The Hungarian Student, 1957 (1. évfolyam, 2-8. szám)
1957 / 2. szám
INFORMATION FOR YOU Tanuljunk Könnyen Gyorsan Angolul is now available. It is an English-language book in Hungarian, containing a basic vocabulary of 1,200 words, a grammar section and simple explanations. The price of the 1957 edition is $2.50, and you can order one by sending a letter or telegram to our Cambridge address. * * * Handbook for Hungarians is available free. It is a 200-page pocketsized phrasebook, guide and dictionary in Hungarian, English and phonetics written for Hungarian refugees in the United States. If you would like a copy, write to our Cambridge office. * * * Magyar Hírlap, a weekly Hungarian newspaper, is also available free of charge. The paper is written by Hungarians primarily for new Hungarian refugees and contains national and international news, news of events in Hungary and articles discussing the problems of Hungarians in the United States and answering questions asked by its readers about American customs and such things as the post office, army service, working conditions, etc. If you would like a subscription, write to our Cambridge office. * * * You can obtain the addresses of your refugee student friends by writing to our Cambridge address. We have a complete and accurate list of names and addresses of Hungarian students in the United States. * * * Our Cambridge office will gladly give you information about Hungarian books and newspapers, Hungarian newspapers printed in the free world and Hungarian organizations in exile. * * * Ask us for pictures, articles and reports in English on Hungarian affairs, by writing to our Cambridge office. Don’t forget that one of our most important obligations is to keep the American public interested and informed. * * * Information about Hungarian refugee students in Canada can be ob2 tained by writing N.C.C.U., 1162 St. Antoine Street, Montreal, P.Q., Canada. * * * If you want information on scholarships and placement in schools write our central office in Cambridge. We will forward your requests to the proper authorities. * * * For any information on American colleges and universities, write our Cambridge office. * * * Please send us your suggestions and opinions on our newsletter and AHSA activities; they will be greatly appreciated. The address of the central office of our organizational committee is: American Hungarian Student Association P. 0. Box 78 Cambridge 38, Massachusetts An Echo from the Past, and a Crying Voice in the Wilderness of the Present We can never over-value the lesson taught us by Hungary on the essential oneness of humanity, the unity of interests, and the consequent atrocity and madness of all wars waged for glory, for conquest, or the base phantom misnamed national honor. It has been the fashion of our Fourth-of-July orators for generations to boast of ours as the only land in which true liberty is understood and appreciated—in which the golden road between anarchy and despotism has been attained—in which men could be governed without ceasing to be free. But suddenly a voice from the far Pannónia of Roman history breaks upon our ears, a voice which we must recognize as coming from the great heart of humanity. With the eloquence of Demosthenes and the sublime fervor of Isaiah, this voice utters burning words which call many men of many creeds and races to the battlefield in which the rights of all are to be asserted and the usurpations of the crafty few, however entrenched and hoary, are to be overborne and stricken down. At first we pause to wonder how the dwellers by the far Danube had learned those great truths voiced by Jefferson and--------------------------------------------- ----others during the creation IE our own Republic; but, pausing, we discover that the Hungarians have not merely imitated our fathers in their immortal declaration, but their words and ideas are living and practical verities to the Hungarian people. Our fathers declared all men rightfully born free and equal; Hungary grappled boldly with serfdom and abolished it ; they declared all men by nature entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;” in Hungary, the Free Revolutionary Government apportioned lands without charge to the emancipated serfs to insure them the means of supporting life, enjoying liberty, and pursuing happiness in the homes of their childhood. Who can rationally deny, therefore, that the great principle of equal rights was at least as well understood and faithfully regarded in Hungary in 1848, as it was in America in 1776? ... And how could the sincere lovers of human rights among us refuse to accord to the people of Kossuth a welcome as hearty and as imposing as that paid, a century earlier, to the good Lafayette? Kossuth is here to arouse us to a consciousness of the majesty of our national position and the responsibilities it involves; to show us that we cannot safely sleep while despots are forging chains for the yet unfettered nations, as well as to bind more securely their present victims; that we must assume an attitude of resistance to the expanding dominion of the autocrat if only to secure our own. That “God hath made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth;” that we have no right to turn our backs on tyranny’s victims with the callous question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”; that the free nations of the earth cannot afford, even were they base enough to wish to do so, to leave each other to be assailed in succession by the banded might of despotism, and so overwhelmed and crushed—these are solemn truths which Kossuth is among us to proclaim and enforce with the earnestness of a martyr’s conviction and an exiled patriot’s zeal. The Reverend John L.E. De Papp, Protestant Chaplain to the Hungarian students of Bard College, 1956/57 Hungarian Student New Her
