Those who have adopted the precepts of Karl Marx speak to-day of ‘party art,’ ‘mass art,’ and ‘co-operatives of spiritual production.’ What perversely wicked fools are these people whose leader claims to be an author and yet kills literature in Hungary! George Lukacs-Lowinger, the hydrocephalic little Jewish philosopher, son of a millionaire banker, who became a Proletarian apostle through the influence of his Bolshevik wife. As Deputy Educational Commissary of the Soviet he had the book and music shops closed down, and after having thus stopped all literary life and effort, he invented ‘the literary register’! He discovered that talent had to be classified, and that each class had to be shut up in a separate drawer, like the goods in a grocer’s shop. He therefore decreed that writers were to be divided into three classes, and that the question as to which class a writer belonged was to be decided by a special Directorate. The authors are to receive monthly salaries according to the class to which they are allotted, and for this salary they have to write. They have no other source of income, but the fixed salary is paid to them whatever they produce, so long as it is in accordance with the interests of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Class War. Needless to say, the Communist poets all belong to the highest class. * * * * * _May 1st._ Early this morning the sounds of a Gypsy band came from the village, playing the Internationale; thus I realised that this was May Day. Strict orders have been issued that the village is to be draped in red. A red flag must be hoisted on the town hall, and red ribbons are to float from the windows of the cottages. The Gypsy band came up to the house and played on the terrace, and the soldiers sang. Mrs. Beniczky and I withdrew to the bottom of the garden. Everything has been commandeered by the Reds: a roast is preparing for them in the kitchen, and other dishes were in process of making. To-night there is going to be a ball. “Two balls,” said the chambermaid, “because we Proletarians refuse to dance with the peasant girls.” Once upon a time May Day was the day of youth, the day of festive excursions for little sempstresses, students, apprentices and children. Then it became the day of manifestations, and, later, of threats. The new saviours of the world promised the millenium for this day. On a blood-soaked land the blood-maddened masses are streaming towards the final battle which is to bring them an utterly unattainable victory. Red flags unfurled in a storm of blood are floating under a sky painted red by incendiary fires.