Verhovayak Lapja, 1943. július-december (26. évfolyam, 26-53. szám)

1943-09-30 / 40. szám

VOL XXVI.

SEPTEMBER 30, 1943

NO 40.

Our Town-------------- By KATHRYN RAW ------------Hungary Wants Freedom

When the autumn days are here. I take a great delight climbing the one hill our peaceful town boasts of. Then I rest a while at the summit, and drink in the beauties of nature. In such solitude I gaze at the horizon, and my mind is indelibly impressed with the great expanse spread before me. I see the old winding road below, deep in the dust of the centuries, and with my eyes follow it to the bay, where a schooner is anchored. Overhead is a fanshaped group of geese winging their way to the south-land. In the distance, just beyond the city limits, I can make out the dry corn stalks gathered into shocks in the farmers’ fields.| How tiny they appear! — and how desolate the wheat fields are, where the grain had been harvested!

I watch the teeming mass of humanity passing by, and can almost make out the different characters, guess where they are going, and the general topic of their e nversation. The scene below is like a play unfolding before me, for the people move along as though their movements had been predestined.

Our town is not large — just a small place, with two churches of different denominations; two high schools, each with a football team and a string orchestra; and a civic recreation center But there are just as many interesting, exciting events taking place here, as in any big city. Everyone knows his neighbor and his business. If he doesn’t, then he

makes it a point to learn all he can about him and his business as soon as possible.

I remember the time John — John Arnold’s boy, was drafted. He was the first boy in our town who went into the armed forces. It was a great event. Everybody in town was at the station to say good-bye to him; and the band was there, pouring its heart into the music. Everyone told John to make a quick end of the war.

John proudly answered: “With me in there now, it will be a short war!”

But that was months ago; and John has been listed as among those missing in action somewhere in the south Pacific area. The towns-people help keep up the morale of his dad and mom and sister, with words of encouragement and kind deeds during these trying times.

Then, there is Effie Jane. I still remember the day she was bom. The doctor was out on another case, and by the time he arrived, Effie Jane was lustily excercising her healthy lungs. She was a plain child who grew up to be the prettiest girl in our town. She became engaged to Bill, who was working his way through law school, when the war came and made changes in their plans. With Bill away, Effie Jane helps his folks with the work on their farm. She can handle the tractor like a man.

Zoe Atkins is the daughter of the richest man in our town. She was sweet and unspoiled, until she spent two weeks in

New York, three years ago. When she came home after her stay in the big city, she was the town’s most uppity-up girl. Why, she even snubbed the boys and girls she grew up with! No one could understand her attitude, but a lot of the fellows and girls felt a little sorry for her, for she was left out of the gay affairs the younger crowd took part in. She missed a lot of the happy times that season.

But the war brought a change in Zoe, too. She took up nursing and after completing the course, went overseas to help take care of our boys in Africa.

War is a strange game. Some men play it as though it were a game of chess. They move their men around, from one strategic point to another, maneuvering them to outwit the enemy.

War is a leveler of human egoism. Many of us followed the doctrine that the only end of human behavior is the perfection and happiness of our self. We were foolish enough to think that all virtue consisted in the pursuit of selfinterest; we forgot all about altruism — devotion to the interests of others. If there is any good thing that this war has brought about, it is the realization that human life is precious, and that the other fellow has the same feelings, perhaps the same thoughts, hopes and ambitions that we may have. He has a heart that beats life into the blood in his veins. He has a mind that soars to the heights, the same as my mind is doing, here on this peaceful hill in our town. His soul is of the same stuff -that my soul is made of, and we are all linked to the one great universal Soul.

If men would take just five minutes every day to think thoughts of love and peace, war would be an impossibility. If we would begin to practice this exercise from now on, it would not be long before our boys would come home to take up their lives where they left off. Our town would be the happy place it had been before this chaotic condition came upon us.

The play of life would indeed i have a happy ending if John were to come back tomorrow; if Effie Jane’s Bill were to return, and Zoe Atkins. We could i plan the future for our children, a future so bright and beautiful that, it would seem as though dreams can be made into reality.

But I am just an idle dreamer whose perspective is the expression of the interrelation in which subjects are mentally viewed. I look at objects of thought from a particular standpoint and give a distinctive impression of life.

If any nation appreciates freedom and liberty, it is the Hungarian. It was the destiny of the Magyar race to fight for independence from the beginning of its national history to the very present. Ever since our ancestors at the end of the ninth century occupied the uninhabited lands on the slopes of the Carpathians and in the Danube valley, this fight for independence became the history of the nation.

First against the Germanizing tendencies of the great medieval emperors, which threatened the absorption of a small race, the extinction of its national' characteristics, of its language and institutions. The wisdom ot the founders of the Hungarian Kingdom is proven by the fact that this small race survived in its very youth the impact of an already mature civilization.

Then, again, in the thirteenth century this love of freedom asserted itself in the fight against the hordes of the Tartars, who were bent upon the conquest of not only Hungary, but also of Europe. The cream of the nation perished in • this great conflict, but Hungarian independence, and with it, western civilization, were saved.

Perhaps the greatest service which Hungary rendered the Christian world was her struggle with the Turks. When in the early sixteenth century, in the period of the general European division and confusion, caused by the great religious upheavals, the Turks decided upon their European conquest, Hungary unhesitatingly threw herself in the path of the mighty Ottoman forces. In this uneven conflict, Hungary was crushed; together with its heroic King, most of the Hungarian manpower was lost on the great plains of

Mohács in 1526, and from Buda, the proud capital of Hungary, the unfurled Turkish banners announced to the world, thai the Hungarian National Kingdom, founded in 1002 by their first king, St. Stephen, came to a sorrowful end. The foreign occupation lasted for 150 years, but the spirit of freedom never died in the hearts of the Hungarian people. For 150 years did the oppressed Hungarian hope, pray and toil for freedom, which once more became theirs with the gradual collapse of the Turkish power at the end of the seventeenth century.

But hardly was the much awaited freedom regained when a new danger threatened its continued enjoyment. Hungary in her struggle against the Turks enlisted the assistance of the neighboring Hapsburg realm, and entered into a personal union with the Austrian Empire. This meant that the Hapsburg emperors of Austria became kings of Hungary. The crown of St. Stephen, that symbol of Hungarian independence, was to be worn by the Hapsburgs, who by their coronation oath were bound to respect and safeguard the national genius of Hungary. But instead of strengthening the Hungarian National spirit after the ending of the Turkish occupation, the Hapsburg rulers embarked upon a policy of centralization with the purpose of merging Hungary into their Austrian realm. The history of Hungary from the end of the seventeenth century to 1848, is an endless struggle against this new threat to her freedom. In this tragic struggle her best blood was dissipated, so was her wealth and her cultural energy. In 1848, in final despair,

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(«randim* Has Left Us

Grandma has left us;

Where did she go?

We all miss her so much;

Even small Joe.

We loved her buttermilk so much —

It was so very grand.

And, oh me, oh my, her cookies were The finest in this land.

We miss her quiet patient ways;

And the songs she sang all day;

Her rocking chair stands idle now —

For no one sits by it to play.

Mother says that she’s in heaven;

Where all good people go;

But I wish she could come back to us — because we miss her so.

IDA LEBER, age 12,

Peoria, 111.

Old Duke Will Wait

Bill left us all when he enlisted;

Leaving his faithful dog at the gate.

Who loves his master so;

Old Duke will wait.

Bill’s been gone nearly a year;

Who knows what may be his fate;

But somehow, trustingly, he knows —

Old Duke will wait.

Bill is somewhere overseas;

Fighting for the United States;

And until he comes back again.

Old Duke will wait.

EMMA JENE EVANS, age 14,

Pricedale, Penna.