receive new wounds, but not for the protection of her own existence, but in the interests of an idea of which the enormous majority of the nation wanted to hear nothing, and whose victory would have buried for ever the independence and the State of Hungary. Hungary had to bleed for a mortal excrescence of the world's catastrophe: Bolshevism.
Social Democracy was cautious enough to deny itself the pleasure of accepting this heroic part. Oppressed on the one hand by the Communists, and on the other by the bourgeois party, without an army and without money, they did not wish to shoulder the responsibility which even the Government of Karolyi had refused to accept. The Social Democrats were afraid that the lot of Kerenski might also fall to them: for Kerenski had failed because he was forced, in opposition to his own pacifist principles, to enter into a war when he was called upon to do so by the Communists. The Social Democratic Party was only too anxious not to deny this problem to the Communist Kunfi, and the Social Democratic candidate for the Presidency released Bela Kun, and handed over the Government to him, together with the enforced blessing of Karolyi, on March 22. He really had nothing to lose. Anyone who gained power from prison cannot afford to be particular with regard to the moment of his election.
The bourgeois members of Berinky's Cabinet were convinced that a Social Democratic Cabinet would succeed him. And they all agreed to this, including the leaders of the Social Democrats. After the last Cabinet meeting, one of the bourgeois ministers, the
