The first of May has been selected by the Communists for the birthday of the world-revolution. Lenin’s messages are being scattered broadcast. Moscow has sent its propaganda gold. And the Dictators of the Proletariat are offering their slaves the scent of blood, so that this May shall be their victory. In Budapest preparations for this festival have been going on for weeks. They hoped to celebrate it with a victory for the Red arms, but for victory they have had to substitute shams. The further the Red army has been forced to retire in the East, the louder they proclaim their Red May. _Panem et circenses!_ There is no bread, the capital faints for lack of food, so let there be a circus for the people. The last rags are falling from the backs of the destitute millions, so let the town be garbed in red. Entire houses are covered with it; bridge-heads, terraces, walls; even the electric trams have been painted blood-red. The Revolutionary Cabinet has exchanged thirty millions’ worth of cattle in Vienna for the red decorations of starving Budapest. The programme of the festivities is so long that the newspapers have no space to report the defeats on the Eastern front. There are meetings and processions everywhere; everybody has to join in; everybody has to decorate his house; otherwise.... May, Spring, glorious feast of freedom, he who dares to remain indifferent to these will be summoned before a Revolutionary Tribunal. The entire capital has turned red, and on the red background gigantic white plaster statues have been set. On the drill ground a red-covered coffin, two stories high and forty-five yards long, has been erected to the memory of Martinovics, to the leader of the peasant rising, Dózsa, to Charles Liebknecht of Spartacist fame, and to Rosa Luxemburg. The entrance of the tunnel under the castle hill in Buda is draped in red, and plaster statues of Soviet soldiers with terrifying faces and with rifles raised ready to strike are standing beside it. The naked red giant, hammer in hand, of ‘The People’s Voice’ is displayed at the street corner: “Death to the bourgeois!” The memorial of our millenary is also covered with red. Over the statue of Arpád, the conqueror, which has been covered with planks, a plaster statue of Marx has been erected. In front of the House of Parliament, like a blood-covered giant bladder, is a red globe. Andrássy’s statue has been covered by a red Greek temple, and there again, ten yards high, are the heads of Marx, Lenin, Liebknecht, Engels and Rosa Luxemburg. Plaster, plaster, red cloth (made of paper), red columns, red flag-staffs and flags, wreaths, five-pointed Soviet stars. A sickening red disguise over the deadly pallor of the Hungarian capital. A red rag rouses a thirst for blood in a frenzied bull. What is it they want, there, on the banks of the Danube? What is it all for? Is it a sudden madness, or is it the accomplishment of the frightful prophecy of the Apocalypse?