The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in EuropeWashington, Booker T.
History
The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe
Washington, Booker T.
Poor -- Europe; Working class -- Europe
Unfortunately the ambition and success of the Magyars in their
effort to gain their political independence and preserve their
peculiar racial type from being lost and swallowed up by the other and
"inferior" peoples by whom it is surrounded have encouraged every other
nationality in a similar desire and determination.
"If it is good for the Magyars to preserve their language, customs, and
racial traditions," say the other races, in effect, "why is it not just
as important for us that we preserve ours?"
The reply of the Magyars is, in effect: "You have no language, no
history, no tradition worth keeping. In short, you are an inferior
race."
Naturally the argument does not end there. The other nationalities
reply by founding national schools and colleges to study and preserve
their peculiar language, traditions, and customs, while these
nationalities who have previously had no history proceed to make some.
Thus the doctrine of superiority of the Magyar race, which has been
so valuable in stimulating the Magyars to heroic efforts in behalf of
their own race, seems to have been just as valuable in stinging into
life the racial pride and loyalty of the other races. And thus, on
the whole, in spite of its incidental cruelties, the conflict of the
races in Hungary, like the struggle of the white and black races in the
South, seems to have done less harm than good. At least this is true
so far as it concerns the races which are down and are struggling up,
because oppression, which frequently stimulates the individual or the
race which suffers from it, invariably injures most the individual or
the race which inflicts it.
Most of the "acts of violence" of which the subordinate nations
complain are committed in the name of what is known as the "Magyar
State Idea," which seems to be little more, however, than the idea
that the Magyars must dominate, although they represent but 51 per
cent. of the population in Hungary proper and 45 per cent. of the total
population, including that of the annexed territory, Croatia-Slavonia.
So far is the Magyar race identified with the Government in Hungary
that it is punished as a kind of treason to say anything against the
Magyars. Most of the persons who are persecuted for political crimes
in Hungary seem to be charged either with panslavism, which is usually
little more than a desire of the Slavs to preserve their own national
existence, or with "incitement against the Magyar nationality."
On the part of the Magyars it does not seem to be any crime to speak
disrespectfully, or even contemptuously, of the other races. I have
observed that those writers who have sought to defend the "Magyar
State Idea" refer quite frankly to the Roumanians and the Slovaks as
"inferior races," who are not competent to govern themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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