"Magyars!

"We are speaking to all who came from the land of the Magyars, and with the New Year's greetings we knock at each door:

"Come all, and let us act!

"There are many hundreds of thousands of us who have worked for the same causes for decades--for our spiritual country, Magyar-America, where the memory of our mother country is uppermost in our minds.

"Our past, present, and future are our own, and our affairs also. We have only one calling and in it our numerous problems that have accumulated during the years. The situation is comparable to that of a family in the life of which the hardships of years have left their mark, and to 2which the gate of the future has just been opened.

"It is proper that we get together. It is proper and necessary. Our mother country is calling, and our own work summons us. We hear the voices of our fathers and our children every minute of the hour. The time has come for a final reckoning.

"We are living and working--in mines and factories. We till the soil, we use the pen, we analyze our thoughts and feelings. We work with our hands, brains, and hearts in the thousands of Hungarian organizations that we have created. And there is not one among us who does not know that our life is setting and that we must perform our work while we are alive. We must all act together in every way, because we can't lease our feelings and wishes to anyone, for we have had countless proofs that the lessees of our lives deliberately commercialized our most sacred causes.

"God, country, brother, mother, joy, sorrow, ideals, adoration, each 3heart throb, have all been shipwrecked because we allowed them to end in that way. Hundreds of banners waved at times in the service of a cause. Sometimes they were side by side and often one against the other. And we always contributed and we always suffered.

"Magyars! This state of affairs cannot go on! We number hundreds of thousands, and we must voice our wishes when anything happens to us, for us, or through us. Magyar-America is not an oligarchy, but a free land of the Magyars. It is a free ship manned by hundreds of thousands in an ocean of opportunity. Who should steer it but we ourselves?

"In the future, we will not agree to any flag unfurling or mass movement until our people and all their organizations, as well as delegates from other Hungarian settlements, shall meet for a conference and decide on a method of activity. We will also follow only the leader appointed at such joint conference.

"We who are speaking in the interests and in the name of the people of Magyar-America, wish to discuss our common problems and the creation of a perpetual Hungarian forum. For three days, beginning on March 15, the glorious Hungarian memorial day, the Hungarians of Buffalo, New York will herald a national convention and call upon all Hungarian churches, societies, and other organizations, as well as newspapers, to send their delegates. At the same time, let it be known that any true Hungarian has a right to be present at this national convention.

"It is not the curse of Trianon alone that weighs on our shoulders. Our work program must be complete. It concerns our children's fate, the future of our societies, the problem of our orphans and the care of the old and infirm.....

"Our aim is peace and work, and we wish to take care of our problems independently of outside interests. The scope of our work requires a national conference. Magyars, come, let us act!

"We are and remain our Hungarian brethren's true brothers.

"In Magyar-America, December, 1928." [A list of twenty-eight names of newspapers and their editors is appended.]

We will comment on the foregoing proclamation in our next week's issue, and until then recommend its contents to our readers.