligently. Dirt has effaced the last traces
of such inscriptions as “By appointment to the Imperial and Royal Court,”
which October 31st had torn down in its fury. Now new work is being done
on the shop-signs, and those that bear names like Hapsburg, Berlin,
Hohenzollern, Hindenburg, and Vienna, are taken down. The cafés are in
a tearing hurry to alter the names they bore before the war, and the
Judaized town sycophantically re-christens itself, plastering its places
of amusement with labels such as: Paris Salon, French Café, English Park
and American Bar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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