The Hungarians
absorbed into themselves Italians, Germans, and Czechs, and the modern
Hungarian is, according to Arminius Vambery, a typical product of the
fusion of Europe and Asia, Turanian and Aryan. And that is the sort of
way in which after a few centuries we get the chauvinistic cries:
"Germany for the Germans," "Poland for the Polish," "Hungary for the
Hungarians." In truth, no nation has a right to anything it cannot hold
by might. And who shall determine what a nation is? Who are the
Americans? Who are the English? "Norman and Saxon and Dane are we." And
once upon a time some of us threw up our country and sailed away in the
_Mayflower_. For patriotism is not the only bond of brotherhood. Men may
be the sons of an idea as well as of a soil. There was a Hungarian girl
selling silver at a stall, who had spent four years in Chicago. Never
have I heard better American, except it be from a Budapest man who had
come back to revisit his native town, and was disgusted with its
smallness and slowness. _Per contra_, I met an American girl in
Switzerland who had lived much in Germany, and whose English had such a
Teutonic intonation that it was difficult to realise she was not speaking
German. And language is but typical of the rest.
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