Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1956. január-június (5. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1956-03-15 / 11. szám
March 15, 1956 w> .► "-i—• AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ- —i ------- .......— 15 LHJ0S KOSSUTH- ARCHITECT CF FREEDOM THE MOST IMPORTANT objectives of Kossuth’s public activity, of his selfless struggles, were the liberation of Hungary from (he yoke of (he Habsburg monarchy and the reestablishement of her national independence. Lajos Kossuth recognized the fact that national independence in the fight against foreign despotism could be secured only by relying on the people, by achieving a broad popular-national unity. This was his primary reason for projecting the fight for the rigths of the people. He fought for the liberation of the sorely exploited serfs, who represented the majority of the people. He fought for a parliament of people’s representative and for universal suffrage. In general he fought for the existence of all those institutions which would effect the liquidation of a decayed feudal system, for the beginnings of development along bourgeois lines and for the creation of the unity of the people. Even today, in the perspective of more than a century Lajos Kossuth’s farsighted policies elicit admiration. These were policies which masterfully linked the liberation of the oppressed classes the developmeut of economic life and the spreading of culture, with the cause of national independence and freedom. All nations which are fighting against foreign domination recoginze that the struggle for national independence and for peace is indissolubly linked with the fight for the people’s rights, for the liberation of the oppressed, and for better conditions of life. After the bloody suppression of the War of independence, Hungary became, for nearly a century, the vassal of foreign powers. In 1867 the Hungarian landowners and capitalists made a traitorous compromise with the weakening Hapsburg regime: they sacrificed the hope of the nation’s independence for the sake of maintaining the rule of their own class. HIS GOAL ACHIEVED BUDAPEST BUILDS NEW ICE RINK Ice sport, in which Hungary has not been so prominent as in other fields, is going td get a big stimulus from the building of a new ice stadium just completed in Budapest. It has been built near the People’s Stadium, the city’s main sports center, and will have accommodation for lo - 000 spectators, which can be doubled with supplementary seating for special occasions. The City Park rink, the only other artificial ice in Hungary, where the European championships were held last year, hold only 4,000. Labor news brief The ALL-CIO has caller upon affiliates throughout the country to take the ini tiative and give wide suppor to a program of cooperative housing designed to meet th< need of families in the middli third of the income scab through use of pension and welfare funds. Did You Know That — After the first World War and the fall of the Hapsburg monarchy the fascist Horthy regime offered Hungary's independence for sale to fascist Germany in order to maintain its bayonet rule with Nazi help. In 1945, when the Soviet Army expelled the occupying German troops from Hungarian territory, it not only liberated the Hungarian people from foreign rule but also smashed the anti-people’s state of great landlords and capitalists. Then, on the ruins, the workers and working peasants were able to build up the new state, the Hungarian People’s Republic. Thus, after nearly a century, the goal of Lajos Kossuth’s life, of his heroic struggle for national independence based on dnmocracv was achieved. The Hungarian people now hold fast to their free country with a new patriotism! Their patriotism is intensified by their awareness that the State i,v.j,.So m mem; n is their power, 'the land, mines and factories of the country belong to them—they are their wealth. The creations of the Five-Year Plan belong to them —they are their future welfare. The force of the people’s patriotism is strengthened by the fact that they are building a country where there will be neither exploiters nor exploited, where the people will no longer be the cheap toys of foreign conquest but an indomitable bulwark against them. The workers of free Hungary are no longer driven by hunger: they are moved by the knowledge that the products of all their efforts belong inalienably to them. This is the basis of the Hungarian people’s new socialist patriotism, which incorporates among them of Kossuth. The first ‘‘strike” in the United States was conducted back in 1636 by a group oi Maine fishermen, and that to take part in any union was judged to be an “illegal con spiracy” for a good many years ? Help for IUE Strikers More locals are reporting contributions they and their members are making to help the IUE strikers who have been fighting for an agreement with Westinghouse since last October. Petőfi, Kossuth condemned Anti-Semitism In the Hungarian People’s Republic any racial, religious and other anti-semitism, as well as war propaganda — is outlawed. This was done in the best traditions of Hungarian history. Sándor Petőfi sharply attacked those, mostly German, agitators, who after the March 15 revolution incited discrimnation per sedition against the Jews. He wrote in his paper: “Of this crying ly unjust persecution of the •Jews, some sneaking provo- cators have become the apostle”, who can’t even imagine, “that there are honest people who are not slaves of dirty selfish interests, but are friends of unsullied truth and humanism.” General György Klapka, the defender of Komarom admitted: “A twelfth of our corp- consisted of Jews. Every bat talion had Jewish voluntee’ platoons. They distinguished themselves by their bravery. Many of them fell on the field of battle...” Lajos Kossuth, seeing the discriminations at the beginnings, has given special order to accept the Jews inte f Petőfi: the Leader :f the Youth and Revolution Sándor Petőfi, who fell in one of the last battles of the War of Selfdefense in Hungary, at the age of 25—was always the sworn enemy of all oppression, the enthusiastic warrior of freedom. The closer he drew to 1848, the “Spring of the Peoples”, the stronger became the political overtone in his poetry. When Lhe news of the Paris and other western uprisings reached him, he was in the ountry. Feeling that his ime has come, he hurried /a»* k to Pest. He became — t the head of the students nd other young revolutionises — the main leader of is Hungarian Revolution of larch 15, 1848. His "Na- onal Sons" became the first •educt of the free press. Here are the first and last strophes of his famous poem as translated by William N. Loew: Rise. Magyar; ’tis the country’s call! I The time has come, say one and all: ! Shall we be slaves, shall wc This is the question, now agree! For by the Magyar’s God above We trullv swear, We truly swear, the tyrant’s yoke No more to bear!... And where our graves in verdure rise, Our children’s children to the; skies Shall speak the grateful joy they feel. And bless our names the while they kneel. For the Magyar’s God above We truly swear, We truly swear, the tyrant's yoke N« more to bear! * AN AMERICAN POET ON KOSSUTH AFTER defeat of The War of Independence in Hungary, Lajos Kossuth went to exile. On popular demand in England ahe was taken on British ship from Turkey to England; on the way he delivered a speech to the workers of Marseille, which was published in Victor Hugo’s paper in Paris; in England he made a triumphant tour. In the United States in 1851—52, he had the same experience: the people received him enthusiastically, but the government of the slaveholders, manufacturers and bankers turned away coldly from him. The high esteem for him by the peoples of the West was expressed in many ways; his reception by the people of New York was an unprecedented mass demonstration of sympathy to any foreigner before; citizens donated him money for the cause of Hungarian independence, workers donated hundreds of complete uniforms for his hoped new people’s army, etc. Writers and poets admired him. John Greenleaf Whittier, the “Quaker Poet” of U.S.A., wrote a poem about him with this “Author’s Note” — “It can scarcely be necessary to say that there are elements in the character and passages in the history of the great Hungarian statesman and orator, which necessarily command the admiration of those, even, who believe that no political revolution was ever worth the price of human blood.” It is not without interest and lesson even today to read his peom of the Quaker poet. Here is the poem entitled “Kossuth”: Type of two mighty continents! — combining The strength of Europe with the warmth and glow Of Asian song and prophecy, — the shining Of Orient splendors over Northern snow! Who shall receive him? Who, unblushing, speak Welcome to him, who, while he strove to break The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, smote off At the same blow the fetters of the serf, — Rearing the altar of his Fatherland On the firm base of freedom, and thereby Lifting to Heaven a patriot’s stainless hand, Mocked not the God of Justice with a lie! Who shall he Freedom’s mouth-piece? Who shall give Her welcoming cheer to the great fugitive? Not he who, all her sacred trusts betraying, Is scouring back to slavery’s hell of pain The swarthy Kossuths of our land again! Not he whose utterance now from lips designed The bugle-march of Liberty to wind, And call her hosts beneath the breaking light, — The keen reveille of her morn of fight, — Is but the hoarse note of the bloodhound’s haying, The wolf’s long howl behind the bondman’s flight! O for the tongue of him who lies at rest In Quincy’s shade of patrimonial trees, — Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best, — To land a voice to Freedom’s sympathies, And hail the coming of the noblest guest Which Old World wrong has given the New World of the West! the National Guard and Army. Just before defeat, at I the last session of the first Hungarian parliament at Szeged, Kossuth’s primeminister Bertalan Szemere introduced a bill to give the Jews equality of rights in the country, it was enthusiastically accepted. From the exile in 1882, on the revival of anti- Semitism in Hungary, Kossuth pointed out in a letter, that “never causing such un- rest, by the imported agitations from Germany, had not the enconomic and social- troubles prepared the masses for the unrest.” In that same letter, Kossuth give the following advice: “Take a definite stand for equal rigths between the j citizens of the country, regardless of their race, ton- i gue or religion. . . Act at once to better the economic and social conditions... do not watch with folded arms, idle, how they set the public feeling on the ‘Jewish question’, whose aim is to put back the Hungarians of the 19th century into the middle ages.” HA MÁR LEJÁRT A LAPJA használja e szelvényt előfizetése megújítására: MAGYAR SZÓ. 130 East lfith Street, New York 3. N. Y. Tisztelt Munkástársak! Tudatában lévén annak, hogy lapunk fenntartását egyedül az előfizetési jövedelem biztosítja, nem akarok hátralékban lenni. 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