The Bulletin’s Day Book

AS the greatest "either-or" man of the age, we give you George Sylvester Viereck.

Either he is a tragically misunderstood soul whose every energy is directed toward the eventual betterment of the Jewish race, or he is the mot diabolical, the cleverest, the subtlest, the most Machiavellian and the "archiest" of the arch enemies of Jewry.

That this man who not only Jews but impartial Christian observers as well have characterized as "Hitler’s chief apologist propagandist" in this country, should be misunderstood is readily understandable and may be attributed to defects in the original Viereck pattern.

Viereck, research in the yellowing scholastic records at City College for the year 1906 reveals, was a pretty rotten student. While he achieved the distinction of class poet during his collegiate career, he won his arts degree by an eyelash. He wheezed through with a low C average.

The man of mystery as a student, used to experience his greatest headaches in the logic and history courses. If the records are correct, these were his poorest subjects. He flunked history once. And logic was so tough for him that he flunked it not once, but several times. His fellow students recall him as a pimply-faced individual with a somewhat morbid interest in sex.

In the light of this record, it be comes understandable that n man who couldn’t digest college logic should be incapable of making himself clearly understood by the public in later life. This inability to cope with logic may, indeed, even be traced to an "accident of birth." Viereck the unedited report has it, has his genealogical roots in the Hohenzollern tree, a tree in which logic reached its highest flower in such thoughts as "Deutschland Uber Alles, "German "Deutschland Ueber Alles," "German Kultur," "The Kaiser can do no wrong" and, the most logical of on the side of the Germans.

Perhaps, with Viereck, the misunderstanding goes even deeper. It may be with George that his left hand doesn’t know what his right hand is doing and that his fertile brain, which produced such works as "My First Two Thousand Years" and "Salome, the Wandering Jewess," which he recently pointed to as sufficient evidence to??? save me from the reproach of anti-Semitism," doesn’t know what either hand is up to.

Among the sensational evidence adduced at the recent Congressional hearings into Nazi propaganda activities, it was revealed that Viereck was on the payroll of Carl Byoir and Associates to the extent of $1,750 monthly. While Viereck and others associated with him in this work assert that the contracts between Byoir and the German railroads specifically prohibited anti-Jewish propaganda, it is an unedited fact that through the Byoir office there was disseminated virulently anti-Semitic literature to the South.

In this connection it is interesting to note that as class poet, Viereck wrote a poem which appeared in the publication Microcosm and in which he solemnly and in pontifical rhyme declaimed against the heinousness of selling’s one’s convictions for gold.

Perhaps, with his congenital weakness in logic, George Sylvester has reached the conclusion that $1,750 a month is not gold.

Still another indication of how poor a logician Viereck is may be seen in the following story.

At the recent Madison Square Garden rally of the League of Friends of New Germany, which was held for the sole purpose of launching DAWA, the anti-Jewish boycott movement in this country, he declared his open admiration for "the astonishing achievements of Adolf Hitler." Last week, in explaining his connection with the Byoir firm, he recalled this statement and pointed out that he had qualified it by saying that he didn???t embrace "every article of his faith."

"For myself," he said, "I emphatically repudiated anti-Semitism. I protested vigorously against the attempts to fight out the German-Jewish problem on American soil. When the full truth is known it will appear that no one labored harder than I do discover the way out of the German-Jewish dilemma."

That statement was made on June 6, 1934. Four days later, George Sylvester being in New York as the chief subject of Representative Samuel Dickstein’s secret hearing into Nazi intrigues here, a Bulletin reporter called him at his home.

Viereck was asked if it was true that he had ever belonged to Phi Epsilon Pi, known as a Jewish college fraternity.

He replied that he had been persuaded to join that fraternity at collage under the impression that it was non-sectarian. When he learned that it was Jewish, he said, he severed his connections with it and has since not been identified with any of its activities.

Consultation with one of the founders of Phi Epsilon Pi, revealed that the fraternity was then and always has been non-sectarian, but is largely composed of Jews.

Perhaps George Sylvester thought he could best help solve the German-Jewish problem by disassociating himself with Jews.

Or, another "perhaps" that suggests itself is this: Since Viereck is employed by Carl Byoir, who is a Jew himself. Since he is associated, at least indirectly, with David Gross, a Byoir associate who is the brother of the Brooklyn rabbi and editor. And since he has collaborated with Paul Eldridge, a Jew, in his various literary ventures.

Since Viereck has differentiated in the matter of associating himself with Jews in what he mistakenly thinks is a Jewish fraternity and Jews in purely business ventures, the impression is inescapable that perhaps he doesn’t mind being connected with Jews who can help him make some of the gold his poetic mind didn’t fancy in the long ago. H. W.