The red flags of victory are floating over seas of Hungarian blood. The Dictators are revelling. Complimentary addresses and telegrams are pouring in. Among the first, Comrade Frank pays his homage to the Cabinet in the name of the Directorate of Balassagyarmat. The County of Nográd! Its people bite their lips with shame and hatred. At the recruiting meeting of Balassagyarmat not a single man presented himself for enlistment, so the meeting had to be closed, and the Directorate asked the Government for Terror troops, so that violence and rifle butts may be used to force men into the army. Meanwhile the Red press reports a sequence of congratulatory addresses. The women raise their voices too. What may they have to say? In the name of the national organisation of Communist women, Sarah Goldstein, Mrs. Elias Brandstein, Maria Csorba-Goszthony, Ida Josipovich and Vera Singer, the women whom the unfortunate inhabitants of Budapest called ‘Lenin Girls’ after the defeat of the Counter-revolution, “greet with love Comrade Haubrich and request him to present their heartfelt gratitude to the others.” Meanwhile demented mothers and sisters weep for the captive pupils of the military academy and the shadows of horrified women roam under the acacias on the banks of the Danube. “The country honours the victors of the Counter-revolution.” So the comrades of the Frank type swear to fight to the last breath for the victory of the Revolution, and Sarah Goldstein and those of her kin send their “loving thanks,” their warm gratitude. Otherwise there is silence. Awful silence. And the summary tribunals of the Revolution are sitting permanently. Colonel Romanelli prevented the executions at the Octogon, but hostages are strangled secretly, quietly, on out-of-the-way building plots, in the deep recesses of dark yards. There are frequent executions in Parliament Square: the rabble hangs about there for hours on end; women sit on the kerb and wait. “What are you waiting for?” someone asked. “For an execution,” a surly woman answered. It is so simple, the Entente sees nothing of this. Soldiers with fixed bayonets bring a victim. The hearse follows. The crowd turns to the steps. A volley is fired. The stones beneath the lions are battered with bullet marks. The hearse goes off slowly and the square becomes empty. There is nothing more to be seen. In the House of Parliament, on the side reserved for the Peers, are officers of the Political Investigation Department, modelled on the Russian Cheka, and Otto Korvin-Klein sits there in judgment. Since the representatives of the Entente have invited Béla Kun to disband the terror detachments, the Lenin Boys have transferred their quarters from the Batthyány palace to this place.