Those who heard my words followed me, and many of them offered their help, though at that time it was dangerous to make such an offer. I noticed more than once that furtive steps followed me in the streets, stopping when I stopped, and going on when I started again. They accompanied me down dark staircases, and when I looked back from a door I had entered, someone was standing in the dark and watching. The Government knows about us, the police are watching us, but in vain; the idea goes on and spreads. Whenever I express it people recognise it as their own. It cannot be stopped now. * * * * * _December 16th._ Once upon a time.... Or was it not so long ago? Was it on a winter evening in my childhood that I heard the story that once, up there in the Carpathians, a huge giant opened his jaws and tried to swallow the world? We were already between his teeth, and all over the world folk said that that was the end of us. Poor little Hungary was done for, Imperial Austria would follow, and then it would be the turn of Germany. It seemed as if our time had come. In the shadow of the Alps, Italy waiting for her opportunity, drew her dagger from under her cloak, and stabbed us in the back. Roumania was feverishly tugging at her knife. “Nothing can help the Central Powers now”.... The whole world said so, and thought us easy victims. Then a miracle happened. It was on a certain day in May, and on that spring morning the three allies started an attack near Gorlice. “Mackensen, Mackensen!” they shouted in victory, and the Tsar’s Russia, the most terrible enemy whom a people had ever encountered, fell upon us. Was it a long time ago? Was it in my childhood that I heard the story, that, down in Transylvania, like an echo of Gorlice, the name of Mackensen rose again as a cry of victory above the Hungarian and German armies? And then, above the vast mirror of the Danube’s flood, a third time the name of Mackensen resounded. For the third time he stood at the head of the armies that were defending the gates of Hungary. Was it a long time ago? Was it so long ago that time has obliterated its memory? It was yesterday! It was on history’s bloody page in the world-war, while there was still hope, while our honour was still bright. And to-day when Mackensen came to Budapest to negotiate with Károlyi for the repatriation of his army, the red soldiers of Pogány-Schwarz, under the leadership of Captain Gerö-Grosz, with full knowledge of the Government, dragged machine-guns to the railway station and trained their muzzles on the line, while an evening paper had its Kinema operator ready. That is how Hungary’s capital prepared for the reception of Field-Marshal von Mackensen.