Ralph D. Blumenfeld has completed his lecture tour of the States and is now en route to England. He embarked Friday on the S.S. Olympic after a prolonged visit during which time he spoke in about twenty cities throughout the eastern part of the United States and in the central area. He talked with a representative of The Bulletin at his hotel suite in the Vanderbilt on the day of departure.
How did this eminent American-born Englishman whose career in journalism is comparable to that of Greeley, or Dana, or James Gordon Bennett, like the land of his birth? As a Jew, what were his observations and of what importance to Jews everywhere are his comments on America?
Asked the pointed question what he saw “out west”, Mr. Blumenfeld said: “I didn’t see much once I got outside of New York. All the towns in this country are alike. They are carbons of each other. The nation is wholly standardized. Every city and hamlet is Babbitized.”
He called New York City an “amazing freak”. He said that the skyscrapers are being imitated with no little success in almost every “wasteland town, including Tulsa, Oklahoma”, although, and this Mr. Blumenfeld reflected is just another sign of the old-age human trait of “copy-cat”, these little towns don’t need them. He said that hotels and accommodations are alike everywhere throughout America; that the people read the same newspaper columns and think the same things and live in the same way. He smiled. “They are monuments to American #anity.”
Mr. Blumenfeld’s answer to the question what forces are responsible for the Jewish conception that anti-Semitism does exist even in the United States was like the man himself candid, free of flippancy.
“It’s an economic reason,” he said. “The Jews get into industry, make good because they have better brains and know human beings better than most other races of people. They grow to be hated. It’s been their greatest fault, their wisdom and shrewd counsel.”
In the current issue of The Nation a letter to the editor takes issue with the Jewish people for selfishly uniting in their own interest and overlooking the persecution of the Negro, the Catholic and other minority peoples.
Mr. Blumenfeld in common British parlance expressed the view that the writer of the letter “was not wrong”. He said that the Jew would become more respected, more admired, if he took up the cudgel for other races.
“Furthermore,” he insisted, “it would establish a more ready willingness on the part of the rest of the world to give ear to the complaint of ‘downtrodden’ races.”
The peace of the world is contingent upon the brotherhood existing between- the English-speaking nations, he said. This in brief was the keynote of the speeches Mr. Blumenfeld delivered on his tour. He can’t emphasize it too strongly. He can’t make it too clear, he said. The two countries, impressed with liberalism and tolerance and a peace-loving motif, must eventually come to an understanding which will enforce their own fellowship upon the world, and make the world a peace-loving, peace-pursuing place.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
