Page:Heinrich Karl Schmitt - The Hungarian Revolution - tr. Matthew Phipps Shiel (1918).djvu/15

 the procession forward, whereupon some old Landsturm men, who formed the first cordon, desisted from employing any force against the crowd. (The warning hes in this detail: the first sign, a departure from strict obedience on the part of the soldier.) But the police employed force. Some minutes later there broke through shooting the sickening noise of lamentation. Wounded people shrieked their despair. Far fell the bullets. Hoofs struck on the asphalt, whistles sounded, and in the hall of the Ritz Hotel I saw the first wounded.

One man died.

Near around me alternated loud command and suppressed whisper, heliograph signals clattered over the porter's lodge, outside something droned past, the hooters of the ambulance wagons formed the accompaniment.

And on the day after whizzed the hail of hate against the police, who had not refused obedience. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the police, under this frightful and crushing contempt of the whole population, was one of the first institutions to place its services at the disposal of the National Council, already the pre-revolutionary power. The police wished to wipe out the stain by open confession to the people.

This use of force, these unholy tactics of the holders of power, which they themselves in the preliminary stage applied to the development of things at the Kettenbrücke—then the scattering of a crowd of students before the Ofen Palace—all this was mirrored still in the newspapers of October 30th. At the same time the papers greeted with enthusiasm the police, who had already over night submitted themselves to the command of the President of the National Council.

But the whirl of excitement arose out of the deep sense of uncertainty. The governmental crisis had been protracted for weeks, and the "explanation" given—the marriage of, it seemed, several gentlemen, added fuel to the fire.

A concentration of the Left was, from the beginning, impossible. Not only were the Social-Democrats now absolutely against it, but also the majority of the Kàrolyi-party, which had all the popularity. And during these crises the King was conferring with obsolete magnates,