Fraternity-Testvériség, 1952 (30. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1952-03-01 / 3. szám
TESTVÉRISÉG 15 Your Red is Showing, Professor — An open letter to Professor Allan Nevins of Columbia University — by Arch Dean Emeritus ENDRE SEBESTYÉN Dear Professor Nevins: In an article first printed in Collier’s Magazine, and reprinted in the January issue of Reader’s Digest, you made the following statement: “Among the most glorious moments in European history are those which found the Dutch ‘Beggars’ in revolt against mighty Spain, Kossuth appealing to the civilized world in behalf of Hungary, Garibaldi leading his Italian legion, and the Czehs bringing their national charter from Pittsburgh.” No sober thinking man will question the correctness of your statement as far as it relates to the heroic stand taken by the Dutch “Beggars”, or to the valor displayed by the great Garibaldi, and finally, to the superb witnessing of immortal Kossuth for the unobstructed sway of world democracy. The deeds ascribed by history to their names will forever mark them off as living milestones in the onward march of mankind toward its God-given destiny. However, no sober-minded man will ' fail either to note the glaring incongruity and astounding inconsistency, coming as a withering anti-climax, in the final clause of your sentence. Speaking in one breath of the Dutch “Beggars”, Garibaldi, Kossuth, and “the Czehs bringing their national charter from Pittsburgh”, sounds, at least in the ears of the present writer, as something bordering on sacrilege. (1) Let us, Professor Nevins, give, first of all, full recognition to the cardinal fact that no document of any description has ever been issued by anyone in authority with any semblance of the claim that it represented a Czeh national charter. Consequently, all talks about the Czehs bringing with them from Pittsburgh, or any other locality on the globe, a national charter, must be relegated to the realm of myths. (2) There is not the slightest doubt in my mind as regards the fact that when you talk of “the Czehs bringing with them a national charter from Pittsburgh”, you are thinking of a fraudulent piece of written matter, executed in the City of Pittsburgh by a number of Czeh individuals, among them one Thomas G. Masa- ryk, and some Slovak citizens of the United States, on May 30, 1918, bearing the title: Czeho-Slovak Pact. The true nature, scope and significance of this document will be taken up and discussed later on. In the meantime, however, it seems advisable to bring to light here the contents of another document of no less importance and of an equally direct bearing on the matter under consideration. (3) The document in question is a Russian- inspired and Russian-dictated diplomatic note bearing the heading: “Instructions of the Royal Serbian Government of April 17, 1909, to the Serbian Minister in Vienna concerning the continuation of the Great Serbia propaganda in Austria-Hungary.” This lengthy note, forecasting the speedy conflict between Russia on the one side, and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other, provides the necessary measures to insure the happy outcome of that struggle for the good of Russia. Two sentences demand closer investigation in it, and these read as follows: “A new focus (of agitation) is being projected in the fraternal Czeh Kingdom, around which can rally all those who wish to seek, or must seek, the salvation of their national individuality in the triumph of the Pan-Slav idea. So far as a revolutionary propaganda appears necessary, it is to be cared for from St. Petersburg and from golden Prague.” l) This highly revealing diplomatic note which, by a stretch of imagination, may be regarded as a charter-like document, gives full authority to the “fraternal Czeh Kingdom” to unleash an unrestricted propaganda warfare against the state formation, known as Austria-Hungary, for the sole purpose of wiping that state formation off the face of the earth, and bringing to fuller fulfillment the insatiable lust of Pan-Slav world domination. As a national charter empowering a whole nation for the carrying on the free pursuit of subversive activities, this diplomatic note hardly has its equal in world history. Three facts deserve especial interest at this point, which are as follows: (1) The date of the document which is four years before the outbreak of World War I. (2) One of Russia’s war aims being recognized as the disruption of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. (3) The selection of a supposedly western oriented nation for the carrying out of the project. (4) For the sake of better perspective, we take the reader back to the year 1848. In that year the Magyar nation was forced to resort to arms in the defense of its ancient liberties. In Hungary, as Kossuth emphatically stated, there was no revolution. Through the slow process of constitutional reforms, the Magyars succeeded in transforming their country into a fully democratized state. The Emperor-King gave his sanction to the newly enacted reform laws, and the nation felt that it was on the 1) Sidney Bradshaw Fay, The Origins of the World War, New York, The Macmillan Co., 1929, Vol. I pp. 400, 401.
