Fraternity-Testvériség, 1960 (38. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1960-10-01 / 10. szám
10 FRATERNITY tractor-drawn trailers to tour the frontier and pick up Hungarian refugees. The Vice President was told that trailer loads of refugees had just come in. We used a tractor-trailer to inspect the border, but on this last muddy stretch only his close associates accompanied the Vice President. There were no seats in the trailer, and so he knelt on some straw, covered by a few blankets. In the soft, uneven ground it woidd have been impossible to stand upright. In this position lie traveled some four kilometers along the frontier between six and six-thirty. “In the farmhouse Mr. A7 ixon met two Hungarians who had just crossed the border. The excitement of their adventurous escape through the frost-whipped marshland was still fresh. They trembled with cold, but their excitement — this time joyful, to be sure — visibly increased as they learned that the dark-hairal young man in the little farmhouse was the Vice President." ★ ★ ★ The pre-Christmas “blitz-visit” — which will be remembered as one of the quickest but most important diplomatic inspection tours on record — impressed the refugees, the Austrian officials, and nearly everybody else whom Nixon contacted. The spokesman of the chancellor's office on Ballhausplatz, Dr. Friz Meznik, chief of the press in the chancellery, summed up to me the significance of the mission in these words: “The visit of Vice President Nixon has raised the prestige of the United, States in the world and enhanced the confidence which Austria and, above all, the Hungarian refugees have in America.” ★ ★ ★ More than three years have passed since “Operation Mercy” was finished. One may ponder in retrospect 'whether the mission tipped the scales of world opinion favorably toward the United States. Perhaps, by the yardstick of history, a period of a few years is too short a time for calm and objective consideration. But one may safely conclude that, during his visits to the Austrian and German refugee camps, Nixon warmed the hearts of those homeless people and threw a ray of hope across the frontier to darkened Hungary. STAMP COLLECTORS may welcome the suggestion that a stamp can be removed from an envelope without tearing it if lighter fluid is first applied to the inside of the envelope behind the stamp.
