Someone had gone out of the room and left the door open. I could see a man in the corridor and heard him say that he had just come on foot, now and then getting a lift on a cart. He brought a letter for Aladár Huszár from his mother at Budapest. I could not help envying Huszár—for _me_ there is never a letter, nor any news. Huszár showed me his letter: it read as though his mother were taking leave of him on her death bed. They are starving in the capital and are living under a perpetual threat. If three people stop to talk to each other in the street they are promptly driven apart by the former boisterous advocates of the right of free assembly. Nobody is allowed in the streets after ten o’clock at night; even family gatherings at home are prohibited, and after eleven o’clock all lights have to be extinguished in the houses. People are spied on in their own homes by the ‘confidential men’ who are quartered on them, and anybody who dares to move a hand is denounced. Poor Mrs. Huszár complained bitterly in her letter that a man-servant whom she had dismissed for theft had since been quartered on her with his wife. They are her guardians. Another old lady was compelled to find quarters for prostitutes, who received Red soldiers at night. And these people have to be fed. They get drunk, dirty the furniture and cover the floor with filth. There are no servants: she herself has to clean up after them, to save the place from pollution. Meanwhile the storks return to their last year’s nest. Nature disregards man-made ordinances and continues her eternal laws. Instinctively I looked at the newspaper. News: the advance of the Roumanians has been stopped. Lower down were three nominations: the Revolutionary Cabinet has appointed the distinguished typewriter salesman, Böhm,[2] Commander-in-Chief on the Eastern front. The Chief of Staff of this ridiculous and humiliating Commander is to be the Austrian comrade Aurelius Stromfeld, the very man who sent a note to Károlyi informing him that the final victory of the Russian Soviet armies and the World-Revolution were inevitable. What new misfortune is this gifted but misguided megalomaniac preparing for us? The third nomination was that of Számuelly to be the President of the Tribunal of Summary Jurisdiction established on the Eastern front. He is to be the absolute judge of all Counter-revolutionary movements behind the front. In his order issued from General Headquarters he stated his intentions clearly: “I do not ask the bourgeoisie for anything, but I should like it to engrave my words on its memory: whoever raises his hand against the power of the Proletariat signs his own sentence of death. As for the execution of the sentence, it will be our business to attend to that.” Who is this man who has the power to speak like that? Whence does he come, he who from this day onwards can dispose of our lives without further appeal?