Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/223

 itself to do something for the liberations of the Uhro-Rusins.

The great war furnished the opportunity. The two fraternal organizations together with the representatives of the Greek Catholic clergy combined to form the American National Council of Uhro-Rusins. A memorandum was prepared by this body and submitted to President Wilson on October 17th, 1918. It recites the grievous wrongs suffered by their people from the barbarous rule of the Magyars and asks the President to help this small nation to be allowed to determine its own future. It is said that President Wilson was pleasantly surprised by the sound political judgment displayed by the representatives of the Uhro-Rusins. They naturally said that their ideal would be, like that of any other nation, to have their own independent state, but that since they were so small they feared that this ideal would be hard to realize and that therefore they were willing to accept the alternative of constituting an autonomous state attached to one of the larger neighboring nations. In the reconstruction of the old Hapsburg empire into free national states the territory of the Uhro-Rusins will have four neighbors; the Czechoslovaks on the west, the Ukrainians across the Carpathian Mountains on the east and the northeast, the Roumanians to the southeast and the Magyars to the Southwest. None of the Uhro-Rusins would think of joining their fate with that of the Magyars, for they have suffered too much from them, even if nothing be said of the Asiatic language of the Magyars, so different from the Slav tongue.

There is no quarrel between the Uhro-Rusins and their Roumanian neighbors, but the difference of language is so fundamental that annexation of the Uhro-Rusin counties to Transylvania and with it to Roumania would not work well. Thus the only alternative for this little people is choice between union with the Ukrainians or the Czechoslovaks.

In language the Uhro-Rusins are nearer to their kinsmen in Galicia and the Ukraine, but the Czechoslovak language, especially its Slovak branch, is so closely related that the Uhro-Rusins have no difficulty in understanding it. And so the American National Council of Uhro-Rusins considered and balanced economic and other advantages which their people at home would derive from the eastern and the western neighbors. A meeting was held by the directors of the Council at Scranton, Pa., on November 12th. It is not known what motives influenced this body of representative men to vote for union with the Czechoslovak Republic. No doubt the strongest motive in their minds was the fear that their small people would be swallowed up and its individuality lost in a Ukrainian state which would number of 30 million people at the very least, and which may quite likely be a part of the great federated Russian state. The motion carried in the meeting of the Uhro-Rusin Council provided that the Uhro-Rusins, after receiving guarantees that they would have full powers of local self-government, should join the Czechoslovak Democratic Republic. And in order that this decision might carry more weight, it was also decided that a plebiscite be carried out among the Uhro-Rusin immigrants in America in the local lodges of the two principal organizations and in the parishes of the Greek Catholic church. It was provided that voting should be completed within three weeks and no doubt was felt by the leaders that their decision unanimously arrived at would receive unanimous approval by their people.

At the same time the National Council felt that the Uhro-Rusin immigrants in America could not bind their brothers in the old country, even though the American Uhro-Rusins were almost as numerous as those remaining in Hungary. It was there fore decided that a delegation composed of three persons should proceed at once to northern Hungary, advise the leaders of the people there of the decision arrived at in America and explain to the people at home the reasons, why union with the Czechoslovaks should be adopted by them as the most advantageous course open to the Uhro-Rusins. The delegation is composed of Gregory I. Zsatkovich, Chairman, Julius G. Gardos, and the Rt. Rev. Valentine Gorzo. As soon as the result of the plebiscite is obtained, there delegates will proceed to Hungary to perform its mission.

The Uhro-Rusins of America are very fortunate in that they have found an unusually able spokesman in Gregory I. Zsatkovich, a young lawyer of Pittsburgh. He interpreted their desires before President