Editorials

Our women have achieved prominence and recognition in several directions, but no woman has yet come forth from our ranks who has exercised any noteworthy influence on world thought or action.

During the years of the woman’s suffrage struggle, Ernestine L. Rose, all too inadequately recognized, was an almost inseparable fellow-warrior with Susan B. Anthony. Lillian D. Wald is hailed by Jane Addams, who voices the sentiments of millions of Americans, as one who has made a substantial contribution to the health of our land ### people. Emma Gold man played a role that many prefer to erase from the records, but her personality lured many to study her and to follow her career.

Rose Pastor Stokes achieved the headlines of the news in her strange welding of wealth with her championship of the proletariat.

These women make one think back to the days when there was a Deborah in Israel’s camp, a woman who spoke and acted with power.

After we register all the accomplishments to the credit of the Jewish woman in the United States, one is left with a sense of dissatisfaction. In the decades during which we have lived and the millions that we are, we have brought forth too small a harvest of gifted women.

Our numbers are negligible in the political field. The dynamic movements of these critical days are not drawing their leadership from our ranks. No Jewish woman has risen to sound a new religious note for the re-vitalization of our Judaism and the functions of the synagogue.

Are our women so utterly devoid of thought and vision that we must awaken to that realization and no longer suffer any despair? Is it courage that they lack to speak what they see? Or, is there something wrong with our civilization that crushes the ardor of our women and stifles the genius in their bosoms?

One is tempted to believe that our women have not sufficiently been put to the test. The hope rises within our hearts that this period of the reconstruction of our country’s economic and industrial life, may bring to the fore many whom the forces of these past years were not powerful enough to stir.

Palestine has tested the mettle and fibre of our women. One can not have the slightest doubt that the crushing challenges and the atmosphere of creativeness are combining to unveil their hidden talents. What are the circumstances that are likely to do that very same thing for the Jewish women of this land?

These circumstances may arise in the ranks of our laboring women and their leaders. There many step forth from many wealthy mansions, women who have been caught by an all-absorbing vision of social advance. The poverty and struggle of these depression years may put a brilliant pen into the hands of many of our sons and daughters.

If the days ahead leave our women placid and undisturbed, finding no opportunity to make real the ideals of social justice that they regard as the heart of their faith; if our women go without negative souls to the hours of synagogue worship and are not moved to rebel at the wide gulf that too often lies between the synagogue’s precincts and the world of social struggle outside; then, we shall still have no inspiring view to paint, of the Jewish woman on the American scene.

THE CASE OF DR. MULVIHILL

How much longer will it take for the people of Germany to get cramps in the right shoulder-blade from yanking up their arms on every conceivable public occasion to the accompaniment of a hearty “Heil Hitler!” Or, maybe, is that the way the German nation is taking its calisthenic exercises these days?

No embassy in Berlin has the right to trouble itself about the manner in which Germans may take their daily dozens, or how they may exercise their arms and feet on the bodies of non-resisting victims who are unfortunate enough to be minority citizens of the German Reich, but it seems to be stretching things a bit too far to compel tourists of other nations to yank up their arms and shout allegiance to Herr Hitler; to compel them, mind you, at the risk of a beating.

When a Mr. Zuckerman, an American citizen, visiting Leipzig, goes promenading with a number of Leipzig relatives—one of whom has an unmistakable Jewish beard—and stops at the curb, with his relations, to watch a contingent of storm troopers passing by, one is not greatly surprised to learn that a couple of brown shirts break ranks and beat up the Zuckermans, what though the visiting Mr. Zuckerman proclaims his American citizenship. Then Mr. Zuckerman calls on the consul and the consul makes a complaint and berlin hears about it, but Mr. Zuckerman, nevertheless, would be rather a fool to stand at the curb a second time, with or without a bearded relation who is, unfortunately, not a citizen of the United States. The American Embassy has made so many complaints to the Wilhelmstrasse about the beating up of Jewish citizens visiting Germany that the Embassy staff is reported to be suffering from typewriter cramps.

An amusing sidelight on the beating up of Americans visiting in Germany was given some months ago by a returned victim who pointed out that it was not politic to show your American passport, for the passport is bound in red, and about all that Nazi hooligans know about red is that it is the color of blood and of Communism, whereupon they assume that the American passport is a card of membership in the Communist party. Perhaps they have been taught better by now.

We do not know whether Dr. Daniel Mulvihill, Brooklyn physician who has been studying with the Berlin specialist, Dr. Sauerbruch, is a Tartar or not, but we do know he is not a Jew. In any event, a couple of Nazi hooligans beat up Dr. Mulvihill because he did not join in the Hitler salute while watching a parade of storm troopers. He was punched in the head, from the rear—a typical instance of German nobility and courage. Dr. Mulvihill made the usual complaint. And what of it?

When a man goes on a dangerous journey he sees that his affairs are in order, that his insurance has been paid up, that his will has been properly drawn up and attested. He attends to these, and similar, matters, before trying to ascend into the stratosphere, crossing the Pacific in a plane, starting to re-discover either one of the Poles, or penetrating the jungle.

It seems that Germany will have to be included in the list of places dangerous to visit or stay in.

This is how The London Times ends its story about the attack on Dr. Mulvihill:

“The American physician laid a complaint before United States consular authorities, who are considering whether it will not be necessary to advise Washington that normal protests, in these cases, which lead to little satisfaction, should be reinforced by an official statement to the American traveling public that the United States Government cannot be responsible for their protection against incidents of this sort.”

One of the most admirable things about Great Britain is that it has always been able to enforce respect for the lives, property and safety of any citizen, no matter where he might be travelling. Must the United States resign that right?