Fáklyaláng, 1964. június-október (5. évfolyam, 1-10. szám)

1964-10-23 / 10. szám

4

FÁKLYALÁNG

historical ungratefulnesses, objectively by ignorance, want of knowledge, and a series of damaging and left-handed actions.

The United States developed into a modern, progressive nation which is suitable for further growth and development only in the Civil War. Until the victory of the North the part of the Declaration of Independence saying: “All men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” remained only mere empty words. These words have had no real meaning in a country where the economic life was based greatly upon the work of slaves. These words sounded rather ironically under the whips of the slave-traders. This lamentable situation was only changed by the Civil War.

And in this war the sons of the Hungarian Nation played a tremendous role on the side of the Union. Indeed, the number of Hungarians who had commanding positions in the Unionist Army was considerable. The Hungarians in America gave two Lieutenant Generals, five Generals, fifteen Colonels, two Lieutenant Colonels, thirteen Majors and over one hundred lower ranking officers to Lincoln’s army. They were appointed to one army command, two division commands and several brigadier commands. One of the most glorious and brilliant achievements of the Civil War, the battle of Springfield, is connected to the name of Colonel Karoly Zagonyi, a Hungarian. The number of Hungarians who served as enlisted soldiers in the Unionist Army was even greater — about eight hundred of them — who did active field service. At that time they, altogether, represented about 20 percent of Americans of Hungarian descent. They were almost without any exception veterans and exiles of the 1848- 1849 Hungarian Revolution and Freedom Fight. Their role in the Civil War was both heroic and glorious.

There is no other nation in the world which has approximately contributed similar sacrifices and achievements to the victory of human dignity and to the abolition of slavery in the United States of America. A long and gleaming list of Hungarians reflects the deeds and achievements of the representatives of the Hungarian Nation in the struggle for freedom which can hardly be parallelled in world history. Many of the pages of the glorious annales of the Civil War were written by Hungarians.

The minimum what could have been expected for such deeds was that the President of the United States would have not handled the Hungarian fate in 1918-1919 with such a shocking ignorance, prejudice superficiality and brutality as he, indeed, did so. What the Hungarian Heroes of 1861-1865 performed for the future of the United States would have deserved at least as much humane compensation that after the general collapse of 1918 the fate of that nation should have been given an unbiased, thorough-going and factual examination, the sons of which raised high and helped to victory the Stars and Stripes of the Union. Instead, we have been treated in Paris as the most inferior and meanest among the nations. Our cause has been overwhelmed by the flood of slanders, making

ridiculous the most ‘‘magnificently” sounding slogans launched at the end of World War I. The United States committed against us, Hungarians, the greatest and most distasteful sin of ungratefulness.

And this historical blunder has to be still repaired because so far nothing has been done to remedy the damages done this way. On the contrary, American policy ever since makes errors after errors at our expense.

The reason why Hungary has lost its deserved place in the community of nations can be found in the Peace Treaty of Trianon. Its ethnical unity has been violated and over 3.5 million Hungarians were forced to live under foreign rule in open violation of the manifested principle of the right of national self-determination of people, cutting them off the main body of the Hungarian Nation. And the Hungarian Government of that time was even prevented from presenting its case based on facts and figures at the Peace Conference at Paris. The means of arbitrary and crude force were applied against us by the President of the country, the real moral foundations of which Hungarian Generals and soldiers helped to be laid down in a percentage far above our national representation in the country. The people of the Hungarian heroes of Lincoln’s army did not deserve this despicable ungratefulness.

Later, the United States somehow could never understand — mostly because it did not want to — that Hungary was pulled into World War II on Hitler’s side because she was deprived in Trianon of those of her main resources of strength which would have enabled her to successfully withstand the nazi-German pressure and to continue or adopt an independent foreign policy. During the world crisis of 1939 to 1945 Hungary was unable to follow her traditional policy because of her drastic dismemberment in Trianon. Her policy — until then —• was always successful in stopping German aspirations for world rule from the tenth century on even at the expense of heavy losses of Hungarian blood.

This the leaders of the United States could not understand between 1939 and 1945 because the Government of this country lacked the basic knowledge and concept on the constellations in Central- Eastern Europe. It continued to fumble about in the Masaryk-created fog. Here, in the United States only dwarves represented the Hungarian Nation during World War II who did not dare to, and especially could not convincingly represent the cause of the Hungarian people. The present lamentable situation of Hungary is the direct consequence of this unfortunate situation. The West revenged itself on us for crimes which has itself committed, in the final analysis, in 1919.

This was, then, crowned by the attitude of the United States during the glorious and tragic Revolution and Freedom Fight of the Hungarian people in 1956. No one wanted that Washington start a war, let us say, World War III for our sake. Nevertheless, much more could have and should have been done short of war to help the Hungarian people express and assert their will freely. Nothing has been done in this direction although everything has been done in the opposite direction. These days will always remain movingly shameful and