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.]

Criticism of the movement on foot in America to bring about a better understanding between Jews and non-Jews is voiced in the London “Jewish Chronicle” (Jan. 22) by Mentor, who holds that it is an attempt of the Jews to get “into the good graces of non-Jews.”

“Why should Jews feel so intensely little pin pricks of anti-Semitism when every fourth person in New York is Jewish?” asks Mentor, and observes: “To have annexed the Statue of Liberty to the extent of America insisting upon introducing its abominable quota does not seem to me to have been attained by anything short of a veritable bargain, if it was done at the expense only of the silly. clownish Ku Klux Klan.

“I do not like this ‘better understanding’ movement,” he continues, “with its truckling and cringing to non-Jews who regard our people who engage in it as ‘the under-dog.’ For one thing. I do not believe that if there were really any ill-feeling on the part of non-Jews for us, it would be in the least assuaged by such means. Leaving that, however, on one side surely the Jew’s nobler part is with dignity and uprightness, and with full consciousness of his world-position, to exercise misunderstanding, which really means envy and hatred, and compel admiration, not of a few selected Jews, but of the Jewish people as a whole. And that leads me to suggest that this movement for a better understanding, between Jews and non-Jews has taken a slightly wrong turning. Those Jews responsible for it should carry on their campaign, not among non-Jews, but among their own brethren. In a final analysis they, and not non-Jews, are what President Wilson called the acid test.”

SEES MENACE TO CITIZENS AS WELL AS ALIENS

Dangers to American citizens as well as to the aliens are seen in Congressman Aswell’s alien registration built by the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle.” which remarks in part:

“The bill is designed to ferrer ont those aliens who have made illegal entry into this country. Is any intelligent person fool enough to be deloded into the hope that an alien curming enough to have gotten into America by srealth is so simple-minded as to register the fact that be is a criminal. The government might just as well pass a law requiring all embezzlers, boodeggers. and card-cheaiers to register themselves as such under penalry of a fine, in which case every citizen in America would have to prove that he was not a thief, a law-tirezker and a cad. But if congress can pass such a law, what is to prevent some ingrown Immaric from inmodnaing a law to compel all citizens to register and carry with them a card giving their fite history for the education of some $125 a month government clerk and the glory of the Ku Kher Klan”