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.
There are over 40,000 people living in freight-cars in the railroad yards in and around the city. They lack every means of sanitation. Epidemics are continually springing up among them which threaten to spread throughout the country. At the present moment measles and scarlet fever are rife. There is no means of ventilating a freight-car, except by letting in the cold, and no means of heating it, except by keeping the doors shut and stifling. I visited the freight-car dwellers today and was notified of their presence by a smell not unlike an open sewer. Men, women, and children lay dying in those boxes, while the living slept beside them. There was no attempt at decency. Decency is a weak word. All sense of elementary cleanliness was forgotten. Here women bore children in the publicity of their families and all the intimate details of married life were witnessed by the most innocent and the youngest. The freight-cars of Budapest are not a series of homes, but an itinerant jungle. When the smell becomes too obnoxious in one spot, they are hauled to another. The fate of their occupants is nobody's business; they are left to die.
