There was a long room, dimly lighted. Running up and down it in an oval, was a pathway of tables. It formed a barrier like the enclosure of a circus. Seated on the outside of it were the bidders, with faces avid as gamblers'. At a high desk the auctioneer sat enthroned—he gets seventy dollars a year for his trouble. In the space on the inside, which the table surrounded, the goods being auctioned were piled. And what do you think they were? Children's toys. Not new toys, but old favorites—dolls and rocking-horses and tin soldiers, the pillage of the nurseries of Vienna. They were the gifts which Santa Claus had left at little bedsides in years when the world was kinder. Like the wedding ring, they had to go. Bread was required. CHAPTER V—ONCE IS ENOUGH Once is enough,” says Budapest. “We shall never go Bolshevist again.” When one listens to the stories of what happened while Hungary was under the heel of Bela Kuhn, his only wonder is that once was not too much. The first man to give me an inside picture was the correspondent of the Manchester Guardian; his mother had been thrown out of a fourth storey window by the pillaging rabble who visited her home. The second was Hungary's greatest iron-master, who crouched with his wife and daughter in an unlighted cupboard during the entire regime of terror. But though Hungary is sincerely repentant and, as an actual fact, less likely than Great Britain or America ever to go Bolshevist, the indiscreet experiment of two years ago has created a prejudice. The need of Hungary is as pressing as that of any Central European country, but a quite insignificant amount of relief work is being done. There has been no feeding of children since last August, when the funds allotted for that purpose gave out. The American Relief Administration is planning to renew its activities immediately; but the neutral countries, which have carried on such fine work in other famished areas, have done next to nothing for Hungary. Yet Hungary's claims are in many respects more urgent. It has suffered from the war. It has suffered from the Peace Treaty, which has given away to Roumania and Czecko-Slovakia its best wheat-lands and all its important sources of fuel. It has suffered from Bela Kuhn. Last of all and most recent, it has suffered from the Roumanian invasion, which resulted not only in theft on a wholesale scale, but also in the most senseless destruction. From all these causes the country is filled with refugees and naturally the children are the chief sufferers. There are two refugee universities in Budapest, which have taken up their headquarters in old tobacco-factories. When I say refugee universities, I mean literally seats of learning like Yale and Harvard which have transplanted themselves entire, with professors and students and now have no visible means of support.