Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1959-07-01 / 7. szám
2 FRATERNITY waves 193 years before the United States was born. Just as the Four Chaplains 340 years later, Parmenius, too, found a watery grave in the Atlantic Ocean, sacrificing himself for humanity. On this hallowed ground there can be no more appropriate appraisal by an immigrant than the mention of a few of his own people who contributed to a better understanding by giving their all in this neighborhood. Here I wish to bring forth the name of the founder of General George Washington’s cavalry, Colonel- Commandant Michael Kováts, commissioned at nearby Valley Forge and who laid down his life in the Battle of Charleston in 1779. The closing sentence of Kováts’ letter to the great Benjamin Franklin may Avell have been the motto of the Four Chaplains — “Faithful unto death!” Many another Magyar, while they may not have died for their ideals, nevertheless dedicated their lives and talents to uphold those lofty principles for which the United States, most particularly Philadelphia, stands. For instance, years before the celebrated French traveler de Tocqueville published his classic volume on his first-hand experiences, the Transylvanian Farkas Bölöni, and the illustrious California pioneer, Ágoston Haraszthy, praised the American way of life in extensive travelogues as yet unknown to the reading public of this continent. Then came Kossuth, on a rousing pilgrimage to a land he, too, took as his model. Some of us are convinced that this eloquent statesman, whom the United States recently honored with two commemorative postage stamps, really tried to prevent, single- handedly, the outbreak of our disastrous Civil War by attempting to arouse in Americans a more dynamic interest in their looming destiny as leaders of a free world. At the Citizens’ Banquet in Philadelphia, Kossuth spoke words which could be fittingly engraved in stone: “I stood with heads bowed in Independence Hall, whence the spirit of freedom lisps eternal words of truth and greatness to the secret recesses of one’s heart . . .” It may well be that similar thoughts echoed in the innermost souls of the Four Chaplains in that turbulent ocean, when they surrendered their places in the lifeboats. Men of lesser fame, too, contributed their wisdom and enterprise to this citv where the memory of the Four Chaplains lives through this chapel. Farkas Kempelen, for instance, demonstrated the world’s first talking machine here — the forerunner of the phonograph and television industry. Thus he brought the music of the spheres to this earth, and through the derivative elec
