Marshall Answers Wise’s Inconsistency Charge in Minority Rights Question

The charge of inconsistency in his attitude toward the question of minority rights is refuted by Louis Marshall, president of the American Jewish Committee, in a statement which will appear today in this week’s issue of the “Jewish Tribune.”

The statement of Mr. Marshall also corrects the allegations concerning the procedure at the Philadelphia session of the first American Jewish Congress in which the American Jewish Committee participated. This statement is a reply to the statement of Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, which was issued recently in connection with the controversy between Dr. Wise and Mr. Marshall over the proposed Conference on Jewish Rights which is to be held this August in Zurich.

Mr. Marshall’s statement reads:

“My attention has been called to a statement attributed to Dr. Stephen S. Wise with respect to my attitude toward the Minority Rights Treaties. However distasteful any controversy of a personal nature may be, historic accuracy demands that a strange misconception shall not pass unnoticed.

“Doctor Wise, after remarking that the joint deliberations of the members of the Committee of Jewish Delegations which met in Paris ‘did much to make possible the enactment of the Minority Rights Treaties,’ to which at the proper time I may have something to say as illustrative of my attitude toward conferences, continues:

” ‘Neither can Mr. Marshall fail to remember that he was long opposed to the Congress which ultimately he came to attend and to represent, nor that he was strongly antagonistic to Minority Rights, the cause of which he came ultimately to espouse.’

“The apparent purpose is to chargeme with inconsistency, which, if true, would matter little, and with opposition to Minority Rights, which, if true. would matter much. It is true that I am opposed to a Jewish Congress, especially at the time when it was first broached. That was several years before the Congress convened. I had reason to believe that if at that time a Congress had met, it would have been disastrous in its results. It would have placed the Jewish people in a false light and would have inflicted lasting injury. After the United States had come into the war and the scene had shifted, to enable the Jews of America to present a united front and on the condition that no Congress should convene until after the cessation of hostilities, the American Jewish Committee and other organizations, acting on my advice agreed to participate in the Congress. That was, however, I repeat, on conditions carefully formulated. In the meantime the American Jewish Committee gave intensive study to the problems affecting the Jews which were likely to receive attention at the Peace Conference, and drafted a document in which its views on minority rights were set forth.

“Immediately after the armistice, the Jewish Congress convened at Philadelphia in 1918. Doctor Wise was not present and therefore can have no personal knowledge of what transpired there. I was present there and came solely because of my desire for unity.

“This brings me to the second assertion, that I was at one time ‘strongly antagonistic to Minority Rights.’ The fact that during the greater part of my life I had continuously fought for them seems to have been overlooked. The very suggestion is absurd. Let me come to the proceedings of the Jewish Congress of December, 1918. I was not in the counsels of its promoters and therefore was kept in the dark with respect to its plans. I was merely one of a small minority unallied with the Zionist Organization, whose members were numerically predominant. After considerable oratory it was decided to appoint either nine committees of seven members each or seven committees of nine members each to consider the respective needs of the Jews of Poland, Roumania, Czechoslovakia, Jugo-Slavia, Russia and other countries, each committee being characteristically limited to the consideration of Jewish conditions in a single country. I was made a member of the Committee on Russia. Foreseeing that nothing but ineptitude could result from such an impossible method of procedure, I returned to New York. After a day I was summoned back and learned that all of these committees were at sea and that none of them had suggested a single idea.

“I was urged to take matters in hand. To that end I invited all of the members of all of these committees, some sixty in number, to meet together, and to my surprise they selected me as chairman. To calm their perturbation, I presented for consideration the plan elaborated by the American Jewish Committee and, stranger still, it was unanimously adopted by the committee with a single amendment. The proposed project referred to civil, political and religious rights. The majority of the consolidated committee desired in addition a guaranty of ‘national’ rights. To them I had always objected as I did in committee, but having participated in the Congress I felt bound by the action of the majority and by the terms of any mandate issuing from it. I reported the resolutions as adopted, which with the exception of a single word, represented the labors of that supposedly undemocratic body, the American Jewish Committee, and just think of it, they were unanimously adopted. Subsequently a delegation was selected to represent the Congress in Paris. My ‘friends’ anxious to ‘punish’ and humiliate me, as they had fatuously striven to do for more than two years by keeping me off the delegation, forgetting to my great amusement, that the American Jewish Committee was still alive, or possibly remembering it, made me ‘also’ one of the delegates.

“When President Wilson returned for a brief sojourn in Washington at the beginning of March, 1919, two memorials were presented to him at a conference held at the White House. They were signed by Judge Mack, Doctor Wise and myself. One related to ‘Minority Rights’ and the other to Palestine. Mirabile dictu every word of both documents was written by me.

“Doctor Wise was not in Paris during the meetings of the Committee of Jewish Delegations and has no personal knowledge of its proceedings. If he or anybody else desires to obtain a picture of its deliberations they may possibly be enlightened. If ‘gradual processes of education wrought any change’ in me, it was not with respect to Minority Rights, because from boyhood up my parents endowed me with a deep-seated and unalterable passion for their attainment and protection. Such education as has come to me in the course of the passing years has, however, strengthened the conviction, much as I love mankind, that there are subjects which cannot be determined in town meeting or by means of a plebiscite.”