Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who was appointed a delegate from New York to the Democratic Convention, to replace the vacancy left by the death of the Tammany leader, Charles F. Murphy, delivered the invocation at the historic meeting of the convention on Saturday, when the question of the Ku Klux Klan was discussed.
During the discussion on the attitude of the Democratic Party toward the League of Nations and the proposed referendum on the matter, Rabbi Wise delivered a speech in which he said the following:
“Senator Harrison in his inaugural address suggested that we are not to be satisifed to be keyh## observers of European wars, but American makers of peace. It has been suggested-and any words spoken now seem needless and almost violative of the sanctity of the hour to which Newton D. Baker has lifted us up. It has been suggested that we are to keep out of the League, even though we speak in favor of it, in order to save this man’s face, and a third man’s fortunes. I say to you, as a teacher of morality and religion, we are to save only the plighted honor of the American people.
Shall we enter the League? is asked, as if the League were a club. The League is not a club or an association, but a convenant of life; a covenant of life which we have sworn to enter. Ladies and gentlemen, to do what we are bidden to do by the majority report is to lose all; all, anti-referendum pro-leaguers, and to gain nothing, nothing but delay and confusion.”
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