Page:Heinrich Karl Schmitt - The Hungarian Revolution - tr. Matthew Phipps Shiel (1918).djvu/11

 Kàrolyi with tho thought of making pause, and of putting into practice their own innate pacificism. Pacifism? The instinct of self-preservation would in this case be the better term. it meant the weighing of the chance of bringing the secession from the union into harmony with evolution.

After tho Parliamentary battles, the newspaper-war, in the tumult of a continuous resistance to the most varied attacks, the expectation was fulfilled.

And in this moment I recall that. from the beginning, Hungary had on her hands the whole weight of the war, provisioned tho German troops, managed tho whole question of transport with her own rolling-stock, and, beside this, exported. Now there was superfluity in Hungary, and it was constantly said to me: "In Budapest one fares splendidly, one eats white bread—a fault of the Government, which, clinging to the principle of absolute centralisation inherent in the administrations of tho land, fed Budapest free, so to say, so as to relieve the capital of petty inconveniences. It was a mirage—a bid for popularity in the capital, which in no other land is so truly and wholly "The Capital" as in Hungary. The Government, in fact, powdered Budapest over with white meal in order to conceal the lack of black meal in many districts. The cause is simple. Only through the appearance of Budapest's well-being could the equally centralised press be "convinced" that all was really being efficiently administered. By these manœuvres the Vienna Government in Budapest was able to win from the country, from the Parliament, every complaisance in the matter of supplies ad infinitum for the army.

And now I will carry my digression from the story no further—will not touch on Arpad's times, and on to the Anjous, down to the Hapsburgs, although precisely this Revolution has its roots in the deeps. Let it be taken as a fact that this war was the cartridge that exploded a mine of aimlessness and drifting, while the powder slowly, slowly, sometimes quicker, sometimes still slower, was accumulated beneath the people by statesmen, authorities, great heroes of history, and little intriguers of mean degree.