Page:Diplomacy and the War (Andrassy 1921).djvu/208

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Part III.—Internal Crisis and Collapse.


I am setting myself a painful task in speaking of the collapse which overthrew everything, or which, at any rate, shook to its foundations that order, for which countless Hungarian patriots have fought and suffered for a thousand years, and for which our heroic soldiers bled, and for which the whole of patriotic Hungarian society, men, women and children, mobilized their enthusiasm and for which I also have worked and lived.

During the war I once declared in Parliament that the opportunism and lack of courage of Hungarian society had shaken my belief in the virtues of the Hungarian people. In view of the heroism and endurance which we witnessed during the war, I am, however, proud once more of my nation. I know, moreover, that I have every right to say so. Even to-day it is a consolation to remember with what heroic enthusiasm, manly endurance and ennobling determination the majority of the Hungarian nation sacrificed everything they had, as well as their blood, for the holy cause of continuing their existence.

Although this memory is a rich source of satisfaction, pride and hope, it is also a source of fearful embitterment. All the holy determination, all the virtue and the love of country, ail the suffering, were