nd a "D" telegram to Budapest to reserve a room at
a hotel. For this "D" telegram you pay two or three times the ordinary
charge in order that it may have precedence of telegrams not marked
"D." Some time after ten in the morning you get into the Serbian
frontier train which takes you ten kilometres and deposits you in a
Hungarian no-man's land. Hungarian gendarmes collect the passports of
the passengers. You stand on a shelterless platform and wait for the
Hungarian frontier train which takes you ten kilometres further and
deposits you at the station of Szeged. Here you congregate like lost
souls in Hades and wait and suffer. They say those suffer most who
continue to have hope in that region. The hopeful clamour and push and
mortify themselves, whilst highly indifferent and laconic Magyars
chuckle among themselves and throw ink across an inky table asking
foreigners in Hungarian their mother's maiden name and their natal
town. The officials have adopted the principle of the division of
labour--one makes out a form, another fills it in, a third franks it
with a rubber stamp, a fourth registers details, and a fifth signs the
visa. Strange to say, this seems to multiply the time by five rather
than divide it by five. And most people know that the train for
Budapest will leave at the scheduled hour, leaving half the passengers
to wait all day at Szeged for another train. After passports, there is
a violent onslaught on your baggage by the customs officials. When
they are convinced that you are carrying nothing dutiable you have to
get a cab and make a hundred-crown journey across Szeged to another
train. You wait in a long queue for a ticket. Heaven help you if you
have baggage to register or re-register. It cannot be registered
through from Belgrade. As for the train, the passengers seem to be
hanging from the roofs of the carriages like bats. It is like a
seaside excursion express, and if you are lucky enough to get a place
you find there is only half a back to your seat.

A Hungarian diplomat, anxious that I should see his country in a good
light, helped me considerably on this journey, and I caught the train.
I had the doubtful pleasure of reflecting that at least half of my
fellow-passengers were still languishing at the first Szeged station,
victims of the division of labour and the verification of passports.
"I do hope you get a hotel after all this," said the diplomat. "For my
part, I wired to an