Verhovayak Lapja, 1940. január-június (23. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)

1940-02-29 / 9. szám

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Verhovay ak Lapja

February 29, 1940.

THE VERHOV AY OVERSEAS CLUB

Steps have been taken to form an organization within the Verhovay, to be known as the Verhovay Overseas Club.

English speaking Hun garians who have been tc Hungary at any time in their lives are eligible for membership; also those Hungarians who recently came to America. Those whc do not belong to the above category may become associate members.

PURPOSE: To foster the Hungarian language and to introduce Hungarian culture to the American public, by plays, music and literature of Hungarian origin.

There will be an organization meeting in the Homestead Library on Sunday, March 17th at 3 p. m.

Anybody who is interested in the formation and fostering of this Verhovay Overseas Club should attend this meeting.

The Overseas Column of this issue contains the names of those who have made known their intentions to join the Verhovay Overseas Club.

OTTO MOLNÁR, Chief Organizer.

BRITISH IMPERIALISM

bY

RICHARD J.PHILLIPS

VERHOVAY DAY PLANNED BY YOUNGSTOWN BRANCHES

At a combined meeting of the three Verhovay branches of Youngstown, Ohio, 21, 108 and 364, plans were discussed and made for a Youngstown Verhovay Day to be held on July 21st.

A special feature of this gathering will be the reunion of those contest winners who have been to Europe.

More definite information will be given in future editions of the journal in regard to this program.

Fraternally,

William A. Miglets, Sec’y Br. 364. ----------O-------------WRITER and LECTURER TO APPEAR IN PITTSBURGH

Louis Adamic, well known author and speaker, will be presented on March 4th, in the Schenley High School Auditorium, at 8:15 P. M., at the next meeting of the PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FORUM. '

Verhovay members will recall that Mr. Adamic -ias contributed to the Verhovay Journal several enlightening subjects.

The present European conflict coupled with the insidious propaganda which is literally dumped upon the American people leads one to believe—and justly so— that the totalitarian governments with their demagogue dictators are to blame for this world catastrophe.

It has been known by students of history that England has always exercised a dominant force over the other European nations and has feared the rise of any nation which might contest her right to world dominance. History is so replete with the savagery and cold-blooded tactics of the British Government to attain these ends that an article here would not be amiss.

It should not be construed that the author is pro- German; neither is he pro-British, but is making a desperate attempt to sift propaganda from actual fact and analyze the catastrophe as brought about by the unjust and dictated peace—the Treaty of Versailles.

In my first article entitled “Christian Democracy versus Pagan Totalitarianism” I tried to point out the cause of the present European conflict and attributed it to the results of a dictated peace upon a vanquished nation. I pointed out that any nation which was saddled with reparations and made to give up her economic stability would, inevitably, rise from the ruins and destroy its master in the same manner as the monster destroyed its creator, Frankenstein.

The wires of all the democratic nations are humming today with lies and cleverly written propaganda material in an effort by the British Government to win to her side the moral and physical support of the United States. This is evidenced by the colored foreign dispatches released under the guise of “official communiques.”

If we listen to the word of Britain it will not be long before the slogan in America will be “Stop Hitler, let us make the world safe for democracy so we will have no more mobilization and can put an end to war.” Does that not compare favorably with the statement by Daladier, that “we must crush Hitler so that we will not have to mobilize every 6 months.”

A war to end all wars! No, it was not a war to end all wars; it was a war that provoked the present war. Go back to the causes of the war of 1939 and we find them in the Versailles Treaty. This is a cause of the World War of 1939.

Colonel Frederick Palmer, the official historian of the World War, has this statement to make regarding propaganda loose in the United States today. Certainly Colonel Palmer is not pro-German as he served with the American forces in the last war. I quote,

“The Allies’ propaganda in America has been excellent in this war so far. My recollection of a historian’s aching eyes in reading more than 100,000 official documents about the cause of our entry and our part after our entry singles out many phrases being uttered today which duplicates those of the winter of 1916-17.”

And so they go on. We again hear that we must help the democracies. They tell us now that we must stop Hitler. In 1916 and 1917 we heard that we must stop the Kaiser. I wish to quote from an English journal on getting America into war. I quote the words of Hilaire Belloc in G. K. Chesterton’s Weekly.

“It is commonly said up and down Europe that we can make the United States do what we like. That idea is based upon the vague and most misleading word “Anglo-Saxon,” but also upon the actual and recent experience of the last 20 years. We got the United States into the Great War on our side, and, what was more extraordinary, we managed, in the debt business, to make France the villain of the peace. We have got them to feel with us against the modern Italy, and we have got them to talk of ourselves as a democracy.”

Note carefully, “and we have got them to talk of ourselves as a democracy.”

This is what. Mr. Belloc says:

“Can we rope them in to fight, or threaten to fight.”

Then he continues:

“The advantages we have in the working of

American opinion and policy are very great, and they have been used in the past with so much success that those who think we shall still win the trick have much to say for themselves. We are the only people of the Old World who use the same printed word, and largely the same spoken word, as the Americans.”

This man is not writing in America. He is a man writing in England—not in American books, not in American newspapers, not in American documents—but an Englishman talking to Englishmen, writing to Englishmen, and this is what he said:

“Fortunately, with America our propaganda is on firm ground. We can be entirely sincere, as our main plank will be the old democratic one.”

People all around me say, “Oh, we must help England because she is a democracy and we must help her save the democracies of the world.” Why do they not call England the “British Empire” instead of “England, the democracy”? Because the word “England” sounds more democratic than “the British Empire.”

Let me quote another literary “genius” from England, This refers to the manner in which the English people were going to get us into the war. This is what he said;

“We shall, as before, send our leading literary lights and other men with names well known to the United States to put our point of view over the dinner table.”

In other words, they are here to fill up their stomachs with food and fill our brains with propaganda. The evidence of these little “tete-a-tetes” is noted in the influx of English statesmen in America today.

Why have they come to this country? Have they come here just to be nice? Have they come here to make America think they are interested in America? No! They have come here to spread their poisonous propaganda under the guise of British statemanship.

After we got into the war in 1917, and after officials of our Government were informed of the secret treaties, about which we knew nothing before we got in, Sir Gilbert Parker, who had been head of the British propaganda efforts in the United States, wrote an article for Harper’s Magazine, in which he went about explaining some of the methods of propaganda by which we had been lured into the war. But we were already in then. He came out very frankly—and rather lengthily too—and described some of the methods which had been used to take us down the road to war. Since that time, these methods have been more explicitly exposed in well-documented phrases in a book entitled “Propaganda for war” written by Prof. H. C. Peterson, of the University of Oklahoma.

English propaganda is like a termite boring from within. English propagandists do their work over dinner tables, and in the newspapers, and at the parties they give to Americans. English propaganda is masquerading in the United States under Americanism. Look at the Rhodes scholars who are editors of papers, and see where they stand in the matter of helping democracy.

SECRET TREATIES

In the preceding paragraph I mentioned secret treaties. I would like to elaborate on this and quote a reference from “The Intimate Papers of Colonel House.” Colonel House, it is remembered, was the confidant of President Wilson and was entrusted with the fulfillment of many secret missions which had to be kept in utter secrecy and out of reach of the American people.

“Grey (referring to Sir Edward Grey) thought that France would insist upon Alsace-Lorraine. The French believe the Allies will win and that they can impose the terms of peace upon Germany; later, perhaps, they would find that to impose peace conditions upon Germany would necessitate continuing the war for a number of years, and when that was realized they might be willing to make concessions.”

Let me quote what Newton D. Baker, Secretary c»i

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