Now-editorial Notes

The current issue of Science, a weekly journal devoted to the advancement of science, edited by Dr. J. McKeen Cattell, contains a striking statement entitled “The Disgrace of German Science,” which reads in part as follows:

“The material and moral degradation of scientific men in Germany because they are liberals or of Jewish descent (so-called non-Aryans) continues uninterruptedly, and not a voice is raised there in protest. It seems that only the religious leaders have sufficient courage of their convictions to protest against the government’s infringement upon their rights and beliefs. Is it possible that groups of scientists or technicians have not courage enough to protest against the mistreatment of their colleagues, or are they merely glad of the opportunity of a few vacancies thus left open?

“Is it perhaps the unceasing and relentless propaganda which threatens to spread its vicious tenets throughout the world that prevents them from seeing in the proper light what is being done, in the name of nationalism, to degrade and dehumanize the best there is in man?… It there no courage left among the men of science to say ‘Thou shalt go no further’? There were times when men of science were willing to die for their convictions! Or are these only cheap mountebanks that do not deserve the name of ‘Men of Science,’ that do not dare to raise the voice of protest against the mistreatment of their colleagues, teachers and friends?”

A STRANGE BRAND OF SOPHISTRY

And the current issue of The American Spectator, a literary journal edited by George Jean Nathan, Ernest Boyd, Sherwood Anderson, James Branch eabell and Eugene O’Neill, publishes an editorial finding fault with the protests voiced in this country against the Nazi outrages. Resorting to a strange brand of sophistry. The American Spectator goes through a series of mental acrobatics in its effort to justal acrobatics in its effort to justify its criticism of the American critics of Hitlerism.

Thus it says:

“The popular pastime of putting Nazi Germany on trial is becoming a bore. Dictatorships are functioning in Europe, and have been doing so long before the Austrian Fuehrer decided to become a German. We do not recall any meetings of protest against Mussolini or Mustapha ###mal…

“In this country our notorious affection for the Good, the True, & the Beautiful, for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, for the pursuit ### Happiness, has made us the ### sacrificing idealists of both ### spheres…

“So long as money was easy, our concern about Italian liberals was reduced to a minimum, and the fact that a Turkish lady blushed when deprived of her veil-a shameful proceeding-made every American girl in a night club feel that these Europeans (even Eastern Europeans) were out of date. But now we are seriously concerned. Die Herren Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, and so forth are all forced to live outside of Germany! The Reichstag fire was the occasion for a monstrous miscarriage of justice! Ever since it happened, we have been putting Hitlerism on trial with vast enthusiasm. We are determined that Communist Bulgarians shall have fair play. Our own trials of Communists are, of course, a model for the civilized world. When we were five thousand miles away from any danger-naval, military, or economic-we were quite as willing to take chances as Goering and Coebbels. Our sympathy for Debs was overpowering and we have never ceased to be active on behalf of Tom Mooney and, while still possible, Sacco and Vanzetti…

A ‘COMPARISON’ IS MADE

“While we ask Germany to ignore her private problems and listen to the voice of humanity, we ourselves ignore, and have continuously ignored, every appeal by world opinion to the American sense of justice. Those who engage in the international sport of trying Germany must concede that they think their manifestations and manifestoes have some effect. Let it be granted. Then, there is justice (under pressure) in Nazi Germany. A violently anti-Communist country has acquitted three Communists! There is no such justice, with or without pressure, in the United States. The whole civilized world has protested against our brutalities, that is, our perfectly legal injustices. We have never been swerved from our purpose.”

This amazing reasoning by American “liberal” or “radical” intellectuals is even more disgraceful than the silence of the German “Men of Science” in the face of the cruelties perpetrated upon their colleagues. While it may be true that some of the Germans rejoice in the rise of Hitler and his policy of “Aryan” purification which enabled them to fill the vacancies left open because of the removal of their more distinguished “non-Aryan” colleagues, most of the German men of science are silent because they dare not speak out against the Nazi despotism.

When the Russian Tsar and his Premier Stolypin hanged revolutionists, there was Leo Tolstoy who denounced the Russian government in his historic outcry: “I Cannot Be Silent.” And Leonid Andreyev, then a rising author, wrote and published in Russia “The Story of the Seven Who Were Hanged,” which constituted a most severe indictment of the system that prevailed in Russia at the time. When the Jewish massacres were organized in Russia by the Tsarist government, there were Vladimir Korolenko, Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev and countless other Russian intellectuals who felt ashamed as Russians of what happened in Russia, and they all dared to denounce the outrages committed in the name of Russia. When the Tsarist government staged the notorious Beilis affair, the so-called ritual murder case, the intellectuals and the liberals of Russia joined the world protest.

And those protests helped. The Russian Tsar was sensitive to foreign public opinion, and for that reason he dared not punish the Russians who had the courage to protest.

NAZI CRIMES ARE WORSE

The crimes that are being committed under the Hitler regime are far more repulsive and cruel than those committed by the Tsar. The German intellectuals, their men of science are silent. The Nazi ruthlessness is more efficiently organized than that of Tsarist Russia.

And now American “liberal” and “radical” intellectuals complain of the anti-Hitler protests in the United States.

“While we ask Germany to ignore her private problems and listen to the Voice of humanity, we ourselves ignore, and have continually ignored, every appeal by world opinion to the American sense of justice,” they say.

To them the happenings in Germany are “her private problems.” They refer to American “sympathy for Debs,” to Tom Mooney and to the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. They say that “there is justice (under pressure) in Nazi Germany, that a violently anti-Communist country acquitted three Communists, and that there is no such justice, with or without pressure, in the United States.”

These “liberal” or “radical” intellectuals fail to mention the fact that a vast number of Americans did sympathize with Debs and were permitted to express their sympathies for him by their ballots; that millions of Americans have sympathized and are now sympathizing with Tom Mooney; that millions of people in this country expressed their sympathy for Sacco and Vanzetti and that many eminent Americans, convinced of their innocence, endeavored to save them.

THE COMPARISON IS ABSURD

If any Germans were to express even in the mildest form their protest against the atrocities and inhuman cruelties now perpetrated by the government of Naziland, they would quickly find themselves in concentration camps where they would experience the latest devices of cruelty and torture.

To compare the happenings in Germany with some of the unfortunate “legal injustices” in the United States is too absurd to be taken seriously. Only parlor “pinks” and “reds,” who believe that they are “liberals” or “radicals,” and who look at life with detached aloofness, with smart cynicism and without feeling, can devise acrobatic stunts in order to justify their indifferences to the tragic events in Germany. These events are not Germany’s “private problems.” They affect all that civilization has been slowly striving to attain in the course of centuries.

And because the “men of science” and other intellectuals in Germany are silent, for obvious reasons, it is all the more the obligation of right-thinking people everywhere to protest against a system which deliberately menaces the spiritual and economic welfare of mankind and the peace of the world.