Saturday Evening Post Expresses Regret over It’s Latest Article on Jews

The Saturday Evening Post today announced that it “deeply regrets the misunderstanding” caused by Milton Mayer’s article. “The Case Against the Jew” which was published in a recent issue. It emphasized that “the Post never has been, is not now and never will be anti-Semitic in belie or expression.”

The announcement was made in purchased newspaper space, reproducing the full text of an editorial written by Ben Hibbs, the new editor, which will appear in the May 16 issue of the Post which is now on the press.

Declaring that the Post has received several thousand letters from Jews and Gentiles who sincerely believe that the article “The Case Against the Jew” was intended as an attack on the Jewish people, the editorial explains that the article was one of three bought by the Post’s former editor in the hope that a discussion of the Jewish question “would serve to clear the atmosphere in this country and perhaps help prevent anti-Semitism from gaining a foothold here.”

“Naturally,” says the Post editorial, “we deeply regret this misunderstanding. The Post never has been, is not now and never will be anti-Semitic in belief or expression. It is not anti any group. We have always been as quick to publish material setting forth a noteworthy accomplishment of Jews as of Gentiles. We have done so because we have always believed that a good American is a good American regardless of race or creed. That this is still our policy will be demonstrated during the months to come by material some of which is already in the process of being written.

“This editorial is being published not only to clear away a misunderstanding, but because the new editor of the Post feels so deeply, so completely, that the only real cause in these anxious war days is the cause of America–the cause of freedom. We Americans are a cohesive people who get along with one another in peace and brotherhood. We are of many races; we came to these beloved shores from hundred lands across the sea, and yet by some blessed alchemy we have all become Americans. For many years the Post has been, in a very real sense, the spokesman for the glories and the traditions of America–for the noble principles upon which this country was founded. It will continue to be just that–in these grim war years and afterwards–for, to the new editor’s way of thinking, there is nothing in this stricken world even half so important as mankind’s yearning for freedom and for brotherhood.

“That one misunderstood article in the Post could have caused so much anxiety in the minds of its readers is a matter of very real sorrow to the new editor. He regrets, above all, that some hurt may have been done to America at a time when national unity is needed as it never was needed before. He asks all Post readers to believe that these words are written in the deepest sincerity.”