Digest of World Press Opinion

The Oxford Times, speaking of Arab Jewish relations in Palestine, says:

Some 200,000 Jews entered the country, mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, and had come to feel that at last they were privileged to return to their home. They had been supplied with capital, and had introduced modern industrial methods and machinery into land development. Unfortunately, that was only one side of the picture. On the other side there was the unhappy feeling between the Jews and the Arabs. The Arabs were a very conservative race, and one could see them still using the type of plough, which was used in the time of Christ. They had been promised a great deal, however, in return for their allegiance during the war. They had been promised self-government, and naturally the Arab felt that he was now losing his home because of the arrival of these very active and enterprising Jews.

It is immensely important for the Jews to come to some satisfactory agreement with the Arabs at the present time. One of the difficulties was that unwise statements had been made by extreme Zionists in other countries, and these had come back to Palestine.

PROF. KRAUS’ DISMISSAL FROM C.C.N.Y. POST

The Christian Century publishes the following editorial:

It is not only in Germany that professors are sometimes dismissed for reasons that seem too thin. Professor Arthur J. I. Kraus, who had to flee from Poland in 1930 because of injustice to the Jews, entered the United States on a temporary permit and secured a position as instructor in philosophy at the City College of New York. In December, 1932, he went on a hunger strike to call attention to the violence directed against minority groups in the Polish universities.

Returning to his duties, he submitted to informal examination to determine his physical fitness to teach and was pronounced mentally incompetent. His dismissal from his post followed immediately. Without employment, his status lapsed to that of an alien temporarily admitted and deportation was ordered. A stay of this order was secured. Persons of national reputation — including John Dewey, Ernest F. Scott, Rein-hold Niebuhr, John Haynes Holmes, Professor Einstein, Henry Sloane Coffin, and scores of others — who have investigated the facts, testify that a grave injustice has been done, both by a snap judgment of mental abnormality, which has been canceled by subsequent examination by eminent psychiatrists, and by the refusal of the authorities to grant any review of the case. Faced with deportation to a country where his life will be in danger, Professor Kraus’ situation is desperate.

DUTCH REHABILITATION OF REICH REFUGEES

The Christian Science Monitor, speaking about the German Jewish refugees, relates:

Young German Jewish refugees are being helped to new careers in the Netherlands in some of the land reclaimed from the Zuiderzee. Doctors, lawyers, business men and students here become tillers of the ground and skilled artisans. The scheme was started in March, 1934, when 125 young men and women obtained permission to start their training for new professions to prepare for emigration to Palestine.

A special committee has been set up for this purpose, and has organized a working camp on a site allotted to them temporarily by the Dutch government. In the near future the number of young Jewish inhabitants of this work and training camps is to be brought up to 300.

Seven distinctly different branches of manual labor are now carried on here under expert guidance. The agricultural section comprises some 250 acres of arable land. Cattle breeding and poultry farming are included. The people learning the building trades, who are now becoming carpenters, concrete workers, bricklayers, smiths and plumbers, are gradualling building up the work village, while those learning furniture making are producing the necessary furniture to outfit the buildings.

KING ALEXANDER WAS A STICKLER ON BRIDGE

{SPAN}###{/SPAN}New York Evening Journal, speaking about the ardor of the late King Alexander of Yugoslavia for the game of bridge, reports the following curious fact:

If any of the players made a mistake during the evening, he was certain to be visited on the following morning by one of the King’s aides-de-camp, who would leave, with the King’s compliments, an exquisitely-bound copy of the bridge rules.

It is said there is only one of the King’s regular bridge companions who does not possess at least one of these royal rule books. He is the Chief Rabbi of Belgrade, Dr. Alkalei.

King Alexander, being asked whether anti-Semitism would find its way into Yugoslavia, once said:

“There will be no anti-Semitism in Yugoslavia as long the Jews are such good bridge players You cannot expect me to lose my best bridge partner.”

HEBREW ALPHABET’S ROMANTIC ORIGIN

The London Times speaking about the Hebrew language and its influence, states:

The history of the Hebrew alphabet was one of the most romantic in the world. We would not enter into a controversy as to where it came from, but where it went to was the most important thing. The Aramaic alphabet was the mother of all the alphabets in Asia except Chinese and Japanese.

In Persia, when the people gave up cuneiform, they adopted the Aramaic alphabet, and they preserved a great number of the Aramaic words in their original form, although they wrote them as Persian. Discoveries in recent years of books buried in the sands of Central Asia, notably Chinese Turkestan, were in Sogdian, which had entirely died out, although it was probably at one time the lingua franca from the Caspian to China. In that language the Aramaic alphabet was employed, and many Hebrew words were used which they read as the Persians did.

In Abyssinia there was the remarkable case of the Falaha (the stranger), a colony inhabited by Jews, who probably remained untouched in the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era, and always had the Scriptures in Ethiopic and had little knowledge of Hebrew. These Jews and others in China seemed to have been the only branches of the race which had lost their knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet.