Otto Korvin (Klein), a hunchbacked, clean-shaven gnome of twenty-five years, was a well-paid official of a joint-stock company when he was called upon to join the ranks of the red, bloodstained knights of hate. It was he who issued orders for the seizure as hostages of the notabilities of our public life,—politicians, judges, bishops, writers, manufacturers, generals; he who was known as _ornamentum civitatis_,—the former Prime Minister, Alexander Wekerle, a man of seventy years,—the former Ministers of War (Home Defence), Hazay and Szurmay, the Speaker (President of the House of Deputies), Charles Szasz, the most distinguished of Hungarian publicists, Eugéne Rakosi, Bishop Mikes, etc.,—all these men now became the inmates of a common jail. But in many cases, the instruments of Korvin’s vindictiveness—the terrorists and detectives—did not even trouble to convey the hostages to prison; dragging the victims out of bed and away from their homes in the dead of night, they simply murdered them and robbed their corpses. Alexander Hollan, Secretary of State, and his aged father were shot on the Chain Bridge, their bodies, bound together, being thrown into the Danube. Louis Navay, a former speaker of the Lower House, together with his younger brother and a local magistrate, while being conveyed from Mako to Budapest, were dragged from the train at Félegyháza, placed on the brink of a grave dug in the neighbourhood of the railway station, and then shot and stabbed with bayonets until they were dead; on the same occasion, the Soviet mercenaries, as they proceeded on their journey, shot three more hostages in the train and seven at the railway station of Hodmezovasarhely.