WHO FIGHTS FOR FREEDOM?
Mayer, Milton
The Two Worlds—II Who Fights for Freedom? by MILTON MAYER This is the second of a series of articles by Mr. Mayer based on his recently concluded year and a half of living and traveling on...
...It was 9 a.m...
...Oh," said my friend, "that part of it is still simple...
...And won't...
...Why," said the man, whose business is refugees, "all of them...
...But when it comes to fighting for freedom, we have to be conscripted...
...I think, I said...
...And what do you think of the fellow at the races who said, "You can't beat a horse with no horse...
...I hadn't said he did...
...This is important—completely important—though Americans may sometimes forget it...
...Who, besides a Paul Douglas here or there, with or without a gun, fights for freedom...
...He looked at the Times editorial again and shook his head again and said, "Dear me...
...Then he went on: "So first there were the Titoists, nationalist antiRussian Communists in a country which the Russians do not love...
...They were liberated' countries...
...Since the last war the Communist doctrine is Trotskyite again, internationalist...
...Hungarian nationalism is fierce—but you know our Magyar history with the Turks and the Hapsburgs...
...What are we fighting for...
...They fought it first...
...I said I did...
...We didn't hear much about the Fascists and the criminals and the anti-Semites," I said...
...We were an occupied country, occupied by the victorious enemy in the last war...
...Or down the street in Mississippi, where the war for freedom is hottest and a federal grand jury refuses to indict the lynchers of a Negro named Mack Parker...
...The nationalist Communists are called Titoists now...
...Right here, where the battlefield is so much more readily accessible than Moscow...
...If our present government were an outright dictatorship and demanded nothing more of us than our money and the anti-Communist conformity it now demands, who would rise up, or uprise, against it...
...The concluding installment of the series, "Who Doesn't Fight for Freedom...
...Who uses it when he has it...
...Have another cognac," he said, "and I'll tell you who the Freedom Fighters were...
...Purely nationalist...
...Of course there were," said my friend, "but not very many...
...So the student movement was basically at odds with the Titoists, except for the nationalism...
...They join our fight against Communism lustily, but so, too, do the Fascists...
...said my friend...
...I know what you mean...
...Hungary was the first true Nazi country...
...I continue," he said, and he continued...
...My Hungarian friend EDITORS...
...And these were the people who hated the Communists the most and the Russians the most...
...fatal, because in the end—" "I know about the end," I said...
...But this was different from Poland and Yugoslavia...
...I know one man—count 'em, one— who grabbed a gun and fought for freedom in the last war...
...Nagy," he went on, "was of course a Communist and an ardent Communist...
...That was long ago...
...you have to drain it or your toast is suspect...
...It was 8:45 a.m...
...Mayer has also written for many other publications including The Reporter, Life, Harper's, Fellowship, Commonweal and the Saturday Evening Post.—THE ""Y^"HO DONE IT...
...Have another...
...I wrote down "completely important," so as not to forget it...
...Three cognacs since breakfast...
...You wouldn't...
...Who fights for freedom...
...All of them...
...will appear in the April issue of The Progressive...
...You don't...
...From what...
...Who uprose in the uprising...
...In Debrecen the rabbis east of the Theiss took refuge in the Reformed Seminary...
...Do I make myself clear...
...Certainly...
...He lived as a Communist, he took power as a Communist, he called his opponents betrayers of Communism, and he died as a Communist...
...Of course nobody mentions Trostky...
...And the time of the uprising was what you Americans call a free-for-all...
...My friend was a Hungarian...
...This happened also in Poland and, of course, in Yugoslavia much earlier...
...This was Horthyism, the still very strong remnants of the Fascist Cross and Arrow...
...We wouldn't...
...The Titoist split in Hungary meant, of course, a split with Russia...
...that you know...
...And he had to fight first to get in because he was over-age...
...There less than here, where there has been a school of freedom in periods past...
...Nationalism by itself responds to rightist sentiments and evokes them...
...The two peoples who think that nothing is funny, on the other hand, make the best capitalists: the Swiss and the Swedes...
...You can't take a sip for the sake of politeness and put your glass down and leave it...
...But what are they fighting for...
...The third is not strictly a definition, but a Hungarian recipe for baking a cake...
...Perhaps in your country...
...We never had a general election...
...And we had been a Fascist country and the spearhead of Hitler's attack on Russia...
...There never are, are there...
...I said I would...
...It isn't much...
...You know," I said, "this custom of cognac after breakfast—" "I know," he said...
...Our current birthright—and their current admission ticket—requires only that they and we fight against...
...that's why Communism has a hard time in those two countries and Fascism an easy...
...No," said my friend, "I suppose you wouldn't, in newspapers like the one you showed me...
...I beg your pardon...
...Mayer based on his recently concluded year and a half of living and traveling on both sides of the curtain in Europe...
...But you know about the Hungarians...
...But pure nationalist movements are not likely to be leftist," he said...
...You may have heard of him: Paul Howard Douglas, wrong-headed, stout-hearted Senator Douglas...
...Right up until 1945 we have had only feudalism and monarchism struggling for power, and finally Fascism...
...If by human freedom you mean political and civil freedom for the individual, this we have never had in Hungary in our whole thousand years...
...The second is I don't know whose: A Hungarian is the only man who goes into a revolving door behind you and comes out ahead of you...
...That's different," said the man...
...We were in Hungary...
...It gets more complicated with the third element in the uprising...
...thought that my three definitions were funny...
...But it is not a simple answer...
...Don't you think...
...The Two Worlds—II Who Fights for Freedom...
...It was Titoism that put Imre Nagy in power in the uprising of '56," my friend went on...
...I said did...
...But the situation was complicated because the Fascist Horthyites were intensely nationalistic, and so were Titoist Communists...
...In Hungary," said my friend, a Calvinist pastor, "a man who doesn't drink is a Communist...
...From many different things...
...But I'm not a drinking man," I said...
...Then you're a Communist," said my friend, and he poured...
...Good...
...This you must remember...
...The old Horthyite anti-Semitism blazed up across the country, especially in the east...
...I asked...
...There were three major elements...
...He enlisted as a private because he wanted to fight—with his teeth and his claws—for freedom...
...My friend looked at it and shook his head and said, "Dear me...
...Who were the Freedom Fighters...
...Even modified serfdom remained...
...Yes," I said...
...Do they fight for it when they get here and they see that it needs fighting for...
...And what a scramble there is among our freedom-fighters then, to do their fighting from a swivel chair...
...The draft board puts a gun to our heads and says, "You want to fight for freedom, don't you, bub...
...Then there was the second element, the student movement, in the Technical High School in Budapest...
...But these were the true anti-Communists in the 'anti-Communist revolt.'" "Were there," I said, "no genuine fighters for genuine freedom—for human freedom, not just national independence...
...And he didn't enlist as a general, or as a colonel, or as a lieutenant...
...by MILTON MAYER This is the second of a series of articles by Mr...
...But here in Hungary—" He shrugged...
...Anywhere...
...I drained it...
...And they wouldn't...
...Who prizes it—not just praises it, but prizes it...
...It was analogous to the Stalinist-Trotskyite split in Russia in the Twenties...
...Now," said my friend, pouring again, "I'll tell you what I know...
...Russians don't...
...I don't...
...In America," I said, "we think that the revolt was anti-Communist," and I showed him a New York Times editorial that called it exactly that...
...How many of them," I said to the man in West Berlin, "are real refugees...
...To fight for freedom—well," and he lifted his glass and said, "To freedom...
...But...
...There the Stalinists, the nationalists, won and the international revolutionary movement failed, in Germany, China, everywhere...
...The trouble with the Hungarians—my trouble with them—is that every cognac is a toast...
...We don't...
...They ruled our country actually since 1919...
...The first is Molnar's: If you have a Hungarian for a friend, you don't need an enemy...
...For freedom...
...So the Horthyites came out of their holes—and the Titoists let them out of the prisons—to help the common nationalist cause against the Russians...
...It isn't so simple, at that," I said...
...And in all the confusion and the new 'liberty'— it lasted for many weeks afterward, actually—purely criminal elements were loose among the patriots and in very large numbers...
...What do the Freedom Fighters come here for...
...We have heard about them...
...It begins: "Steal three eggs . . Hungarians and Poles are the only people left any more who think that everything is funny...
...In practice international Communism means subservience to the U.S.S.R., just as international anti-Communism means subservience to the U.S.A...
...We fight for advantage and for safety and for comfort and for national independence...
...For four months at the end of the first war the democratic government of Count Karolyi endured, but even this without any election...
...In Switzerland," I said, "a Christian is a man who doesn't drink...
...Who really wants it so that he and everyone else can do something with it that could not be done without it, something besides marching around the Legion Hall in lockstep singing its battle-hymn...
...So there were the three major elements," said my friend, "with only nationalism in common...
...Jews were beaten and robbed and murdered...
...Who fights for freedom here, where we have it, some of us, in great measure, and where the penalty for fighting for it is mild...
...He enlisted, and he didn't enlist in the Navy or the Air Force to escape the infantry...
...The first was the split in the Hungarian Communist Party...
...A regular contributor to this magazine, Mr...
...It was a dangerous game, to open the Horthyite box...
...The Freedom Fighters were—one may say 'are'—what you English call a mixed bag...
...Like all student movements—I think you do not have them in America—this was nationalist...
...They are much more likely to be rightist...
...And didn't...
...I wouldn't...
...The Horthyites had been underground for only ten years...
...My Hungarian friend asked me that: "What do they do in America, the Freedom Fighters who left Hungary in '56...
...Ah, yes," said my friend, "the Freedom Fighters...
...I looked at my watch...
...Hungarian answers are never simple...
...Let me tell you about them," I said, and I told him my three definitions of a Hungarian...
...Who throws, not his vote or his Fourth of July oration, but his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor into the fight for freedom...
Vol. 24 • March 1960 • No. 3
