Terming anti-Semitism in America “a possible criminal movement,” Wendell L. Willkie, Republican presidential nominee, has warned that the spread of anti-Jewish feeling would be a “calamity” and has called on Americans to “stand shoulder to shoulder for tolerance and religious liberty.”
Willkie’s statement was made in an interview published in The Day, New York Yiddish daily newspaper. The Republican nominee said: “I consider anti-Semitism in America as a possible criminal movement and every anti-Semite as a possible traitor to America–that America which is so beloved and so dear to me, that America wich has always symbolized liberty, equality and brotherly love among its inhabitants,” The Day quoted Mr. Willkie as declaring.
But he believes England is far from lost. “They are a brave and a tough people–tough in the better sense of the word, and I still hope that England can stand up to and smash Hitlerism.”
These views Cahan expounded in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in his apartment on lower Fifth Avenue, amid the countless books, periodicals and newspapers that betoken his still unflagging interest in the world around him.
Cahan scoffs at a question about possible retirement. He still keeps 9:30 to 6 office hours–sometimes arriving as early as 7 a.m–at the Forward editor’s office, which he has occupied for the 44 years of its existence, with the exception of one year when he left because he couldn’t have his way. His evenings are given over to meetings, theater, movies, reading. And, with a novel and a book of memoirs behind him, he still hopes to write a novel about a theme he thinks too complex to summarize. His health, he says, was never better.
About anti-Semitism in the United States, the veteran editor is not inclined to be alarmist. “Anti-Semitic agitation here,” he said, “is largely a reverberation of Hitlerism abroad. If this country holds its own, then it can retain its social and political life. It all depends on England. If England falls, this will have its effects here. There will be lots of fakers, Coughlins, et cetera, whose influence will increase.”
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.
