In that moment, as if a chain round the town’s chest had broken, Balassagyarmat breathed freely again. Men raised their heads, spoke loud and freely, many careworn faces made an attempt to smile. There was talk and laughter under the trees lining the streets. Then a boy started to work and others took it up—arms were raised, sticks and pocket-knives worked feverishly, and in a few minutes, all through the town, the posters of the Dictatorship were hanging in shreds from the walls. Thick layers of paper fell on the pavement, bright coloured scraps covered the cobbles, and were trodden in the dust. The grape harvest has come in the land of hunchbacks. * * * * * _August 6th._ Days have passed since the murderers of the country have fallen and fate has not yet done justice to them. Reality has achieved nothing, so it remains for imagination to sit in trial over the criminals. People tell each other that Michael Károlyi and Béla Kun have been given up by the Czechs and Austrians and that both have been hanged. Between the Danube and the Tisza and in Western Hungary the peasants are arresting the hiding butchers of the Dictatorship and delivering them up to the justice of the crowd, who make them eat the posters scratched from the walls. Then they are executed by those whose father, mother, husband or child they have murdered. Then comes one authentic piece of news: Tibor Számuelly has committed suicide. He was the first who tried to escape. The Cabinet had not yet resigned when he rushed in his car to the aerodrome, hoping to fly to Russia. But not one of the pilots would undertake the job. Then he started with some of his hangmen on a lorry towards Austria but was arrested on the way, and while unwatched shot himself dead. “That is not fair,” said a farmer, “he ought to have been strung up on a dung-heap.” “He deserved the torture chamber, not a bullet!” And the people curse the scoundrel furiously for having escaped human justice. But once again our elation is stifled by sorrow, for we are receiving more and more unexpected names of the victims of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In the last hours, during its agony, the reign of terror has snatched the lives of Oscar Fery and his faithful companions, Menkina and Borhy.