News Brief

The Chicago “Daily News” (Mar. 22) writes on “Fraternalism in Religion” with reference to the exchange lectureship on religion recently established at Garrett Biblical Institute, affiliated with Northwestern University.

“When it is recalled,” the “Daily News” comments, “that many of the wars of history were caused by religious differences, that many thousands of lives in modern times have been sacrificed by pogroms, and that the bitterest antagonisms and hatreds are aroused over religion, it will be realized that the movement thus locally undertaken is worthy of being extended broadly throughout all lands.”

A view differing from the foregoing is voiced by B. Z. Goldberg (the “Day,” March 25) who likens the goodwill movement to the Polish-Jewish Agreement and holds that it is a result of what he terms the fawning attitude of some rabbis.

Mr. Goldberg bases his objections on the ground that “the Jews never quarreled; they were always willing to overlook differences and forgive wrongs.” He especially takes exception to the statements made recently by the rabbis at a goodwill meeting in Rochester. “The Jewish role,” he declares, “has been the role of the beaten, the oppressed. The hands of the Jews are not besmirched with blood. If the Christians wish to wash their hands, they are surely welcome to do so, but Jewish hands should not be dragged into the same bowl. If the Episcopalian church in Rochester desires good-will between Jews and non-Jews all they have to do is to tell the members what the Christians did to the Jews, how barbaric it was and how harmful for the soul of the Christian himself, and to lift them to a spirit of repentance. That is all. The good-will of the Jews was always present, even when they were spat on.

“We Jews have no peace to make, for we never waged war. The ill-will came entirely from the other side, and it is up to that side to prove its good-will now. The mediation and compromise of a rabbi is as brutal as it is absurd.”

LORD ALLENBY TERMED “LAST CRUSADER”

Field Marshall Viscount Allenby, the conqueror of Palestine, is called “the last great Crusader” by the New York “Times” of March 25, in an editorial expressing the hope that Allenby, who is now in Canada, will visit the United States before his departure.

“About no other leader in the Great War has so much of romance gathered as about this great soldier, whose figure and appearance satisfy every demand of the artist and whose qualities of courage, honor, reverence and clemency represent the best in the civilization in whose behalf he planned the campaign in Palestine, which will be remembered as one of the most dramatic and completely successful in all history,” declares the “Times.”

“Lord Allenby belongs not alone to the British Empire; he will be claimed by all humanity. It is hoped that when he has made the rounds of his own empire he will find time and freedom to visit the rest of that world whose security, as he said, ‘God in His Heaven had intended’ and to which he himself contributed so valiantly. Especially is it desired that he will come to America, where men, women and children of all faiths are eager to welcome the last great Crusader who recovered that little land that holds the sacred memories of three religious faiths.”