War Department Confirms Anti-jewish Propaganda Disseminated by Army and Navy Institution

The War Department today confirmed, in reply to a query by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that anti-Jewish views were disseminated among the U. S. armed forces throughout the world in an official educational correspondence course established under the auspices of the Army and Navy and issued by the U. S. Armed Forces Institute at the University of Wisconsin.

The spokesman, embarrased by the disclosure, defended the War Department’s record in teaching soldiers to combat racial prejudice and pointed to the fact that during the past few months special orientation fact sheets emphasizing the importance of fighting prejudice were issued by the War Department. He added that the correspondence course containing anti-Jewish statements was withdrawn from army use last December.

The Navy Department, which also sent the correspondence course to its forces, refused to make any comment. The discriminating “lessons” were being distributed among servicemen as recently as two months ago, it was established. They contained a reprint of a chapter entitled “The Melting Pot” from “America Comes of Age” written by Andre Siegfried and published in 1927 by Harcourt, Brace & Co. The anthor of the book is described as a former attache of the French Foreign Office who toured the United States in 1925 to collect material for his volume.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS ARE TOLD THAT JEWS ARE NOT GOOD AMERICANS

In this chapter, presented to the U.S. armed forces as a “lesson” in English composition, the American soldier and sailors were told that the Jews are not good Americans, that they don’t assimilate well, that they are “restless and ambitious” and that “if the Stars and Stripes is waved at a jinge demonstration in New York, you may be sure that it is a Jew who holds the standard, while the 100 percent American whose great-grand-father was a friend of Washington stands aside disgusted.”

“In the American Melting Pot, the temperature at which fusion takes place varies with the different races,” the American servicemen were taught. “In certain cases it occurs at a very low degree, being practically automatic. In others, however, a high temperature is needed, and even after prolonged heating an insoluble residue is liable to remain. This is particularly true of the Jewish race.”

Dividing the immigrants into “Nordics” and “non-Nordics” the author of the chapter reproduced in the correspondence course says that the immigrants most difficult to assimilate are the Latins, the French, the Finns and the Mexicans, but worst of all are the Jews.

“As there are three million Jews in the country, a million-and-half in New York alone, the problem is important, more especially as they include Jews of every class of society, from aristocratic bankers of London or Frankfurt to verminous refugees from the ghettos of the Ukraine and Poland,” the soldier and sailor students were told. The chapter adds that “the Gentile fears, and with reason, the competition of the Jew in business, and despises him as a matter of course.”

Speaking of the Jew as an American citizen, the chapter says: “The Jew passes through the first phase of his Americanization with disconcerting rapidity. There is something suspicious about his excessive zeal. Caught suddenly into the rhythm of the New World, he is soon more American than the Americans themselves. He joins societies for the promotion of ethical culture, where he mixes with broadminded Protestants anxious about their duty to society.”

JEWS ARE “WORMING THEIR WAY” INTO CLUBE DESPITE INSULTS, PROPAGANDIST SAYS

Continuing the attack on the American Jew, the book says that the Jews “are only too anxious to attach themselves to the Christians. Surreptitiously they have wormed their way into the clubs in spite of the ostracism and insults designed to exclude them. With their brilliant intellects, they have firmly established themselves in the universities, where the medicore element tries instinctively to oust them. So this pseudo-American ferments at the bottom of the Melting Pot, unassimilated to the end.”

The New York newspaper PM, which today carries a full-page article disclosing the details of the “course,” reports that the U.S. Armed Forces Institute, when asked how it came to disseminate such “educational material” among soldiers and sailors, replied that the correspondence course, including the-anti-Jewish part, was devised by an editorial board of civilians in Washington. The names of the members of this board were not disclosed.