Page

Four

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and The Legal Chronicle

Book Review

Detroit Jewish Chronicle

By LEON SAUNDERS

and THE LEGAL CHRONICLE

Published Weekly by Jewish Chronicle eukilishing Co., Inc., 525 Woodward Aye., Detroit 26, Mich., Tel. CAdillac 1040

About Books and Reading

SUBSCRIPTION: $3.00 PER YEAR SINGLE COPIES, 10c; FOREIGN, $5.00 PER YEAR

Filtered as Second-class matter March 3, 1916, at the Post office at Detroit, Mich., under the Act of March 3, 1879

Editor-in-Chief, LOUIS W. ENFIELD

Vol. 48, No. 5

Publisher, CY AARON

Managing Editor, NATHAN J. KAUFMAN

Friday, February 1, 1946 (SHEVAT 30, 5706)

National Advisory Budgeting

On the weekend of Feb. 8-11, Detroit
will be host to the delegates of the gen-
eral assembly of the Council of Jewish
Federations and Welfare Funds from
cities all over the country. It is needless
to ask Jews in Detroit to continue their
tradition of the warm hospitality for
which they are noted. It is needless to
ask Detroit Jews to let these delegates
recognize the strong moral encourage-
ment they have always given to the wor-
thy organizations supported by the Fed-
erations. Detroit Jews have always shown
their feelings in a substantial way by
opening their purses wide when the Fed-
eration drive is on.
This weekend affords a splendid oppor-
tunity for Detroiters to learn some of the
more intimate details of the problems that
face Federations. We urge you, there-
fore, to set aside some time during the
weekend, to attend some of the meetings
and learn for yourself what Federations
are thinking and planning all over the
country.
We also urge one more thing. Perhaps
the most important item to be decided on
the floor of the convention is the raging
issue of national advisory budgeting. This
proposal is not a new one and we do not
propose to go into the merits of the ques-
tion. In the interests of solidarity, the pro-
posal will in all probability not be passed
at this time because there is so much op-
position that even if a majority could be
mustered in its favor, it would be unwise
to introduce dissension at a time when
union in the face of crisis is so imperative.
However, there is one thing worthy of
note in the interest of solidarity and union
in this city. The Detroit Jewish Federa-
tion sends its delegates to the convention
uninstructed. That means they are to lis-
ten to the discussion on the floor and each
one is to form his own opinion and vote
on the question as he sees fit.
The delegates go on record in this vote.
They speak for the city of Detroit. Let us
remind the delegates that the city of De-
troit has already expressed an opinion on
this matter which is also on record.

At a meeting of the Jewish Commun-
ity Council called some weeks ago to
discuss this very question, the delegates
of the various organizations which
make up this Council expressed their
views in a vote. After listening to dis-
cussion for and against National Advis-
ory Budgeting by representatives of
both sides, the delegates present voted
overwhelmingly against it.

Let the Federation delegates who go
uninstructed to the convention remember
the expression of opinion of a cross-sec-
tion of the population of this city who
gave that expression formally in a vote
of record on this very proposal. Let the
delegates remember that solidarity in the
Jewish community of Detroit is just as
necesary as it is anywhere else.

And Burst It Will

Legally, a strike is a matter between a
group of employees and an employer. As
such, it would not seem to be the concern
of the general public. If the strikers win,
they get what they have been fighting
for. If they lose, they do not.
But such is not the case at all. The
latest release from the Michigan Unem-
ployment Compensation Commission shows
that for the week of January 26, there
were 87,535 people registered for unem-
ployment benefits. When their period of
compensation runs out, there is only one
place for them to turn and that is to the
Welfare Department. That means that in
the end, the public has to pay for their
upkeep.
From this point of view, a strike is of
direct concern to the public. It is money
out of their pockets. Not only must they
pay directly for the support of strikers
who have no income, but they must face
the fact that all these people without in-

Detroit 26, Michigan

come cannot buy goods and thereby dis-
courage other manufacturers who cannot
find a market for their own product.

Because during war time, a smart
manufacturer's lobby smuggled through
Congress a recapture clause which
means that there is a sixty-two billion
dollar fund for manufacturers who do
not earn enough money to equal their
war time cash, the situation now is that
the government is financing the owners
of large companies in strikes while the
poor worker is left in the cold as usual.

A long-suffering public, accustomed to
being bamboozled, is doing nothing as
yet to insist that strikes come to an end.
But any worm will turn and these manu-
facturers, swollen with staggering war
time profits, had better turn their eyes to
the needs of the world and of this coun-
try, instead of trying to fatten their pock-
ets still more at the expense of the public.
What swells too much may eventually
burst.

Fight The Filibuster Here

In far-off Washington, a filibuster is be-
ing carried on by a group of reactionary
Senators who are determined to talk the
Fair Employment Practice bill to death.
Following the trend at this time, it looks
as though they will succeed.

But the Fair Employment Practice
bill must become the law of this land.
It is the only hope for the abolition of
discrimination against minority groups.
It is the key to the abolition of anti-
Semitism BY LAW!

It is therefore the absolute duty of ev-
ery American to support this bill in any
way he can. And there is a way, right
here in this city. There is in the Trans-
portation Building a Fair Employment
Practice Council for Metropolitan Detroit.
It has been functioning as the only com-
munity organization in the country devot-
ing its full time to local, state and na-
tional FEPC activities.
As such, the council was drawing
money from the War Chest. But this sup-
port is now withdrawn, due to the failure
of the Chest to meet its quota. The coun-
cil therefore is planning to organize a
city-wide fund-raising drive to be held in
February.
At the head of the council is Professor
Edward W. McFarland of Wayne Univer-
sity. This organization merits your sup-
port. It is fighting the battle for democ-
racy and against discrimination. So while
you sit down and write a letter to your
Congressman demanding that he sign a
petition stopping the filibuster of the
FEPC bill, write another letter to the
Metropolitan Fair Employment Practic e
Council, 906 Transportation Building, and
enclose a check to help them fight the
battle against discrimination.

Friday, February I, 194e

Books are just as important in the life of man as food and shel

-

ter. Of course, like food and clothing, the consumption of it varies. Some

have little, some have much. Some consume good, healthy food and

dress with taste and some look drab and eat anything. Like food,

books require good digestion and assimilation to prevent mental con
stipation.

As Chesterton remarked, there is an important difference between

a man who wants to read a book and a man who wants a book to read

Just so is there a difference in writing a book. A German novel ih

a book where two people want each other in the first chapter alp!

don't get each other till the last one. A French novel is a book when.

two people get each other in the first chapter and from then on don't

want each other until the last one. An American novel is where two

people want each other from the first till the last chapter. A Russian

novel is a book where two people neither want each other nor get

each other. There is a deluge of books. The explanation?

Authors hear a lengthy cry:

Tickle

entertain us or we die.

Books, of course, are like mirrors. If an ass looks in, he cannot

expect an angel to look out. No person likes to be told what or how

to read, but one advice is worth remembering. Avoid being impressed

by the recorded experience of the eminent.

Benson said: "The time of my life that I consider to have been

wasted was the time when I tried, in a spirit of dumb loyalty, to ad-

mire all things that were said to be admirable." Great people are very
hypocritical on the subject of their early reading. Harold Nicholson

tells of the great poet who in childhood dragged the infolio Spencer

from his father's library and spent a night immersed in the Faerie

Queen. Byron claims that his taste was molded by Chatobriand, the

windy French romanticist. Both of these cases, says Nicholson, are
lies. The writer of these lines, without beingcounted among the great,

as a boy learned by heart pages from Humboldt's "Cosmos" without

understanding a word of it just to impress people around him. Th,.

biographies of the great are as silent about the bad books they read

and LIKED as about the good books they were made to read and DID

NOT LIKE.

Human nature is so constituted that a variety of tastes is natural.

A variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than the uniformity

of many somethings. Brillat Savarin in his "Philosophy of Taste," a

book 1 recommend to everybody, says, "We may live without poetry,

we may live without conscience, we may live without friends, we may

live without books, but civilized man cannot live without cooks." The

intellectual gourmet, Savarin, of course, was just trying to be a little

cynical. He would hardly have given up books even for a good cook.

In books, as in food, one can be a "gourmant," a gross feeder, or a

"gourmet," a delicate taster. Hume objects to much refinement in

reading. "Read everything," he advises. A writer should be like Sten-

dal, who "lived, loved and wrote."

Some people asked my opinion about the value of lists of books

chosen as the best out of millions. In my opinion, it is futile to try to

tell others what to read. One acquires a taste for certain books one

is naturally inclined to and a taste develops for what suits one. One

must, of course, insist on intellectual integrity. It is useless to force

oneself to read James Joyce when one actually enjoys Harold Bell

Wright.

Personally, being very impressive, in my poor style of reading and

writing, I sometimes lament with Schopenhauer, and laugh with wan-

ton spleen. I will cry with the sentimental hero of George Ohnet and

sate myself with the intellectual pyrotechnics of Charles Gide. I fall

asleep with Jules Romains and sit up late with Stendahl. I pursue my

style of literary mosaic, and collect tautologies, rhetorical nothings,

cliches and apothegms that strike my sense of the ridiculous. And I

repeat the saying of Sully-Prudhom, "Mon verre est petit mais c'est

mon verre." My glass is small but it is my glass.

Thank You, Judge Watts

We hear from mothers in the Wilde-
mere-Davison community that the traffic
light which was set up there through the
instrumentality of a CHRONICLE edi-
torial is bringing them great comfort.
Thanks in this regard are due directly
to Judge John D. Watts of Recorders
Court and Lloyd B. Reid of the City of
Detroit Traffic Engineering Bureau for
their prompt action to our request.
To other mothers in other communities
who feel a need for protection for their
little ones on dangerous corners, we rec-
ommend similar requests. Where there is a
real need, the city stands ready to co-
operate.
While we have men of the caliber of
Judge Watts at our head, there is always
a place where a hearing, a sane, sympa-
thetic hearing, on matters of vital impor-
tance can be had.
Elections have a way of rolling around
from time to time and if Judge Watts is a
candidate for office, it might be well for
the community which now has this light
to remember his prompt and efficacious "They say all his other clothes went to the Victory Clothing
Collection."
action on this request.

.

