Just as they were walking across from the station to the archduke’s palace a newsboy came rushing over to them yelling out the news of Tisza’s murder and offering them printed leaflets with all the details. Some of the little band bought them and then, just as they were saying they had better get a move on so as not to keep the archduke waiting, they looked around for the future justice minister – he was nowhere to be seen, vanished into thin air. No one had seen him go, and no one knew where he had gone. He had just slid away and vanished, and was never seen again.

This humorous little tale was characteristic of those days and, although perhaps not completely accurate in detail, essentially true13.

Later on someone was found for the post, but everyone’s feeling of disappointment remained. The new ministers were largely unknown, except perhaps to a few in obscure circles in the capital. What was worse was that none of them had any practical experience in the fields for which they were now to be responsible. They had never held executive posts in any civic or governmental department. On the contrary, they were armchair theorists or journalists who ranged from honest but donnish scientists and dreamers to that familiar type, those coffee-house prophets who had passed their days in playfully solving all the world’s most complex problems while sitting at their desks or at the marble tables of popular cafés. The only exceptions were the Socialists for whom leadership of the trade unions had proved a good schooling, and so they alone of the new government had any idea of the effect new measures might have on real people when they passed into law.

It was therefore only to be expected that once such men had seized power, which they had done from the first day of the revolution, the whole edifice of government would gradually begin to wither away.

Notes

6. These had been established in the Hotel Astoria.

7. The white aster is usually known as a ‘Michaelmas Daisy’ in England, while ‘aster’ is normally kept for the hybrid varieties of this very large genus of plants. Several other historical accounts of this day refer to the ‘Michaelmas Daisy Revolution’, but the name ‘Aster’ is more usual.

8. In fact, in October 1914, in the company of a small band of Hungarians who had also been interned in the garrison barracks at Bordeaux, Károlyi was allowed to board a Spanish ship which took them to Venice, whence they went directly to Vienna. The visit to Switzerland took place three years later, in October 1917, when Károlyi attended the Congress of the League for Permanent Peace held in Berne.

9. This is not quite accurate. In January 1918 Imre Károlyi, a prominent banker, published a letter in the press – not a lawsuit – accusing Mihály of being ‘half-traitor’. In 1923, when Mihály Károlyi was living in exile in London, it was used as evidence (fabricated, according to Károlyi’s memoirs) that led to Mihály’s being arraigned for High Treason. Found guilty in his absence (he had already been out of Hungary since 1919), his properties were seized, and he was officially condemned to an exile that, in all, lasted for twenty-seven years.

10. That is, fourteen years after the events here described.

11. The Kaisers Rock was the imperial uniform, regarded by the officer caste as a quasi-sacred symbol of their calling that must never be disgraced by word or deed, while the Portepée Ehre – literally ‘sword-carrier’s honour’, meaning a gentleman’s honour – was a phrase dating originally from the days when all gentlemen, and only gentlemen, wore swords with civilian dress.

12. Although the literal meaning of this German saying is ‘How do you take without stealing?’ perhaps the sense here is best interpreted as ‘How do you remove the best and not be left with the second rate?’ or ‘If you remove the strong you are left with the weak.’

13. Károlyi does not mention his search for a justice minister but does say: ‘I now went, accompanied by the members of the government, to the palace, to take the oath before Archduke Joseph. In the entrance hall we were told that Count Tisza had been murdered in his villa in the Varosliget. The news came five minutes before the swearing-in ceremony and so terrified our future minister of justice that, taking to his heels, he vanished and was seen no more…’

Chapter Three

The story of the October Revolution is not really the subject of these purely personal reminiscences. It is neither my intention nor my calling to write any more about it. Everything that I know of those days stemmed either from the newspaper accounts or from the unverifiable tales told to me by acquaintances. Even afterwards I never studied any of the official documents, and as far as the Károlyi case was concerned, all I knew was the published verdict. Therefore all I can recount of what actually happened in those troubled times was learned from the point of view of an onlooker; and very few of those events had any personal significance for me. My memories can offer only a fragmentary picture, and so their only value can be as source material for historians of the future who wish to write about this period after a long interval of time; and their interest, perhaps, will be underlined by the fact that these pages come from the pen of a man who tried always to avoid bias.

Impartiality is not necessarily a virtue; rather it is a question of character. At any rate it has always been a part of my character, so ingrained that I feel I was born with it as an inherited characteristic which was to be developed by many experiences during my time as a diplomat.