There was a moment’s silence, as if the people were following the burden carried by their voices. And then, as from afar, the song resumed: “... And led him away to crucify Him....” The organ, like a decrepit old shepherd, gathered the flock together. The voices rose in unison and clamoured in such despair as has probably never been heard in this our land: “... My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” The people chanted it with pale faces, with broken hearts, and in that moment every one of them was Christ and Christ’s words were their own. The sounds had died away, and yet a feeling as of a wound remained. The church door opened and through the doorway the bright sunshine floated in. And the centuries-old hymn of Hungarian Catholicism rang out in a last appeal. It spread, rose, and mingled with spring, and its eastern rhythm and western faith clamoured to the endless blue sky. * * * * * _April 14th._ Nowadays I often feel like one who has lost his way in an unknown country on a dark night. He dares not move: he stands in the dark and waits for the sun to rise. But sunrise never seems to come, his terror becomes insufferable, and his mind becomes unhinged. The whole of Hungary is in darkness to-day. Those who were once together are separated. Each isolated district bears its tribulation in solitude. What is happening in Transylvania, in Upper Hungary, down in the South, beyond the Danube, or in Budapest itself? In the dark one hears nothing but the awful crash of collapse, one is ignorant what has fallen down and where the cataclysm happened. Then all of a sudden news comes in secret whispers. The whole country is falling. In Transylvania and in the South the Roumanians and Serbians rule with the scourge in their hands. In Upper Hungary the Czechs labour to fill the prisons. They persecute and punish everything Hungarian. But for that, life must be more tolerable there than in the Red area, because there people have the hope of resurrection. The events here, if they are to continue, can only end in death. In Budapest and in all that remains of Hungary the miscreants are erecting gallows. At first they promised integrity, bread, peace and freedom. Now they are sneering at our territorial integrity. They give us starvation instead of bread, a Red army instead of peace. Here and there the disillusioned, betrayed victims raise their voices. Deception, as a means of government, can never be anything but transitory, and can only be followed by the honest truth or by terrorism. What will become of us? How often have we asked that question?