_May 7th._ Now and then comes the sound of distant gunfire. Whence does the wind bring it? The Reds have beaten the Czechs back all along the Ipoly. A new poster has been stuck on the wall of the house opposite, it is an appeal to the inhabitants of Balassagyarmat by Comrades Riechmann, the political delegate, and Singer: “Comrades! We have vowed on our ideals that if any among you who want to restore the old order raise their sacrilegious hands against us, we shall strike them down with our iron fists and smite them like a hammer smites the anvil. What do they want? To bring back the old criminal order? Do not attempt the impossible, because henceforth the slightest attempt will mean paying with your lives, and we will deal with you as with ordinary assassins who are a danger to human life. Behold your heroes, sitting in gaol and waiting for the sentence of justice for their vile, incredible treasons.... What does the country mean to the bourgeois? You have seen how it created happiness and comfort for them, while our share was misery.... And we declare to the bourgeoisie of the whole world that we will not give up our town and our country, because _now they are ours, it was we who defended them for fifty-two months_.... Long live the World-Revolution! Long live Béla Kun!” Comrades Singer and Riechmann! They cannot even write the Hungarian language, and yet they dare to claim not only our country but its defence during the war which they successfully shirked for fifty-two months. Let them behold from their graves, those who have fallen on distant battlefields, those whose feet were frozen in paper boots, those whose wives hungered and shivered in the queue! Among my relations fourteen followed the call. All of them were young. Eight of them will never return. Do they behold these things from their graves? At the end of October the disbanded soldiers came back from the world-war clamouring for pogroms. In November they were already demanding the blood of their own kin. The air was full of secret promptings: ‘Everything shall be yours!’ Later on there came the shout: ‘Plunder the gentle folk!’ Those who first whispered saved thus their fortunes and their lives. And the people chose as its leaders the owners of the gin-shops and declared the landlords their foes. And Comrades Singer and Riechmann declare to-day that our country is their country and no longer ours. The leadership of the nation which was once Széchényi’s, Kossuth’s, Deák’s and Tisza’s, is now theirs. * * * * * _May 8th._ Béla Kun has asked the Rumanians for an armistice. His offer expresses deadly fear. If he can retain the rest of mutilated Hungary in his grip he will renounce any territory, is ready for any sacrifice.