On this sacred holiday of Christmas happy thoughts of our childhood come before us. We can hear the peals of church bells in the small villages back home calling us to prayer. We can see our dear Hungarian people dressed in their native attire hurrying to church. It is Christmas. Our mind is preoccupied with the soul-stirring thought that on this beautiful holiday, the holiday on which love was born, the worst man in the world yearns to do some good deed. The worst criminal in the world looks back at his childhood days and thinks of his mother, and automatically his hands are clasped in prayer. It is Christmas!

This is the way in which we emigrant Hungarians dream of our former happiness. We wait for children to come and sing Christmas carols under our windows, and 2to make our dreams complete, we can hear a church bell in the distance. It does not sound like those which we used to hear back in our native land. We look out the window, and we awaken from our beautiful dream, for the bell that we heard turns out to be that of a locomotive passing by. Under our windows we see our Hungarian brothers pass, some coming home and others going to work. The day is dark and dreary, and the air is full of smoke. The only way that we can tell that it is Christmas is to look at the calendar.

There is a newspaper on the table; the name of it is A Het (The Week), and its editor is Geza Kende. We start to read it; we are attracted by a piece entitled "The Witches' Kitchen". It deals with two Hungarian Catholic priests in Hungarian-American communities and the fight that has been going on between them. With sad and tearful eyes we read about the unbecoming behavior of these two Catholic clergymen. Our hearts are broken when we think that we Hungarians took the wanderer's staff in our hands; it was the unfairness of our lot [in Hungary] which caused us to emigrate to America, this vast prison, where every one must suffer for his sins if he has any. This is where the struggle for 3bread will clear one's conscience. And we who have no country, instead of loving and respecting one another, display greed and selfishness toward [our fellow Hungarians]! This greed and this selfishness hurt us. And those who are setting us such an example are the very ones who should be assuaging the terrible distress in which we exist--those who will ascend to the pulpit on Christmas morning and proclaim, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men!"

We turn the pages, and another article attracts our attention. "A Comical Play about Hungarian-Americans" is the title of this piece. It is indeed a sad situation when comedies are written about us poor disillusioned Hungarian-Americans! Well, we read it. It is Menyhert Lengyel, the famous dramatic writer, whose works have been translated into other languages, and whose plays are known to all civilized nations. Lengyel, the famous Hungarian writer, has written a comedy about Hungarian-Americans! In this play he derides them just because a few thousand have returned to Hungary with fairly large sums of money and are taking advantage of their American citizenship. The name of the play 4is "The Battle of Waterloo".

Cannot you see, you poor Hungarian-Americans, that one of the greatest Hungarian writers has taken you and impaled you on the tip of his pen? Those whom he is writing about are those who during the war and after it aided poverty-stricken Hungary and its people. Lengyel, the great writer, belittles and derides them in this comical play that he has written. The whole world will laugh at us.

Yet the character of the Hungarian-American is not to be likened to that of the immigrant who comes here to save money and then hurries back with it to aid the "old country," where he becomes the victim of swindlers of all sorts. Some of these swindlers and cheats have reached very deeply into the pockets of some of the despised Hungarians who have returned to their native land with good intentions. These people should be pitied, not ridiculed.

But if Hungarian-Americans do not come to their senses soon, then Menyhert 5Lengyel will be proved correct when he belittles them in the eyes of the world.

These sad thoughts must be cast aside. Hungarians! In this dream of ours let us produce some real Christmas thoughts. For the first lady of every true Hungarian's heart is right here among us--Countess Karolyi. Let us think about her! She is the granddaughter of a man who was one of the most loyal followers of the Hapsburgs, Count Gyula Andrassy. Countess Karolyi was disowned by her family for remaining faithful to her husband when his property was confiscated, and he was driven into exile, because he was fighting for the freedom of the Hungarian nation. Hungarian-Americans did nothing to help this great man in distress because those who drove him out made sure that the more influential Hungarians in this country should not be able to do anything about it. Finally, however, the Hungarian-Americans became restive, and decided to alleviate the sufferings of Mihaly Karolyi and to make arrangements for a tour of this country for his wife, so that she might personally enlighten the American public concerning the injustice inflicted upon her husband, who had put a stop to 6unjustifiable bloodshed and had driven the Hapsburgs off the throne of Hungary--those same Hapsburgs who for the last four hundred years have oppressed the Hungarian people.

Hungarian-Americans! On this sacred holiday of Christmas we cannot cherish a more beautiful thought than that of Countess Karolyi, who left her husband on a sick bed and her children in poverty to come here to save a nation from destruction. She came here at the request of the largest republic in the world, the United States. She is a pilgrim here among us on this sacred Christmas holiday. She probably thinks of her sick husband with tears in her eyes. Hungarian-Americans! If this grand Hungarian lady comes to visit you, take her in your arms lovingly and caress her, for it will heal that heart of hers which has been torn to shreds by the suffering which she has endured.

If your hearts are filled with these thoughts, your Christmas holiday, even though you are far away from your native land, should be a day of joy and contentment, and it will surely be a holy day in your hearts.