Now–editorial Notes

The Jewish Daily Forward celebrated yesterday its thirty-seventh birthday anniversary. Under the editorship of Abraham Cahan, the Jewish Daily Forward has grown and developed into the most widely read Jewish newspaper in the world. It exerts widespread influence upon the masses of the Jewish working people. It is a live, wideawake and courageous organ of public opinion.

The secret of the great success of the Jewish Daily Forward lies chiefly in the journalistic genius and the youthful and enterprising spirit of its editor-in-chief, Abraham Cahan, one of the most colorful personalities in American Jewry. In Cahan are blended the finer qualities of the Russian intellectual, the Jewish maskil, the Socialist educator and popularizer, and the American journalist and publicist. Cahan also attained high distinction in American literature as a novelist and short story writer, but his devotion to the Forward and to the Jewish labor movement caused him to sacrifice his own literary career.

Mr. Cahan is assisted by a staff of brilliant and experienced writers, while the business department of the Forward is conducted by Mr. Vladeck, a man of high culture and remarkable executive ability, who also finds time and energy to help numerous worthy humanitarian causes.

THE GOTTHEIL MEDAL

The annual Gottheil Medal will be presented this year to Rev. Dr. Everett R. Clinchy, of New York, Father J. Elliott Ross, of Charlottesville, Va., and Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron, of Baltimore, Md., for outstanding services rendered to the Jewish people during 1933. These representatives of three faiths travelled during 1933 from coast to coast, spreading the gospel of good will and better understanding among Protestants, Catholics and Jews.

The men to be honored this year surely deserve recognition for their splendid work. Better understanding among Americans of various religious faiths is sorely needed. For prejudice and hate spring from ignorance and superstition.

But there is no special distinction about the Gottheil Medal. The selection is usually made in a haphazard manner. In one instance the Gottheil Medal was bestowed upon a man who did not deserve any medal for anything he had done for the Jewish people, and who has since then disgraced himself and the Jewish people.

HITLER’S RESPONSIBILITY

The Manchester Guardian, the great liberal newspaper, denies that the Nazi leaders have grown more moderate in their anti-Jewish persecutions. In a long article, the Manchester Guardian declares that “not only is the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis still going on, in the sense of continual acts of violence against the Jews which sometimes culminate in down-right pogroms such as occurred in Gunzenhauzen, Bavaria, but the Brown Shirts are constantly reminded by their commanders that the Jew must be treated like a pariah.”

“The responsibility for the persecution of the Jews in Germany rests now, as before, not so much upon the rank and file of the Nazis, but upon the leaders, especially upon Adolf Hitler himself,” writes the Manchester Guardian.

The recent efforts in this country to create a more sympathetic attitude toward Hitlerite Germany by endeavoring to make Americans believe that Hitler and other leaders in Germany had modified their viewpoint regarding the Jews, have since then been disproved by further outrages committed in Germany. Hitler has let loose the passions of the mob by his hysterical and irresponsible appeals to violence for many years, and it will be very difficult to check the mob spirit of hate and vengeance, if he wishes to do so, but there is thus far no evidence whatever that Hitler has changed his tactics with regard to the Jews.

Wherever a government is officially and genuinely opposed to manifestations of race hatred and bigotry, the people soon cease to indulge in these destructive and costly “luxuries.”