Amerikai Magyar Reformátusok Lapja, 1937 (38. évfolyam, 1-38. szám)
1937-03-10 / 10. szám
AMERIKAI MAGYAR REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA 3-ik oktal Kossuth’s Protest in America 85 Years ago against Trianon Excerpt from Kossuth’s reply to W. C. Bryant’s address, at the dinner given in his honor by The American Press on Monday evening, December 15th, 1851, at The Astor House Gentlemen, a considerable time ago there appeared, in certain New York papers, a systematic compound of the most foul calumnies, falsehood and misrepresentations about the Hungarian cause, going so far, as with unexample effrontery to state, that we struggled for oppression while it was the cursed Austrian dynasty which stood forth for liberty. You cannot, of course, expect to see me, on this occasion, entering into a special refutation of this astonishing compound of calumnies. Permit me rather to make some humble remark upon the question of “'nationalities” which play such an important, and, I dare say, such a mischievous part in the destiny of Europe. I say mischievous, because no word ever was so much misrepresented or mistaken as the “nationality”; so that it would indeed be a great benefit to humanity could I succeed to contribute something to the rectification of this idea, the misrepresentation of which became the most mischievous instrument in the hand of absolutism against the spirit of liberty. Let me ask you, gentlemen, are you, the people of the United States, a nation or not? Have you a National Government, or not? Have you? Your answer yes; and yet you, the people of the United States, are not all of one blood, and speak not one language. Millions of you speak English, others French, others German, others Italian, others Spanish, others Danish, and even several Indian dialects—and yet you are a nation! Now, suppose that one part of the people of the United States, struck by a curse like that with which the builders of Babel were once struck, should at once rise and say, “The Union in which we live is an oppression to us. Our laws, our institutions, our state and city governments, our very freedom, is an oppression to us! What is Union to us? what rights? what laws? what freedom? what history? what geography? what community of interests? They are all nothing. Language—that is all. Let us divide the whole territory, by, an according to languages, a_nd then let the people of every language live a separate life. Because every nation has a right to a national life, and, to us, the language is the nation — nothing else; and your Union, your rights, your laws, and your freedom itself, though common to us, is on oppression to us, because language is the only basis upon which states must be founded. Everything else is tyranny”. What would you say of such reasoning? What would become of your great Union? What of your Constitution? What would become of this grand, mighty complex of your republic should it ever be attacked by the furious hands of the fanaticism of language? Where now she wanders and walks among the rising temples of human happiness, she soon would tread upon the ruins of liberty, mourning over the fragility of human hopes. What makes a nation ? Is it the language only? Then there is no great, no powerful nation on earth, because there is no moderately large country in the world whose population is counted by millions, where you would not find several languages spoken. No! It is not language only which makes a nation. Community of interests, community of history, communities of rights and duties, but chiefly community of institutions of a population, which, though perhaps different in tongue, and belonging to different races is bound together by its daily intercourse in their towns, the centers of their homely commerce and homely industry, the very mountain ranges, and system of rivers and streams, the soil, the dust of which is mingled with the ashes of those ancestors who bled on the same field, for the same interest—the common inheritance of glory and of woe the community of laws, tie of institutions, tie of common freedom or common oppression—all this enters into the definition of a nation. But on the European continent there unhappily grew up a school which bound the idea of nation only to the idea of language, and joined political pretensions to it. There are some who advocate the theory that existing countries must cease, and the territories of the world be anew divided by languages and nations, separated by tongues. And really it is very curious. Nobody of the advocates of this mischievous theory is willing to yield to it for himself; but others he desires to yield to it. — Every Frenchman becomes furious when his Alsace is claimed to Germany by the right of language, or the borders of his Pyrenees to Spain; but there are so.me amongst the very men who feel revolted at this idea, who claim for Germany that it should yield up large territory, because one part of the inhabitans speak a different tongue, and would claim from Hungary to divide its territory which God himself has limited by its range of mountains, and the system of streams, as also by all links of a community of more than a thousand years, to cut off our right hand, Transylvania, and to give it up to the neighboring Wallachia, to cut out, like Shylock, one pound of our very breast — the Banat, and the rich country between Danube and Theiss—to augment by it Serbia, and so forth. It is the new ambition of conquest, but an easy conquest; not by arms, but by language. So much I know, at least, that this absurd idea cannot, and will not be advocated by any man here in the United States. PÁLYÁZATI HIRDETÉS A Bethlen Otthon Igazgatótanácsa pályázatot hirdet a Bethlen Otthon tanítói állásra. Kötelességei: Az Intéző Bizottság utasításai szerint az irodai munkában való A MÁGNÁSOKHOZ Irta: Petőfi Sándor Dicsőséges nagyurak, hát hogy vagytok? Viszket-e úgy egy kicsit a nyakatok? Ujdivatu nyakravaló készül most Számotokra, nem cifra, de jó szoros. Tudjátok-e mennyit kértünk titeket? Hogy irántunk emberiek legyetek, Vegyetek be az emberek sorába... Rimádkodott a szegény nép s hiába. Állatoknak tartottátok a népet. Hátha most mint állat fizet tinéktek? Ha megrohan mint vadállat bennetek S körmét, fogát véretekkel festi meg? Ki a síkra, a gunyhókból miljomok! Kaszát, ásót, vasvillákat fogjatok! Az alkalom maga-magát kínálja. Ütött a nagy bosszuállás órája. Ezer évig híztak rajtunk az urak, Most rajtuk a mi kutyáink hízzanak! Vasvillára velők, aztán szemétre. Ott egyék a kutyák őket ebédre! Hanem mégse!.... Atyafiak, megálljunk! Legyünk jobbak, nemesebbek őnáluk. Isten után legszentebb a nép neve, Feleljünk meg becsülettel nékie! Legyünk nagyok, amint ülik mihozzánk, Hogy az Isten gyönyörködve nézzen ránk, S örömében mindenható kezével Fejeinkre örök áldást tetézzen. Felejtsük az ezeréves kínokat, Ha az ur most testvérének elfogad. Ha elveti kevélységét, cimerit, S teljes egyenlőségünk elismeri. Nemes urak, ha akartok, jöjjetek! Itt a kezünk, nyújtsátok ki kezetek. Legyük szemei mindnyájan egy láncnak, Szüksége van mindnyájunkra hazánknak. Nem érünk rá várakozni, szaporán! Ma jókor van, holnap késő lesz talán. Ha bennünket még mostan is megvettek. Az Úristen kegyelmezzen tinektek. segedkezés, az iratterjesztés vezetése, a gyermekek tanítása és a reájok való felügyelet, áhitat és istentiszteletek alkalmával a zongorázás, illetve orgonázás és szükség esetén az árvaatya helyettesítése. Pályázhatnak református vallásu, nős, okleveles lelkészek és tanitók, akik tagjai a Református Egyesületnek, az angol nyelvben kellő jártassággal bírnak, továbbá az énekkar vezetéséhez és zenetani- táshoz értenek. A megválasztandó tanító felesége köteles a háztartás összes ágaiban segédkezni. Fizetése évi 1200 dollár, lakás, fiités, világítás és teljes ellátás. A fizetés havi utólagos részletekben esedékes. Pályázatok 1937 április 15-ig az elnök címére (Rev. Dr. Francis Újlaki 1946 Ba- kewell Street, Toledo, O.) küldendők. A megválasztott tanító hivatalát 1937 junius 1-én tartozik elfoglalni.
