During the strike Michael Károlyi, walking one day with his wife in the city, met one of their relations who lived in the suburbs and asked him anxiously, “Are the people rising out there?” The negative answer depressed them. “It does not matter.... The day has not yet come.... But we shall not escape revolution.” Louder and louder came the whispers out of the darkness: we had come to a phase when words could do the work. And words began to agitate: “Only a separate peace can save us from the revolution.... We must leave the Germans to their fate.... They are the cause of everything.... The war goes on because of them.... Alsace Lorraine....” Invisible lips uttered these things with persistent consistency. Unknown voices spoke to those who repeated their sayings. And far away from the fields of battle, in the country’s capital, in the workshops and the barracks, quietly, secretly, the earth began to quake. And yet the front was never stronger than at this period of the war. After the Ukrainian and Russian peace, these were perhaps the last moments which permitted us to hope for a possible peace, if only we showed unity and resolution. But in these fateful days some mischievous magic lantern flashed the picture of a weakening alliance with Germany, of internal discord and risings, towards our adversaries, and these pictures inspired them with new zeal. At home it became more and more clear that we harboured men who ate the bread of our soil under the protection of Hungarian soldiers, who drank the water of our wells and slept peacefully, whilst putting forth every possible effort to make us lose the war. If I remember rightly it was at this time that Károlyi’s political camp began to spread the rumour that he had come into touch with leaders of the Entente. Poincaré had once been the lawyer of the Károlyi family.... Stories circulated. Others again knew that he had connections with Trotski and that he had organised secret military councils in the smaller towns round the capital. “The traitor!” While we in my family called him a traitor, the radical press raised him to the dignity of a prophet, and the misguided masses saw in him the saviour of the country.