International peace depends on domestic peace, which requires elimination of antagonisms among national and racial groups, Father John La Farge, associate editor of the Catholic magazine America, tonight told Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders gathered at the Williamstown Institute of Human Relations, organized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
Declaring peace within the individual state was “the starting point for any positive lasting development of world peace,” the Jesuit priest asserted that “we have a false concept of common interest; the building of cliques and combinations based upon pride of wealth, national antagonisms, quest for political power and racial exclusions. Because of this non-recognition our society is deprived of an organic character.”
In a plea to Americans to establish harmonious relations within our own borders, Father La Farge said: “What is done in the United States sooner or later will be felt and imitated by the rest of the world, even among those nations who now most severely criticize and oppose us.” He added that the Catholic Church helped “to correct misunderstandings and to allay hates.”
The Rev. Michael J. Ahern, Jesuit, of Weston College, Mass., giving a Catholic view of “Methods of Translating Moral Teaching into Legislation,” declared that “Love thy neighbor as thyself” was “a perfect slogan for legislators in a democracy.”
A half-hour panel discussion on “The American Theater and Democracy” over a National Broadcasting Company hookup was held tonight with the scheduled participation of Irving Berlin, George Jessel, Brock Pemberton, Alfred Harding of Actors’ Equity and Worthington Miner of the Theater Guild.
A call to the church to help expose the “sham” of anti-Semitism was sounded last night by Samuel O. Clark Jr., United States Assistant Attorney General.
“The Church,” he said, “must help to expose the sham of those anti-Semites who seek cover behind the flimsy pretext that they condemn not all Jews but some of them –those who allegedly live in anti-social ways. Such devices as these must fall before the logic that in justice these same people should also condemn all Christians to lead such lives…
“The Church must dramatize how brief is the gap from street riots and patty persecutions to concentration camps and the burning of cathedrals and synagogues. It must show in the light of our history and the history of religion that such deeds have no place here; that the things which Jews and Christians have in common are far more vital than any small thing that may seem to keep them apart.”
Arthur Robb, editor of Editor and Publisher, termed the charge of Jewish control of the press “a complete fabrication designed not so much to injure the Jewish people as to injure the press among the ignorant and prejudiced.” The alleged suppression of the story of Coughlinite attacks in New York City was attributed to a deliberate un-journalistic policy on the part of the metropolitan press by Frieda Kirchwey, editor of The Nation.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
