Digest of World Press Opinion

The New Republic, in its issue of November 21, criticizes H. L. Mencken for his recent statement in which he implied that most proletarian writers are Jews. The New Republic writes:

Mencken speaks of novels “too often done in English that seems to be a bad translation from the Yiddish.” In Hitler’s Germany there is a movement to prohibit all Jews from writing in any language except Yiddish or Hebrew, on the ground that they have been corrupting German taste and style. This critic who used to think for himself now writes as if he were making a free translation from a pamphlet by Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

Enumerating the most prominent proletarian novelists by their pseudonyms and actual names, the New Republic continues:

There is one bogus name in the list of six. There is also one Jew, but the Jew writes under his own name. As a matter of fact, Jewish writers have not particularly distinguished themselves in this particular type of fiction, for reasons that have nothing to do with racial genius or literary talent. Most proletarian novels deals with the struggles of workers in the basic industries. There is not a high proportion of Jews in these industries, and honest writers of any race prefer to deal with subjects they know at first hand.