The men in the artillery barracks were restrained by Communist orators, who appeared suddenly and informed them that the Counter-revolution had already been defeated everywhere, and made them arrest their officers. The monitors gave up their useless cannonade and fled down the Danube to the south. The workmen of the factory were persuaded to surrender to a band of terrorists who had hurried to the spot. Shots were exchanged between Buda and Pest. The colours on the masts of the ships on the Danube and on the soldiers’ caps changed from red, white and green to red as events took this turn. Terror Boys on lorries with machine-guns raced through the empty streets, shooting into the windows and firing volleys at the houses, occasionally breaking into houses and carrying the occupants off. They tore down the national colours wherever they found them, and corpses began to strew the pavements. When evening came the unfortunate town knew that it had not yet freed itself from the tyrant and that there was seemingly no hope left. By its organisation the Red power had swept away in a few hours the rising of the barracks, the monitors and the factories. The whole thing crumbled away in blood, misfortune and retreat. Everything was lost. Not everything! In the general collapse a handful of Hungarian boys kept the flag flying. The forsaken cadets of the military academy held out. Till next morning these boys in white uniforms defended the telephone exchange which had been entrusted to them against the assaults and machine-guns of the Reds. They also defended the building of their academy, besieged by a whole regiment. The attacking Reds were reinforced in the morning, artillery was brought up, and Haubrich sent a message to the effect that if they did not surrender he would have the whole place blown to pieces. Then only did the gate open and the heroes of the Counter-revolution lay down their arms. Soldiers with fixed bayonets drove a group of boys in white uniforms to the condemned cells. Everything is lost. Yet there has been this ray of light in a town wrapped in darkness and shame. Our honour, which the men could not defend, was saved by a few boys; and through our despair there appeared a vision of a new generation worthier than the old. What will be their fate? The nights are nights of terror and nobody sleeps; some fight with horrors, others hope and pray. Poor boys! I think of them and their mothers, of unknown, pale, sleepless women, strangers to me yet closely kin. I, too, have a mother. * * * * * _June 26th._ The Red press rhapsodizes to-day. “The Counter-revolutionary plot has failed. Capitalism attempted to regain its power. It was led on by a tricolour flag. The mean, cowardly bourgeois mob of priests, bankers, aristocrats, officers, _Jew boys_, has crept out of its lairs to incite pogroms.”