Countess Louis Batthyany had telephoned that she wanted to see me. I made my way through a dense crowd, for the town is overrun by the constant influx of refugees and of thousands of home-coming soldiers. On the boulevards people thronged; there hardly seemed to be enough room for them. The human tide overflowed into the by-streets, pushed, pressed, swarmed and accumulated in front of the windows of newspaper offices like a knotted muscle. In the office window of an evening newspaper were some photographs, and under one of them was an inscription, “The members of the Soldiers’ Council.” There were too many people for me to get near, so that I could only see it at a distance as I passed—the faces, exhibited in glory, of those who were guilty of the rebellion of October, and who may one day be called to account. “What do you think of that?” a voice asked among the loiterers. “The Minister for War has had Heltai arrested for embezzlement, robbery and murder.” “What? the ex-commander of the town?” “That’s him ... and now his sailors are coming in armoured cars with machine-guns to rescue him. There’s going to be trouble.” The news spread at once. “Have you heard it?” “It is not true?” “But it is!” There was a panic. And the people in the streets carried it on with them: “The sailors are coming! They have left Pressburg, they have left the Czechs....” Crowded electric trams passed, so crammed with people that the pressure inside nearly broke the cars’ sides; outside people were hanging on everywhere. I saw some soldiers coming along, when suddenly one of them tumbled forward, tripped over his own foot and fell, face downward, on the pavement. Nobody troubled about him and even his companions went on indifferently. With a remnant of war-time charity I stooped over him, thinking that perhaps he had an artificial leg, or was suffering from an epileptic fit. When I took hold of his arm to help him to get up again, however, I found that he was drunk and vomiting. As I started back I heard his companions roar with laughter. The crowd carried me on, but the incident was like a thorn thrust into one’s heart. Soldiers, Hungarian soldiers! There had been a time when my eyes filled with tears at the sight of them. How proud I had felt of them, how I had respected them, I had loved them as being the personified courage of my race. What are they now...? When I arrived at my friend’s house I found the talk turning on Michael Károlyi, to whom several of those present were related. I asked them if they knew the conditions of the armistice concluded with Diaz, that they had safeguarded the frontiers of the country, which the Belgrade treaty had sacrificed? The news was so mad, so impossible, that doubt showed in every eye. “I know it for certain,” I said; “a member of the armistice commission, Lieut.-Colonel Julier, told my brother so.” Anger succeeded consternation on every face.