June 8th. has been fixed for the first meeting of the special Preparatory Committee appointed by the League of Nations to study the question of calendar reform, which has been placed on the agenda of the Fourth General Conference on Communications and Transit, opening here on October 26th.
The principal task of the Preparatory Committee will be to take note of the replies of the various Calendar Reform Committees set up in the various countries by decision of the League of Nations, and to draw up a report for the Conference, making it clear in what direction the replies tend.
It is assumed in League of Nations circles that the Committee will provide an opportunity to specially interested parties asking for facilities to make verbal statements to explain their point of view, so that the Jewish representatives will be able to appear before the Committee and explain the Jewish attitude on the danger of the introduction of a blank day, which would result in shifting the Sabbath and endangering Jewish Sabbath observance.
England does not want calendar reform, the “Morning Post” wrote this week. In England the questionnaire sent out by the British Calendar Reform Committee had been rather a farce.
England, it was added, is not alone in its lack of enthusiasm. France, Spain and Italy are all regarded as hopeless by the advocates of reform. Apart from the United States, all countries, European and non-European alike, are regarding the new calendar in a spirit of amused and not particularly sympathetic detachment.
To-day, the “Daily Telegraph” has an article on the subject by Dr. W. F. Geikie-Cobb, who concludes by saying that the seven-day week is at once too ancient and too useful to be scrapped.
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.
