PAGE TWO

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE

THE TEST OF PATRIOTISM

AN EDITORIAL

BY RABBI LEO M. FRANKLIN

THIS is a personal word to you who read these
lines. As you grasp the significance of this
message, as you respond to its appeal, you will prove
the character and the degree of your patriotism.
We are living in a time when every individual is on
trial; when his willingness to serve and sacrifice is
the measure of his manhood. Protestations of pa-
triotism that are not backed up by heroic service are
rank hypocrisies. Waving the flag and speaking
brave words for America do not count in the long
run. Nothing counts now but service.

•

Some men understand this. They have at their
country's call put behind them every selfish interest
and laid their strength and their youth upon their
country's altar. Thousands of them are already in
the front lines "Over There," and some have already
brought the supreme sacrifice. Other thousands of
the fairest youth of our land are in the cantonments
preparing to add their strength to that of those who
have preceded them across the seas, and an increas-
ing number of those who are still at home are pre-
pared, nay, eager, to answer the call of service.
Dry-eyed mothers with smiling lips but empty
hearts will bid them farewell—who knows—uerhans
forever. But they will go to their duty as others be-
fore them have gone, for they would be degraded in
their own eyes did they shirk the sacred privilege
that is theirs to fight, and, if need be, to die for the
saving of civilization.
Beside the sacrifices which these men are bring-
ing, how utterly insignificant must be any offering
that we who stay at home can possibly be called
upon to lay upon our country's altar in these times!
It seems well nigh stupid to have to beg any man for
gifts of money to be used in the equipment of our
soldiers, in the care of the wounded, and in the many
and varied forms of merciful service that the horrors
of war compel. Money is utterly without value ex-
cept as it translates itself into terms of service. To
have money and not to use it in the forwarding of
works of patriotism and of mercy is to degrade one's
self to the brutish level of our enemies. To have
within our reach the means of sustaining the men
who are fighting civilization's battle and not to em-
ploy it to that end is to stamp ourselves viler than
the conscienceless hordes against whom we are
pitted in the arena of the world's battle. To be able
to succor the suffering aml not do it is to deny the
divine element that lifts men above the plane of the
brute. To be able to make just a little easier the
work of the Red Cross Society and other agencies of
relief and not to do it is to deny the plea of our nobler
nature and to yield the forces that drag men down
and down and down into the mire of degradation.
And so the appeal of the Detroit Patriotic Fund
which shall come to the men and women of the city
of Detroit this week is, first of all, addressed to their
humanity. Wherever a human soul is stirred by im-
pulses not wholly brutish and barbarian; wherever
the voice of pity sounds stronger than the voice of
power; wherever there is even a dawning sense of
the responsibility which strength owes to weakness,
and of the obligation which those who dwell in com-
fort owe to those who, stripping themselves bare,
have gone forward to fight the fight that shall make
the world safe for our children to live in, the plea to
give generously to the Patriotic Fund will be an-
swered eagerly and generously. Only those who
like our German foes hold to the philosophy of
might will have to be urged to give to this fund as
they never gave to any cause before. Indeed, the
suspicion may not be ungrounded that those who do
not give to the very limit of their power are Ameri-
cans only in name. They will bear watching.
To urge at length why this Patriotic Fund
should be generously supported would seem to be
well nigh superfluous. Leaving out of account al-
together the practical efficiency arguments having
to do with the reduction of overhead expense and of

the conservation of the time and the energies both
of the givers and of the workers through the unifi-
cation of numerous drives for funds into one, we
may urge the patriotic reasons that may not be en-
tirely obvious to all.
That our country, nay, that civilization, is at the
most critical hour that human history has ever
known will be conceded by all thinking men and
women. The fate of mankind hangs in the balance.
We stand in the "valley of decision" as to the kind
of a world in which we and our children shall live.
Shall it be a world such as we in America have
known and loved—a world in which men can dwell
in peace and security, each respecting the rights of
the other; a world in which freedom and justice
abound, and in which every man has at least in
greater or less measure an opportunity for self-
realization?. Or shall it be a world in which no man
is safe? Shall it be a world in which might rules
and not right? Shall it be a world in which there is
no freedom and no justice, but where autocratic
power and the tyranny of self-seeking monarchs
hold the bodies and the souls of men in bondage?
Shall it be a world in which thought and free speech
are trammeled? Shall it be a world in which strong
men must tremble lest in their madness ravaging
hordes of men made into brutes shall pillage their
homes and outrage their women and murder their
children?
These questions are by no means rhetorical, for
the war in which the nations ( of the world are today
engaged shall definitely decide as to whether we
shall live in a world of this sort or the other. Ameri-
cans in their self-confidence, and accustomed as they
are to their security, cannot visualize their own coun-
try invaded and their own people enslaved. So con-
fident are they that no great calamity can come to
them that they are not as wideawake as they should
be to the appalling possibilities of a time like this.
But if we are to believe the words of those who have
just come back from "over there," we must not be
over-confident, but into the struggle which we and
our allies are making for humanity's sake we must
throw every vestige of our power and of our means.
Men of the type of our own Abner Lamed tell us
that the enemy is at the very climax of his power,
and that to underestimate his strength is a mistake
that will lead to our undoing. Now, we have faith
that we shall win this war. We have faith that
because our cause is just the God of the nations will
not permit us to be crushed into the dust. But faith
alone will not save us. We must translate our faith
into terms of such service and such sacrifice as men
never knew before.
The Patriotic Fund simply shows us one of the
ways in which we can serve. That fund, be it remem-
bered, will be used not merely to clothe the naked,
to feed the hungry and to equip our soldiery, but over
and beyond all these things it will carry over the
seas the message of our sympathy with the men who
are fighting our battle. It will encourage and
hearten them, and by that token it will maintain
their morale in a most effective way. It will bridge
the sea between America and France. It will be a
hand stretched out from home to "over there." It
will be a message sounded into the souls of our boys
that we are with them and back of them, ready to
serve with them and to sacrifice for them, as they
are serving and sacrificing for us.
It should scarcely be necessary to point out in
our plea that for once in a tremendous undertaking
such as this, sectarian lines have been entirely oblit-
erated. What a magnificent thing it is to realize
that at last the day has come when Protestant and
Catholic, when Christian and Jew, no longer merely
prate of brotherhood, but have realized a brother-
hood of service, and that in a single drive such
organizations as the Red Cross Society, humanitar-
ian and non-sectarian, stands united with the

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Y. M. C. A., the Knights of Columbus and the Jew-
ish War Relief agencies.

Such unity of effort presages the day of better
understanding, which shall be one of the first 'Ind
one of the finest fruits of the war. But it is espe-
cially fitting that in a drive like this, sect and creed
should be forgotten. Suffering knows no creed and
humanity wears no denominational wrappings and
trappings. Men of every faith and every creed
are banded together in this noble cause as men, as
Americans and, most of all, as lovers of justice and
humanity.

And this brings us to our final word. It is a word
addressed particularly to our Jewish readers. Out
of the Patriotic Fund that is to be gathered, dis-
tinctly Jewish causes have asked for support in a
sum well above $425,000. To this amount they are
well entitled, for they ask no more than the import-
ance of the various causes that they sponsor abso-
lutely justifies. But this word needs to be said.
God forbid that the Jews of this community should
feel content to contribute to the Patriotic Fund only
so much as they expect to take out of it for purely
Jewish causes. We are entering upon this work, riot
as Jews, but as American patriots, and to every
cause represented in this fund we wish to give our
full measure of support. Let us be sure, then, that
we do not content our consciences by giving only
an amount equal to the aggregate of the sums that
last year, and in other years, we gave to Jewish
causes. We must give more, much more, than this.
A million dollars should be a conservative estimate
of the Jew's quota to this $7,000,000 fund that is to
he raised.

We believe that our co-religionists will under-
stand this, and that with their characteristic gener-
osity they will rise to the high and holy duty that
rests upon them. They who fail to do their duty at
this time will be marked men. Even the mantle of
their niggardliness will not hide them from the
spotlight of disdain that shall be directed upon
them. They cannot hide behind the old excuses
that they were wont to give, that so frequent are the
calls upon their generosity to this fund and to that
fund they cannot give in liberal measure. This is
the one great drive of the year. Giving to the Patri-
otic Fund, they give not only to all the great
national and international war-relief agencies and
organizations of mercy, but they contribute also to
more than forty philanthropic institutions which
under no circumstances will call upon them again
during the year.

And so men must give and give, and give again
to this fund, until, if need he, they have stripped
themselves bare. To urge that they have bought
Liberty Bonds to the limit of their power will riot
avail them. The Liberty Bond is an investment,
the safest that the modern world affords. But now
we ask not for money for investment, but as a free-
will offering, to be laid upon the altar of humanity,
of justice and of civilization. What one gives now
will bear no monetary interest, but its interest is to
be computed in the terms of lives saved, of torn and
tattered bodies restored to a semblance of whole-
ness, of blind eyes made to see again, of a racked
and ruined world brought out of chaos into order,
and of a struggling, bleeding, well-nigh crushed
humanity dragged into the mire and muck of bru-
tality, lifted up to the clear heights when once again
men may have a vision of peace and of God.

Is it worth while under such conditions to con-
tribute to the Patriotic Fund? Can any man whose
heart is not dull and dead to every holy impulse
hesitate in his response? Can any man or any
woman who dares to call himself and herself a true
American pause for a moment in an answer to this
question? Our patriotism is being tested. God
grant it stand the test.

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