They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [130]
Now all his thoughts were concentrated on what would become of her if there was a general mobilization and he had to go to war. If that happened he would certainly be away for several months, with no news of her and in a constant state of worry.
He was so agitated that he got up and walked about the room for a while before sitting down and taking up the newspapers again. He could find only one item that seemed even slightly reassuring. Sir Edward Grey had offered to mediate in the dispute and try to find a formula for restoring peace. That England was prepared to take this line seemed, at least, hopeful.
Then he turned to the home pages, but found nothing reassuring there.
Since Parliament had reassembled in mid-September, the loose coalition of the parties in opposition had changed its tactics. While most of its members had absented themselves from the summer debates, now they reappeared in force, for in their private meetings held in early autumn it had been all too clear that their policy of boycotting Parliament had passed almost unnoticed in the country. Something else would have to be tried. They were now again present in force, making provocative declarations which they read out with a lot of noise, scandalizing the more conservative members with noisy interruptions, blowing whistles and toy trumpets before again retiring en masse. Their well-publicized attitude was that all the sessions held since June 4th had been illegal and therefore invalid, and so there was nothing scandalous about their repeated clashes with whoever presided at the debates and with the parliamentary guards. On one occasion a large band entered the Chamber so tightly clasped together that they were able to occupy the floor of the House without the guards being able to reach those who should have been excluded. They stood there, between the ministers’ seats and the stenographers’ desks, from noon until the evening; and this heroic opposition lasted until eight p.m. when they decided to leave.
Later they tried something else. The guards had become more adept at keeping out those who were proscribed by the exclusion decrees, so the opposition cliques started to search for new ways round them. Someone found out that the kitchen staff could move freely in and out of the Parliament restaurant where no guards were posted. The plan was soon made: into the building by the kitchen entrance and up in the kitchen lift, which carried the paprika chicken and the veal fricassee to the restaurant floor close to the Chamber itself! What a surprise for everybody! There they’d be, and there they’d stay until in due course they were hustled out again, as they undoubtedly would be; but what did that matter when the great Tisza, to his shame and annoyance, would for once have been outwitted? The plan was put into action at once … and failed. They were seen sneaking in, it seems, or perhaps one unwisely talkative member let out the secret which reached the officials in time. Whatever the reason, they were stopped before getting to their places, and the escapade was the talk of the day just when the Serb army was standing before Durazzo and the spectre of a world war was stalking the Danube basin and the foothills of the Carpathians.
At this same time other absurdities were being perpetrated in the Hungarian capital, and the newspapers lost no time in passing on the news to their readers.
The opposition leaders – Kossuth, Justh and Andrassy – seemed suddenly to become aware that all was not as it should be in the Balkans and felt they owed it to the people to make public their point of view. The opposition had to have a voice, they said; to make a stand, let their views be known. And in this they