Speech #850000177

This little nation. indifferent to her own safety. jumped into the breach. She stood by Hungary as if she. too. as much as Hungary herself. were immediately and fully involved. Without treaty obligations. without any obligations. she alined herself with the Hungarian revolution in the form of aid for fleeing refugees. in a way that will stand for all time a symbol to men whose hearts go out to those seeking to be free. Against this seemingly impossible resistance stood the glowering. wounded. massive Soviet enemy of a free mankind. She was injured to the quick by this glaring exposure of her dishonest propaganda protestations of friendship for the proletariat and for peacethe most gargantuan fraud of the 20th century. I ask passage of this resolution in the Congress for the glory of Austria. of course. but as much for peoples everywhere who do honor to the human spirit. And I want the valiant conduct of Austria memorialized by this documentary recognition from the United States lest the big part this little nation played in the mighty spectacle be swallowed up in the huge world canvas against which the tragedy of Hungary is being enacted. Austrias deed was done without knowing whether she. like the refugees she was helping. would have to go it alone against the full vengeance of the infuriated Soviet Union. Her response to the challenge was instantaneous. it was wholehearted. it was in the tradition of mans noblest conduct toward man. But it was. in addition. as a kind of overplus. a brilliant demonstration of such raw human courage as only legends are made of.