Now Editorial Notes

The announcement that a national organization, headed by Professor Morris R. Cohen, the famous philosopher, has been formed for the purpose of combatting anti-semitism by facts and the proper interpretation of facts, will be welcomed by all thoughtful and peace-loving people. Thorough and scientific investigations into the causes of anti-semitism in various lands, authoritative exposures of the fabrications disseminated by the “ideologists” of Jew-baiting along religious, racial, economic and political lines, will do more to check the epidemic of anti-semitism than mere denuncaition and condemnation of the disease. The authentic materials prepared by the new organization will be made available to the various existing organizations engaged in defending the rights of the Jewish people wherever such rights are violated. Facts and the scientific analysis of facts constitute the only effective weapon against the sinister propaganda of anti-Jewish hate that is being circulated by Hitler’s Germany throughout the world.

A FIGHTING PACIFIST

ABRAHAM L SHIPLACOFF, ASocialist labor leader, Zionist, pacifist, is dead. He will be mourned by the laboring masses and by American liberals and radicals, for he was a sincere, indefatigable champion of their cause. He was courageous at a time when chauvinism and jingoism prevailed, when it was dangerous to be a pacifist. He fought for the abolition of child labor, for the prohibition of the “third degree,” for the elimination of the unspeakable sweat spop conditions. He was wholeheartedly interested in the amelioration of the lot of the working people. He devoted himself genuirely to humane efforts in behalf of the distressed and needy among the poorest of the poor. At first indifferent to Zionism, he became an ardent advocate of the movement after the war, and after his visit to Palestine, where he was deeply impressed with the achievements of the labor organization, and where he was inspired by the constructive work of the Jewish pioneers. A man of vision and high ideals, a fighting pacifist. Shiplacoff was at the same time one of the gentlest of humanitarians.

THE PRACTICAL VISIONARY

THE project to build a colony in Palestine in honor of Mencham Mendel Ussischkin, announced by Jewish National Fund of America, will meet with widespread approval among all Jews interested in the upbuilding of Palestine. Ussischkin, “the aronman” of the Zionist movement, uncompromising in his ideals, was at one time regarded as a visionary dreamer. But events

Ussischkin is beloved in Palestine also for his sympathetic understanding that in Palestine not all that is old must give way to all that is new. As he remarked on one occasion, without some of our finer and older institutions and traditions, we would have no new Palestine.