not continue in power, at a time when a strong Government was essential. The evil of mistrust spread like a contagion. The agitation against everything that existed increased from day to day. When I arrived in Budapest (October 22) from Berne I received the gloomiest impression. Everything that I was able to observe had the effect of moral blows upon me. I held aloof from all party squabbles, and I was face to face with the most difficult and greatest problems of our national life. The influence of the deadly danger which encompassed our nation made me feel in all the fibres of my being that only co-operation and the complete exclusion of party and power considerations, and a division of labour, as dictated by the interests of the State, would be able to help us—if it was not too late already! Instead of this, hatred, ambition and dissension vied with each other in an unbridled and mad contest. Even the best patriotic feeling was subject to exaggeration, and to the revolutionary spirit which refused to wait any longer and which was determined to accept no compromise, but to settle everything once and for all radically. Moderate intelligence had lost command, and passion and overstrained nerves celebrated orgies. Authority lay in the dust. Everyone, even the most uneducated and frivolous, was bursting with thoughts that were to save the country. Everyone attempted to go his own way, thought he was independent, and wanted to listen only to his conscience, but actually was under the influence of mass-suggestion and merely screamed for that which everyone else demanded.
