Now for the Magyar has come a time of reckoning. Russia, the big brother of the Slavs and his own hereditary enemy, stands at his door. The protecting glacis of Galicia has been torn away and Peremyshl, the road out and the road in, has fallen. Even on the south there is a victorious enemy, the Serbian, who has just claims on some of his territory. To east, the sky is equally cloudy for him. Transylvania, a mountain barrier whose loss would leave him defenceless on this side, has a large Rumanian population, which his oppressive policy has driven to its natural affinities; and Rumania seeks the realisation here of her traditional ambitions. The Russians are fighting their way from hill to hill through the Carpathians. The Austro-Hungarian army has suffered severely in each of the many counterstrokes which it had to attempt in the interest of the German plan of common defence. The cavalry is practically gone and the infantry is very exhausted. Sacrifice made to Germany at the beginning of the war, when so many of the Austro-Hungarian guns and motors were sent to the western front, have left their marks on the Hungarian artillery. The Carpathians are like a fan, and might perhaps have been held from the inside, but they have at many points been lost step by step; and once they are crossed, the converging passes will bring the Russians together into a compact mass on the further side. There is one strong man in Hungary, Count Tisza, and he still reserves his hand. He is fighting meanwhile the desperate battle of the Austro-German connexion, to abandon which is to put Hungary at the mercy of Russia and to sign the abdication of the Magyars' mastery over his Slav subjects; but this seems to be the result which awaits him almost inevitably. Germany is for every reason bound to do all that she can to save Hungary. But the Russian advance, whatever direction it takes, must make an ever-widening gap between the two allies. _April 4._ I had known the airmen for some time. Sometimes I met them discussing sporting enterprises with their chief in the conspirative quarters of "Wiggins." Sometimes I dropped in at their spacious lodging in the town, where everything, meals, talk or plans, seemed to go with a peculiar briskness and lightness; in particular there was this touch about any of the several services which they rendered me. It was Russian in spirit, but in manner very reminiscent of England. Several of the airmen might be English, and one of them they call "the Englishman."