Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1959-07-01 / 7. szám

FRATERNITY

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tronic developments our horizons became broadened into the stellar regions of a hitherto unknown universe, formerly beyond the reach of man.

Just as science, so did art play a noble role in our spiritual contacts. The first liaison ever established by the Hungarian Academy of Science was with the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. Then, the grandiose pictorial conceptions of the master Munkácsy have become an integral part of your Easter reverence. The famed Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra is synonymous with the name of its conductor, Ormándy.

The City of Brotherly Love is, indeed, fortunate in having had such men to serve its ideals. And today, as yesterday, solid citizen-material from my far-off country of birth is striving to do credit to this New Homeland — in the spirit of the Four Chaplains. I personally like to think that the prestige established through the decades by Philadelphia’s Hungarian colony had a share in this community’s truly American welcome to so many of our freedom-fighters, whose role will go down as one of incredible gallantry.

However, the rare privilege of becoming heroes may never be our lot. Yet, individually, it is our solemn resolve to uphold the example of the Four Chaplains and to do our best in whatever avenues of human endeavor are open to us. This is why our workingmen, toiling with the sweat of their brow, our artisans with skills acquired through generations, our professionals who so diligently gathered the learning of past centuries — these good and honest people join in their efforts with our atomic scientists who unfold the secrets of space for us -— and this makes up the flowers and leaves of the wreath we symbolically place before the altar of this chapel.

And the young Americans who believed so intensely in the indestructibility of the spirit that they rather chose a watery grave for themselves, just to save the lives of four servicemen, these Four Chaplains can only be dead in the physical sense.

In our eyes, as in the eyes of millions of people on both sides of a man-made Iron Curtain, they have risen, Saviour-like, to the pinnacles of human endeavor.

This is the meaning of our pilgrimage here on this memorable occasion. This is why we feel, as Kossuth did when addressing Philadelphians a little over a century ago:

“Man may well be silent, where from such a place history thus speaks . . .”