American ,fewish Periodkat Center

CLIFTON AVENUE - CINCINNATI 20, OHIO

5

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and the Legal Chronicle

June 6, 1941

urely Commentary •

Pacifism in the Background

In 1917, the Rev. Dr. Charles Rhind Joy was
burned in effigy on the steps of his Portland
church for condemning American war tendencies.
But last week Dr. Joy returned from a seven-
and-a-half months' stay in Europe as director of
Unitarian Service Committee with the regret that
he no longer can be the pacifist he was. To re-
porters he made this statement after asserting
that Germany is a distinct menace to the safety
and securiy of America, and that Germany and
America are bound to clash:
"I wish I could continue to be a pacifist. I
regret exceedingly that I cannot. But what I saw
happen in Germany and Russia causes me to
state that, good or bad, I am not a pacifist any
longer. It has been demonstrated to me that we
can't, at this time, depend upon good-will be-
tween nations to keep the world at peace. In
the interim, sonic other means must be used."
Dr. Joy added that "an aggyessive dictatorship
such as we know Germany to be can't exist with
a vital democracy. There is bound to be a clash
of interests. Both are dynamite."
Circumstances have forced pacifism in the back-
ground. Men like Dr. Albert Einstein, Prof. Bert-
rand Russell and other, who were uncompromis-
ing pacifists, today urge a militant stand to speed
the destruction of the world reactionary forces
represented by the Nazi-Fascist powers. The
world line-up is clear, and the clash, spoken of
by Dr. Joy, has already taken place. The Nazi-
Fascist ideology must be destroyed if men are
to be free. To make men free it is even worth
abandoning pacifism.

•

H. L. Meites Pens a Credo

H. L. Meites, editor of the Chicago Jewish
Chronicle, has been devoting himself in the past
two years to encouraging refugee artists who
have created symbolic Jewish art works, in clay,
such as book ends, Torah reproductions, etc.
Mr. Meites' latest hobby is the production of
a key ring, with a coin attached, the face of
which has a reproduction of the Statue of Lib-
erty with the inscription underneath it of "My
Country", and the reverse of which, showing a
scroll, with the Tablets of the Law bearing the
Ten Commandments interposed on a Mogen Dovid,
carrying the words "My Faith".
The entire idea is splendid as a constant re-
minder of the great duties all Americans have
today—to their country and their faith.
Accompanying this memento, H. L. Meites has
published a credo in which he states that "In
these trying days when tyranny, intolerance and
persecution are rampant; when personal liberty
is trampled under foot and religious worship is
denied, it is heartening and encouraging to carry
with you a coin on which is embossed on one side
the Statue of Liberty, and on the other side the
Torah and Ten Commandments, symbols of the
Faith of our Fathers."
Those who have received this souvenir will
be indebted to Mr. Meites for an original idea
and for a thrilling constant reminder of the two-
fold obligation which makes the privilege of be-
ing an American so sacred.
•

The Jewishness of the Late Henri Bergson

A French officer who escaped from a German
prison camp, describing the venality and disorder
of German administration in occupied France, re-
veals that the works of the late Henri Bergson
are among those banned by the Nazis. Which
serves to bring up again the subject of Bergson's
Jewish background as well as his conversion to
Christianity a few years ago. The revelations
published by Madame Maritain in the Catholic
weekly Commonweal about Bergson's conversion,
stirred up interesting discussion, in the course of
which Dr. A. S. Oko, former librarian of He-
brew Union College, stated that Bergson "was
at no time of his long life even remotely iden-
tified with the Jewish community. I doubt whether
he ever took part in a Jewish cause; he never
came to the defense of his persecuted people."
The controversy anent Bergson became more
aggravated by virtue of the proud and dignified
attitude assumed by the French philosopher in
rejecting an offer from the Vichy government,
when it decreed its anti-Semitic policy, for exemp-
tion from restrictions and for status as an Hon-
orary Aryan. In a letter to Commonweal of re-
cent date, Charles Donne of New Haven, Conn.,
points out that in a book entitled "Bergson, mon
Maitre," by Gilbert Maire, conversations with
Bergson are recorded throwing new light on the
subject. Mr. Donne translated the following state-
ment by Bergson, believed to have been made in
1912, and incorporated it in his letter to Com-
monweal:

The Dreyfus case is still weighing heavily
over our political horizon. Do you wish to
know my opinion on this s ubject? For a long
time, I have believed in the g uilt of my
co-religionist; the Henry forgery has made
me incline toward a belief in his innocence
and has, at any rate, made be an advocate
of revision. Nevertheless, I have always blamed

the nerturbatory methods used to obtain it,
and which have transformed into a deplorable
pinion,
civil war an affair which, in my o

purely
could have been m aintained on the
judiciary plane. I have never shared in the
Dreyfus
Dreyfusian enthusiasm and, in the
case, I have cast the blame on everybody.
As you can imagine, such an attitude has

exposed me to the hostility of both groups.
Let us now turn to the Jewish problem.
am very glad that you ask me the question
mbarassment in
quite frankly, and I feel no e
answering you. I need not tell you that I
in the first
disapprove of anti-Semitism,

Federation Board
To Elect Officers
By Philip Slomovitz

place because I am a Jew and have always
proclaimed myself to be one, in the second
place because this doctrine seems to me vul-
gar even more than barbarous, based as it is
on a racial theory which is grossly arbitrary

and superficial and not amenable to distinc-
tions in a matter where it is above all neces-

sary to make distinctions.

I do not deny the existence, among Jews,
of certain racial traits which isolate them,

but do these traits really form a homogeneous
block as claimed by their enemies? As a Jew,
I have been forced to observe rather the con-
trary. There is a Jewish materialism, but
there is also an idealism; there is a revolu-
tionary Messianism, but there is also a con-
servative spiritualism. Christianity is an off-
shoot of Judaism, at least in part, and I find
this derivation quite natural. In one word,
in discussing the Jews, taken as a whole,
one exposes oneself to the same difficulties
and the same mistakes as in generalizing
about the English and the French. And that
is where I see above all in anti-Semitism either
a mass of prejudices, or a specious method
and, ordinarily, a justification of the latter

An election meeting of the
hoard of governors of the Jewish
Welfare Federation has been
called by Clarence H. Enggass,
board chairman, for Tuesday af-
ternoon, June 10, at 4 o'clock,
in the Federation offices, 51 W.
Warren Ave., Room 308.
In addition to conducting the
election of officers, the board will
be given a summary report on
the 1911 Allied Jewish Campaign.
The campaign is conducted an-
nually under the auspices of the
Jewish Welfare Federation.
Present officers of the Federa-
tion include: Abraham Srere,
president; Clarence H. Enggass,
chairman of the board; Fred M.
Butzel, chairman of the executive
committee ; Israel II imelhoch,
Nate S. Shapero and Mrs. Henry
\Vineman, vice-presidents; Maurice
Aronsson, treasurer; Isidore Sobe-
!off, secretary.

of citizenship and that is where I cannot fol-
low those who would appeal to Jewish solidar-
ity. This solidarity, which I am the first to
recognize and to practice, must cease if it

runs counter to the national interests which
naturalized Jews have above all the duty
to respect and serve. They do not always

respect them and thus contribute in providing
some semblance of justification to anti-Semit-
ism. As for me, I shall never oppose my
quality of Jew to that of Frenchman nor,
for that matter, to that of Christian. Many
of my friends, and perhaps the best, are

fervent Catholics, to mention only Edouard
Le Roy.

While there is little ipformation hitherto un-
known to be secured from this statement, a com-
plete study of the Bergsonian conflict seems to
indicate an aloofness from Jews, an irritation
with the people he sprung from, an admiration
for Catholicism which he later embraced. Only
when there is an outbreak of violent anti-Semit-
ism did he become concerned with the Jewish
problem. This accounts for the magnificent stand
he took against the Vichy anti-Semitism on the
eve of his death—a stand which does more to
glorify his name with a single act of self-respect
and courage than his lifetime of preaching and
philosophizing. The point to recognize is that
Bergson and many intellectuals like him are
negative Jews. Persecution brings them nearer
their people, but they have not learned to adopt
a positive attitude for the creation of Jewish
values. Those who have begun to be positive are
the refugee group who have left Germany and
are now part of a wholesome and constructive
Jewish community in Palestine. The exceptions
to the rule are Prof. Albert Einstein and a very
few others like him who have been consistently
more self-respecting in viewing their position as
Jews and are therefore destined also to receive
greater respect from their own people as well
as non-Jews.

MONTEITH INN

For descriptive folder, TA, write to
Hotel or to Mr. II. ShopsowItz, 205 Spa-
tlIna Ale., Toronto, Canada. Phone

'FrItilty 0862.

Trees Planted in
Palestine Forests

by the former.

Anti-Semitism therefore sets the Jewish prob-
lem in a wrong light, but this is where I differ
with many of my co-religionists, for the Jew-
ish problem remains and, in my opinion, it
must be faced. It resolves itself, at bottom, to
a question of naturalization. All aliens, wheth-
er Jews or not, are far from being worthy

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"CALL FOR

The Jewish National Fund
Council of Detroit announces the
planting of trees in Palestine
forests as follows:
In the Fred M. Butzel Forest:
One tree in honor of consecra-
tion of Judith Pregerson by Mr.
and Mrs. Samuel N. Heyman;
two trees in memory of Mrs. An-
nie Gurman by Mr. and Mrs. Ben
Brown; one tree in memory of
Nathan Schermer, husband of
Rose Schermer, by Hebrew La-
dies Aid Society; one tree in
memory of Hattie Krohn Gold-
stein, by Mrs, Mary Koppelman,
DRIVE
Evelyn and Frances.
SAFELY!
In the J. II. Ehrlich Forest:
One tree in memory of Dora
Dontzig by Jewish Women's Eu-
ropean Welfare Organization.
To plant trees in Palestine
Forests call the chairman of the
tree committees of the Jewish
National Fund Council of Detroit,
Mrs. Alexander W. Sanders, Ho-
garth 0967, 2342
Broadstreet.
1

•
Birkhead and the Democratic Way of Life

When the present war is over, with the Nazis
crushed in the very dust they have been blow-
ing for years in the eyes of the many millions
of people they arc now tormenting; and when
the lunatic fringe in democratic countries is
relegated to the degraded position it deserves
in a free world, the name of one man will stand
out as that of one of the most fearless champions
of justice. lie is Leon M. Birkhead, director of
Friends of Democracy, a movement he created
several years ago to conduct a militant fight for
the preservation of true American democratic
ideals.
A few weeks ago we had occasion to speak
of Dr. Birkhead's efforts against the America
First Committee's reactionary set-up as "the Nazi
Transmission Belt", his fight against Joe Mc-
Williams, the Coughlinites and the Christian
Frontists. The latest courageous act of Dr. Birk-
head and the Friends of Democracy is the warn-
ing against the rise of a Gestapo in this country
and the call to Americans: "We must offer all
of our strength, all of our resources, to the
valiant free forces now fighting Hitler, his Nazis
and his co-dictator allies. Nazism, the root, is
the real foe that threatens us. Its evil plant,
the Gestapo, will perish when Nazism is de-
stroyed."
This call, and Birkhead's warnings against the
Gestapo, are incorporated in a 32-page pamphlet
which should help corral all forces for decency
in this country against the common foe of de-
mocracy in the world.
Birkhead never fails to write a letter without
concluding it with the words, "Yours for the
democratic way of life." Ile reminds us of the
time when Zionists used to end their letters with
the Hebrew "B'Birchath Zion", or with the "Yours
with Zion's greetings". People who do not fail
to speak of their devotion to a cause do not
forget the cause. Birkhead never forgets to men-
tion the democratic cause, and his constant em-
phasis upon it is a boon for democracy. Those
who are hesitant and fearful—please note—and
introduce similar practice for yourselves.

SILVER
STAR
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