Page:Heinrich Karl Schmitt - The Hungarian Revolution - tr. Matthew Phipps Shiel (1918).djvu/25

 of the telephone, of those often censured telephone girls. was one of the most satisfying phenomena of these hours of crisis, for there was still no certainty whether the members of the National Council would see the morning morally exalted, or merely physically by suitable mechanism.

It was a nerve-racking game of roulette. The winning chance was indeed enormous; but in judging these men and their worth one should not forget that each, without exception, was playing with his head.

A heavy sky full of cloud shed a light rain.

We see that there was suddenly something which looked furiously like Revolution. Who did it?

The answer is amazing. One, at the most, two dozen people, who, with much decision, indescribable temerity, an unsurpassed mass of disdain, contrived all that which is meant in the crisis of the foregoing short period. A few manipulators sharply grasped the nettle, in the decisive moment got through a great mass of work with the worker's joy in energy, took upon themselves a responsibility superhuman, hardly measurable, and—this is their real merit—stood firm, even then when the flood was nigh to covering them. They did not lose their heads, held taut the reins, prevented, by the highest exhibition of decisiveness, the sprouting of anarchy, and, after some days of interim order, left quite acceptable conditions behind them.

The National Council itself was political, but the night of the revolution saw fewer politicians in the rooms of the Astoria than men of affairs. The whole thing resembled an inter-editorial conference.

There was Jàszi, leading-article writer for The Vilàg, with his colleague Birò, first Minister of Nationalities later on, and last Secretary of State for the Exterior, tutor, author, journalist; Ernst Garami, now Minister for Trade, the responsible editor of the Népszava"; Ladislaus Fényes, chief assistant-editor of the Az Est, a deputy, and now Government-commissary; then Dr. Ludwig Halàsz, the distinguished Chief of the