Rabbi Wise Sees Unholy War Against Smith

Dr. Stephen S. Wise in his sermon at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall, New York, on Sunday, spoke on the “Whispering Campaign” in the forthcoming Presidential election.

He declared that the whispering campaign against the Republican candidate was not on a parity with that against the Democratic candidate. The whispering against Governor Smith is virtually proclaiming a most unholy war, against a candidate on the ground that he is a Catholic, Dr. Wise said.

“To the ears of some it will sound strange that I, a Jew and a Jewish teacher, should plead for fair play for a candidate for the Presidency, who chances to be a member of the Roman Catholic Communion,” Dr. Wise continued. “Protestant Christians as well as some of my fellow Jews, have imagined it needful to remind me of what my people have suffered at the hands of the Roman Church in other days and centuries, even as they have suffered grievous wrong at the hands of nearly all Christian churches. I am not unmindful of that. I cannot be. But, though a Jew, it is for me to remember that America means a new start in the life of the world. If America is to mean to me nothing more than the perpetuation in the Western World of the century old phobias and the fanaticisms of the past, then is America not worth while.”