Fraternity-Testvériség, 1958 (36. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1958-11-01 / 11. szám
2 FRATERNITY LÁSZLÓ L. ESZENYI: AMERICAN HUNGARIANS OF WHOM WE ARE PROUD We were criticized for using the word “proud” in our present series, an attribute and attitude hardly acceptable by Christian philosophy. We would here like to assure everybody that the expression is not used in the sense of “haughty”, but rather according to the second meaning, “sensible of honor”. We may have been called a proud people, perhaps because we were always very conscious of the fact that from Hungary came leaders in all fields, in all professions, in all activities, way out of proportion to the corresponding ratio in other nations. We could listen to the accounts of battles fought between the nations of the West — and remember by whom and where the advance of the Eastern hordes was halted. We could listen to the demands for rights, the political convulsions of the other European nations —- and smile, remembering 1221, when we already had our own “Magna Charta”. Proud — yes, for we Hungarians have always had cause for pride. That unusual quickness of intellect, the eagerness to attempt to solve the unsolved, the ability to find the way out of hopeless situations so characteristic for Hungarians are rich recompensations for centuries of dangerous living, threatened on all sides by invaders seeking annihilation of our race. Certain it is that the Red invaders from the East sought to seize upon the brains and skill of our Hungarian brethren — and to suppress them where they could not use them. How much has Hungary lost in the deportations of so many thousands, untold numbers of her best sons, who disappeared in Siberia. Thousands more escaped to the West when there was no longer any freedom of intellect or security of life in their own country. Hungary has lost — but the West has gained. In the United States we have all the reason to be proud of
