with
an excessive self-confidence, believes himself to be an exponent of his race,
but I am also a patriot. A romantic patriot of the kind of the Italian patriots
and of the better Hungarian and Polish emigrants. This patriotism, however, is
still dormant in me. As certain as it is that I have wiped out of myself any
traces of racial hatred, so that besides Oszkár Jászi there are not many who are
more tenderly and benevolently disposed towards the national minorities in
Hungary than me, so certain it is that patriotism would awake in me in desperate straits
and occasions.
I am afraid it is not impossible that this