The news reached the village last night. The Red army has gone to pieces. Comrade Landler reports that after “the unchanged situation at the front, we are attacking the Rumanians who have crossed the Tisza.... The Red army is in perfect order and has gained a victory over the Rumanians.... We have retired, unbeaten, of our own accord.” The members of the Balassagyarmat Directorate are unable to disguise their nervousness, the comrades are rushing about the shops clamouring to buy no matter what so long as they can get rid of their white Soviet banknotes. But however much they pester and threaten, the shopkeepers refuse to sell. The shop windows are empty, only the propaganda shop of the Commissariat of Education still offers its wares—pamphlets, portraits of the Commissaries, Red stars, badges with the ‘Red man’ and plaster busts of Lenin and Marx. But these are at a discount to-day. The town is practically without traffic and the telegraph wires bring incessant orders from Budapest: “Let everyone remain at his post. Let none dare to run away....” Steps halted outside and I heard a Semitic voice say: “Let us lead it into other channels....” What did that mean? While I was pondering the front door bell rang. The Sub-prefect has come with a wire from Budapest. Béla Kun’s rule is over! Something snatched at my heart and I felt that I wanted to shout. “It’s certain to be true,” the Sub-prefect said. “A purely Socialist Government is being formed.” And he folded his hands carefully as if he were afraid of committing himself. A purely Socialist Government! That was not what we had expected! Now I remembered the rumours that the delegates of the Entente had not been negotiating with the Viennese committee of Count Stephen Bethlen, nor with the Government of Szeged, but had been exchanging pourparlers for days, not with Hungarians, but with William Böhm, Kunfi and with Károlyi’s henchman, Garami. I thought at once of what I had heard outside my window: “Let us lead it into other channels....” So the Jews are still to be our leaders: the Red hangmen of yesterday are resuming their old garb of moderate Socialism and are preparing to pass the power from one hand into the other. The world-revolution has not come off, and there have been other mistakes in their calculations; they reckoned every item as they thought—the threats of the Entente, the attacks of the Rumanians—but they forgot to take into account that dying Hungary might have energy enough to cross its arms over its torn breast and undermine Bolshevism from within with its old weapon, passive resistance, despite the failure of the Entente and Rumanian arms. There were shouts in the guard-room opposite: