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The committee met, pursuant to adjournment at 10 o'clock a. m., in room 426, Senate Office Building, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge presiding.

Present: Senators Lodge (chairman), Brandegee, Knox, New, Moses, Swanson, and Pomerene.

The CHAIRMAN. We will hear those who desire to speak in behalf of Hungary. Our time is very short. We can give you gentlemen only an hour, as we have another hearing set for this morning. STATEMENT OF EUGENE PIVÁNY, NATIONAL SECRETARY OF THE HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN FEDERATION.

Mr. PIVÁNY. Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee on Foreign Relations, before presenting our case to you on behalf of the Hungarian-American Federation, I wish to express our thanks for, and appreciation of, the spirit of fair play evinced by the willingness of your committee to have us testify before you in the case of Hungary.

We feel that in appearing before you we are performing a civic duty and are serving the best interests of our country as well as of mankind, for

(1) We endeavor thereby to prevent the United States of America from becoming an active partner to the unwarranted, unjust and arbitrary disintegration and annihilation of a country that has existed in the territorial condition now to be disturbed for over a thousand years and had become a recognized factor of civilization;

(2) By placing at the disposal of your committee, the Senate of the United States, and the American people the true facts of the case, we endeavor to prevent that judgment be based on the one-sided, or unreal, or fabricated statements which have been spread broadcast by the claimants of Hungarian territory for several years past;

(3) The fate of what had been known until the armistice as Hungary is not a matter of indifference to the rest of the world, as might be inferred from the lack of interest in the subject shown by various factors of public opinion in this country. On the contrary, the very peace of Europe depends on it.

In order to add to the lucidity of our brief, we beg leave to give first a concise account of the treatment accorded to Hungary during the armistice, then present our data and arguments grouped as to (1) the historical; (2) the racial or ethnographic; (3) the religious; (4) the economic; and (5) the political or international aspects of the case, and, finally, state our conclusions.

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