Students of Slovak nationality have been expelled by school authorities from seminaries and secondary schools for Pan-Slavic propaganda. Pan-Slavism in the case of these unfortunate youths consists in the reading, recitation, or circulation of literature in one of the Slavic tongues. Journalists are prosecuted or jailed for alleged seditious articles against the Hungarian State; newspapers are mulcted in ruinous fines, in many cases tantamount to their suppression. In countries enjoying the blessing of freedom of speech and press, _de facto_ and not only _de jure_, the articles which Hungarian prosecuting attorneys construe as seditious, would be regarded as an honest and fearless criticism of the acts of government. There are few Slovak journalists who have not served terms in jail or whose newspapers have not been fined. To plead one’s case in the courts in the Slovak language, notwithstanding the express provisions of the Law of Nationalities permitting this procedure, would be prejudicial to the litigant’s case in the lower courts and impossible in the higher courts. A patriotic Slovak may not hold a government position of any trust or importance. One aspiring to an office in any way connected with the government, directly or indirectly, must of necessity renounce his nationality--or, in the alternative, conceal his true inward feelings, both before his superiors and before his friends. Apparently with the object of making the world believe that Slovakland has always been Magyar, the Hungarian Government is abolishing the ancient Slavic nomenclature of villages and towns, replacing it with Magyar names, and this crusade is undertaken in districts where from times immemorial no other speech had been heard but Slovak.[22]