Daily Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval-Editor.]

The advice to Zionists that although the Jewish Agency “of the promising vintage of 1924, has ceased to be,” they “must not despair, but explore every possibility,” is given by Emanuel Neuman, director of United Palestine Appeal, in an article, “What of the Agency?” which will appear in the Jan. 15 issue of the “New Palestine,” organ of the Zionist Organization of America.

Mr. Neuman surmises that “Marshall, like Weizmann, may well have his Gruenbaums and Meriminskys-less vociferous in their criticism, perhaps less animated in their behavior, but quite as irreconcilable and suspicious of the new entente.”

Further he writes:

“If now, the question is put: ‘What of the Agency?’–we must first ask ourselves, which Agency?

“Insofar as the Jewish Agency is a matter of paper and ink, of quasi-legal documents, of meticulously worded instruments–its status has not changed a whit since the Vienna Congress. But, in the last analysis nobody is concerned with a name, or a protocol. The very term, Agency, is derived from a Latin root meaning to act: an ‘agent’ is one who acts. Surely the proponents of the Agency, on both sides, contemplated and desired not the shadow but the substance–no effigy, no simulacrum, but the living original.

“Yet, insofar as the Jewish Agency be not an algebraic equation, but a moral and spiritual fact, a throbbing reality, an understanding based on mutual faith and confidence, a covenant not of parchments but of souls–that Agency, of the promising vintage of 1924, has ceased to be. To its hollow shard applies Achad Haam’s immortal phrase, shem shenithroken mi-tochno, ‘a name emptied of its content.

“Does that end it? Has all the effort of the leaders on either side been wasted? Are we then to revert to the status quo ante? Shall it be war, or a precarious, sterile peace?

“The business of the statesman is neither to force his formulae on the resisting realities nor to spurn a half loaf where the whole may not be had. He faces the facts of life calmly and unblinkingly, notes the changes of fortune and the temper of men’s minds, and revises his plans to suit the altered circumstances.

“If sane counsels prevail much may yet be saved from the impending wreck. We who have earnestly striven for a genuine reconciliation, who have fought for the Agency at home and abroad, must not despair but explore every possibility. The non-Zionists may, by some heroic effort, be brought to a realization of the seriousness of the problem. They may take steps at once to place their collective organized strength at the service of the Palestinian cause. They may by such prompt, concerted, and effective action sweep away all doubts and misgivings on the part of the Zionist masses and liberate themselves by an act of faith and of will from the spell of their own smoldering antipathies and latent inhibitions.”

The Denver Sheltering Home for Jewish Children in Denver, Colorado, a national institution, which cares for orphaned and homeless children brought to Denver by their tubercular parents, is conducting a campaign to raise $400,000 for additional buildings to house a hundred more children.

A Committee of professional and business men of Denver are planning to come to New York to organize the campaign here.