Now-Editorial Notes

GOVERNOR LEHMAN’S approval of the Wald bill which makes it a misdemeanor to alter or conceal the mark on imported merchandise giving the country of its manufacture is sure to make the boycott of German products even more effective than it has been thus far.

As Samuel Untermyer recently pointed out, German manufacturers and importers and certain of our own retailers have been successfully resorting to frauds, evasions and devices by which they have deceived the American consumers. The German goods have been knowingly and misleadingly marked with the names of cities, provinces and states in Germany, instead of with the name of the country as specifically required by the law. Mr. Untermyer sharply criticized the Treasury Department for permitting these gross violations.

Senator Albert Wald and Governor Lehman deserve high praise for stopping in New York the evasive methods of the German manufacturers to camouflage the mark of origin of their products.

Samuel Untermyer, whose indefatigable efforts to curb these tricky violations of our laws and whose tireless work for the anti-German boycott have attracted worldwide and favorable attention, also merits the gratitude of all right-thinking and liberty-loving people.

GANGSTER STUDENTS

The Cuzists, the followers of the anti-Semitic Professor Alexander Cuza, of Rumania, were defeated in the Radutzi by-election to the Parliament and they avenged themselves by attacking Jewish passengers in the trains. They beat the chief Rabbi of Jassy and plucked his beard. They attacked other Jewish travelers and forced them to shout "Long live Cuza!"

It is reported that in Radutzi, where the by-election was held, the Cuzists attacked not only the Jews but also Christians whom they suspected of having voted against the Cuza slate. The anti-Semitic rowdies were dispersed by the gendarmes.

In 1927, while visiting Rumania, I heard from eyewitnesses and victims exactly the same accounts of Cuzist outrages. The same attacks on Jewish passengers in moving trains were made then. The same humillitations were heaped upon anyone who looked like a Jew to the Cuzist rowdies in students’ uniforms. The Jews were forced to shout "Long live Cuza!"

The fact that the Cuzist slate was defeated indicates that all the vicious anti-Jewish propaganda of falsehoods has not taken root in the Rumanian ###sses. The fact that the Cuzist attacked Christians as well as Jews because of their defeat at the polls should open the eyes of the Rumanian people to the menace of the gangster bigots in students’ uniforms who are led by a perverted university professor. The Iron Guards, the Cuzists, the Nazified Rumanians led by Cuza and Goga, are undermining peace and order in Rumania. The Jews are the first scapegoats. But the menace is more far-reaching. It is directed against all the decent elements of the Rumanian people. Fortunately there are men in the Rumanian government today who understand this.

RELIGION AND WAR

Two hundred Christian ministers and several rabbis at a conference on "war and Economic Injustice" indicated their opposition to war. They also expressed themselves in favor of "a radical change in the economic system which breeds war."

The most forceful declaration was made by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the Riverside Church, in which he appealed to the church to stay out of war and "every alliance that maintains and encourages it," and recalled the remark of field Marshal Earl Haig, "it is the business of the churches to make my business impossible."

Then he made the following statement:

"I renounce war. I renounce war because of what it does to our own men. I renounce war because of what it compels us to do to our enemies, bombing their mothers in villages, starving their children by blockades, laughing over our coffee cups about every damnable thing we have been able to do to them. I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another."

During the world war the churches of all the nations involved in the war gave their blessings to the soldiers, sailors and airmen to destroy the enemy, the people who did not know the real causes of the war, who had no voice in the declaration of war, who had no real grievances against one another, and who prayed to the same God for victory. The result of the World War was neither victory nor peace.

The spiritual leaders, the clergy, who sanction war and bless it are untrue to the highest ideals of religion. The noblest essence of religion is absolutely incompatible with the brutalities of war.