Magyar Egyház, 1972 (51. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1972-03-01 / 3. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 11 SHALL WE BE PRISONERS OR FREE? For years now it has been fashionable to annually deliver patriotic speeches around March 15th, commemorating the freedom fight of 1848-1849. This is as it should be, for thus we have managed to keep alive our love for the land of our birth, our Hungarian emotions and for a few minutes we have been able to forget our quarrels and in-fighting as well as the tw'o gravest dangers confronting our life as immigrants — forgetfulness and apathy. We ought to realize the fact, that we, who live in freedom, are the eighth Hungarian tribe, and here abroad represent the Seven Tribes, who in their own native land are suffering oppression. The free world, including America, judges and appreciates the Hungarians only to the extent we, who live in freedom, merit. Aside from writers, sociologists and politicians the average man in Hungary never had, nor does he now have, a problem trying to define who and what constitutes a Hungarian. Exclusive of selfmade gifted people and geniuses, a Hungarian could have a career only if he was selling his country to foreign colonizers. Foreign policy, culture, technology and agriculture were determined by Vienna yesteryear, much the same as they are dictated by Moscow today. Yesteryear Metternich and later Bach strangulated the nation, today Kossigyn and Brezhnev relieve one another in the act of suffocating our people. Any change in this situation depends on us, the Eighth Tribe, and not those in the homeland, who out of the necessity of selfpreservation must, like beaten dogs, shake hands with their new jailers. Trice during the past three centuries the Hungarians have demonstrated their historic mission and national convictions. They have done so in the Rákóczi uprising, the 1848 freedom fight and the 1956 revolution. They proved that their nation does not lack martyrs in the cause of God, freedom, law and humanity; the jails, hanging trees and galleys, by God, were never empty. Now it is our duty to assure that all these losses of blood and all this suffering, not be in vain. The selfsame elements, which then as now, are ruining Hungary, in order to rule her, are also busily ruining, undermining, lying and leading this country astray. We would all love to see the day when Hungary is free once again, hut this can happen only if we here in America do not lose our own as well as our adoptive country’s freedom, strength and world respect. All three of these, by God, are in grave danger already. The leaders of our country, listening to their advisers, have not yet realized this menace and have not as yet understood that this is no pennyante game. Let us all learn from our own past and recognize, that there is no emergency door leading out of the United States, that there are no other places of refuge, that the conditions have been given: here — now or never! As soon as constitutional requirements are fulfilled we must enter, or help others, qualified by reason of education and bearing, to enter and achieve positions of leadership in politics and the economy; if other ethnic groups were successful in reaching these goals, then we also must succeed. To do so however, among other things, command of the English language is a necessity. It is indeed disheartening to listen to one of our immigrant countrymen who have already forgotten their own native tongue without having learned English yet— they have thus become illiterate in two languages at once— Success in this manner is impossible. A conqueror is he who, having reached the bottom of his fortune, realizes, that he has no one else left to count on but himself and having done so determines to risk all or nothing. Let us therefore become conquerors as well. Let us look around in northern Ohio, where we have always believed to have the largest concentration of Hungarians, and ask ourselves a few poignant questions: How many Hungarian city councilmen are there? How many mayors? How many state representatives are of Hungarian origin? How many Hungarians have we elected to the office of governor, U. S. Representative or U. S. Senate? Let us not answer the above, for if we did, we would be ashamed. But of course at the end of our 1848 freedom fight, which we lost, the American navy’s ship, the Mississippi, was dispatched to pick up Kossuth and bring him out of Turkey, Kossuth arrived in Britain on October 23, 1851, and on December 4, 1851 in the United States. He delivered more than 500 speeches in the span of seven months, from Boston to New Orleans, in perfect, literary English. The U. S. Government officially introduced him to the Senate and the House of Representatives, where he was asked to deliver a speech. These appearances of his were well remembered to the end of the century. At the start of the Civil War, in 1861, there were not more than 3,000 Hungarians living in the United States; a few' hundred of them volunteered to show their love towards their adoptive country. Seven of these Hungarian volunteers served in the U. S. Army as generals, 15 as colonels and many others as officers of lower rank. General Szamwald even received the “Congressional Medal of Honor,” General Asboth also served with singular distinction.
