Now the red, white, and green flags are disappearing rapidly. But the soiled colours of the nation are not replaced in the country’s capital by the black of mourning. Every day there are more and more red flags in the streets of this unprincipled town, which is always outrunning itself and stamping its past into the mud. Once I loved this town and wrote its romance, so that its people might learn to love it through my art.[4] Now I have become a stranger within its gates and have no communion with it. I impeach it and repudiate it. And this accusation is not raised against the foreign race which has achieved power, which has attained its end by sheer perseverance, ingenuity, industry and pluck—but against Magyardom and the whole nation, who have, heedlessly, incapably and blindly, given up their own heart—the capital. All past powers and governments are responsible for this. The reproach concerns to the same extent those politicians who are still debating about shades and won’t see that to-day there are only colours, and won’t feel that in a short time there will be no more colours, but only one colour, and that that one will be—red. This bitter thought brought to my mind a Red soldier whom I saw when I was on duty at the railway station. Some armed men came into the hall where we have our Red Cross. They were commanded by a strapping young Hungarian. He stopped in front of me and asked me whether I had seen ninety-six men pass there. They came from Deés, were Whites, armed, and their track had been lost. “I haven’t seen them.” Then my eyes caught sight of his cap. A broad red ribbon was sewn round it. “What have you done with the red, white, and green one?” “We lost that on the Piave,” the soldier answered. “There you lost the black and yellow one.[5] You have torn off our own colours yourselves.” As I said this I looked straight into his eyes. He couldn’t stand my gaze: he snatched the cap from his head and hid it behind his back: “Well, and you gentlefolk, why don’t you ever give us a lead?” Many times have those words echoed in my ears since then, every time a soldier or a workman has flung at me the accusation of want of leadership. It seems to be a characteristic of our politicians and intellectuals. * * * * * _March 6th._ An old woman stood on the edge of the curb and made queer, whining sounds. People looked at her and went on. A few street urchins jumped about her and laughed at her. When I came near I noticed that she was blind. She was making heartrending appeals out of her eternal darkness to the passers-by, and wanted to cross the busy street, but there was none to give her a helping hand. For a moment or two I looked at the people: they were mostly poor: labourers, labourers’ wives. They passed unmoved, caring for none but themselves.