5

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and The Legal Chronicle

June 21. 1940

p urely Commentary

The Spirit Versus Might

Despondent people have much to learn from
thefaithful who see the hand of God in all that
is happening on earth. The religious person will
not dtsrair as long as he believes that there is
a heavenly power that guides the destininies of
men.
Jews, who have so terrifying a stake in the
pre sent world tragedy, have much to learn from
their history. What is happening today is merely
a r epetition of what occurred before. It is a
battle between the spirit and the sword. It is
o nce again llebraism versus Hellenism. The latter
said that the power of the sword and of physical
strength shall rule the world. The Hebrew re-
plied: "Not by might nor by power, but by My
spirit. said the Lord."
The present struggle is a fight between might
an d right, between the spirit of decency and the
rule Of the jungle.
Temporarily, there is a setback, and a part of
the f orc es that stand for human rights has been
defeated.
But this is NOT the end.
Right MUST conquer, and it surely will.
Read the history of the Jew, read the history
of the world, and you find that events have moved
in cycles; that the jungle has been victorious be-
fore and that it has collapsed under the pres-
sure of the inevitable.
The tragedy is that the jungle should have
rev ived in the enlightened 20th Century. But
this should merely be an encouragement that our
enlightenment will shorten the age of madness.
We DARE NOT despair. Life, after all, does
go on and it WILL go on. What we need today
is faith and courage—to make this life better.
Have faith! Read the story of your people and
of mankind, and you will find consolation that
good must come out of evil, that right must con-
quer might.
•

The "Treachery" of Success

There is one major danger in the present ca-
lamity. Since "nothing succeeds like success,"
there is danger of people saying that the totali-
tarians are right (as the "Fifth Column" in this
country and elsewhere is already saying), and
that might is, after all; preferable to weakness,
and, therefore, to right.
The moment we yield to this sentiment, we
are lost. The moment mankind accepts this theory,
we are hurled all the deeper back into the jungle.
This is a philosophy we must reject. Sometimes
the wrong thing succeeds. What mankind . must
strive for is the success of righteousness. We
must pursue justice. The lone great democracy
in which we live must take up the fight which is
traditionally the battle of the Jew—the battle
of the spirit versus the sword, of justice against
terrorism. Sooner or later, the entire world will
accept this call so that justice may triumph.
•

The Parochial School Movement

The action taken by the Farband convention
in Detroit to encourage the building of a paro-
chial school in Montreal serves to revive interest
in the parochial school movement.
Montreal's will be the first Yiddish parochial
school in America. In New York there are many
orthodox parochial schools that function as ad-
juncts to yeshivas. A movement was inaugurated
during the past few months in New York to ex-
pand the parochial school movement among ortho-
dox groups throughout the country.
•In the main, the parochial school idea has not
been successful in American Jewry. We had a
parochial group in Detroit 20 years ago, as part
of the United Hebrew Schools' system. But these
classes were considered failures and were aban-
doned. Such a system is possible in New York,
in thickly populated orthodox. centers, or in Mon-
treal, where the majority of the population—the
Catholics—foster such an educational system. But
it is a difficult effort, not to mention its undesir-
ability. The tendency- should be what it is today
—to foster inter-group relationships rather than
to encourage separatism.
For those who prefer the Ilebrew school system
to the Yiddish method there was an impressive
example of weaknem in the latter at the Farband
convention. The child who greeted the large gath-
ering in Yiddish spoke with difficulty. It was evi-
dent that her Yiddish was not natural to her.
Somehow; such difficulty was never evidenced in
similar demonstrations of Hebrew speaking by
students of the United Hebrew Schools. It is not easy
to ascribe a ,reason for it, except that Hebrew is
more generally and more naturally acceptable to
all of us as the language of the synagogue and
the prayerbook and of a revived Jewish national
existence in Palestine.

•

The Tour of Photographs

Louis Rittenberg, executive and literary editor
of the Universal Jewish Encyclopdia, explains the
delay in the appearance of the second volume.
"Quite by accident," he tells us, "we were able,
after a great deal of frantic cabling and wire-
pulling, to secure 15 additional color illustrations
for our Encyclopedia. These underwent quite a
calvary, in that they were first confiscated in Ger-
many, then smuggled out to Holland, thence to
France
ranee and from there to Palestine, finally reach-
ing us just a few weeks ago. But they were well
worth waiting- for, and Volume II will have not
one but three color illustrations, witih a propor-
tionate volume of color in the remaining volumes."
Incidentally, great interest has been aroused in
the new Encyclopedia as a result of the essay
contest conducted by The Chronicle among con-
firrnants and consecrants in which the first prize
winner received a set of the beautiful new en-
cyclopedia. Those who have already seen and
thumbed through the first volume will anxiously
await the appearance of the second.

By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

The Map of France—lt Will Not Die

The day before the French surrender, R. L.
Dutfus, able member of the editorial staff of the
New York Times, wrote a long poem on "The
Map of France." He opened with this verse:

"Shut your eyes.
Now let me guide your finger
On the man.
Its alive, isn't it?
It's beating like a pulse.
It's warm with men's lives."

Then, reviewing the story of France, the in-
trusion of .Julius Caesar, the heroism of Joan
d'Ai c, the battles of centuries, he concludes with
the following:

Th e tanks break through
There swoop the Stukas.
Hitler's on the march,
Into a land not his,
tato a land he cannot understand
And therefore would destroy.
The smoke rolls
In the Place de la Concorde.
The city's ringed with fire.
Maybe Hitler's right.
Maybe it's hell and damnation
And the world's end.
Maybe liberty won't work,
Maybe equality can't fight,
Maybe fraternity can't knock a tank out.

And maybe not.
The map says not.
Verdoon and Chateau Teery say not.
Notre Dame and Chartres say not.
The faces of Frenchmen,
The old houses,
The books,
The songs,
The streams, the rivers, the mountains,
The army of those who died for liberty,
Say not.

This is the map of France.
It's alive.
It's beating like a pulse.
It's warm with men's lives.
It's been ploughed in blood
And fertilized with bones.

But it will not die.
They say some beaten troops
Saw Joan the .other night.
She wept but her sword was flaming.
This is the map of France.

And the eminent poet, Edna St. Vincent Mil-
lay, writing also for the New York Times and
several other newspapers, under the heading
"There Are No Islands, Any More; Lines Writ-
ten in Passion and in Deep Concern for England,
France and My Own County," makes a plea for
the democracies—and for the security of Amer-
ica. "The tidal wave devours the shore," she
writes, "There ARE no islands any more." Thus
rebuking those who insulate themselves and call
themselves isolationists,. she concludes with this
frantic plc a:

Not France, not England's what's involved,
Not we—there's something to be solved
Of grave concern to free men all:
Can Freedom stand?—Must Freedom Fall?

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(Meantime, the tide devours the shore:
There are no islands any more.)

Oh. build, assemble, transport, give,
That England, France and we may live,
Before tonight, before too late,
To those who build our country's fate
In desperate fingers, reaching out
For weapons we confer about,
All that we can, and more, and now!
Oh, God, let not the lovely brow
Of Freedom in the trampled mud
Grow cold! Have we no brains, no blood,
No enterprise—no any thing
Of which we proudly talk and sing,
Which we like men can bring to bear
For Freedom, and against Despair?

Lest French and British fighters, deep
In battle, needing guns and sleep,
For lack of aid be overthrown,
And we be left to fight alone.

A grave responsibility resbs upon the United
States of America, and our President's position
is not an enviable one. But he is firm • in his de-
cisions, and we should be grateful for that.
But each one of us must be firm. Each one
of us must know the problem and must be
determined to help our Chief Executive to back
up the Government, to defend the last citadels of
democracy—"For Freedom, and Against Despair."
•

The Baby Carriage Story

This Commentator wishes to repeat a story he
told two years ago. It is about a German worker
in a baby carriage factory who became a father.
First are improvised a bed for his new-born baby
out of newspapers. Then he secured an old basket
for the infant. Finally, he decided that his baby
must have a carriage, and he informed his wife
that he would steal parts in his factory and set
one up. For days he kept bringing parts home.
Then, all parts compiled, he began the job of
assembling them. He worked nights for a week,
and when the job was done he had—a machine
gun.
The democratic powers knew the facts about
Germany. They knew that everything was dis-
carded by the Nazis in favor of a war machine.
They did nothing about it and now the entire
world is paying the price for their weakness.

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