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■WHY ARE JEWS PERSECUTED’ ATLANTIC ICE & COAL CO. General Offices in Atlanta, Georgia Operates an Ice, Coal and Cold Storage Business in: GEORGIA TENNESSEE ALABAMA FLORIDA SOUTH CAROLINA NORTH CAROLINA VIRGINIA Sending MONEY = ABROAD MAIL - CABLE - RADIO W© pay actual United States Currency or foreign money in all /n parts of GERMANY-PALESTINE*POL AND and other countries REMITTANCES TO RUSSIA THRU TORQSIN FAST SERVICE SAFE, RELIABLE, AT LOW COST See or write American ExpreMN C o. Atlanta. €»«M»rtfla or your local Agent, Railway Express Agency, Inc. A Christian Leader Tries to Answer This Age-Old Question JOHN HAYNES HOLMES He has a simple problem. As 1 look at Germany in this dread hour 1 seem to see a curtain lifting on the panorama of the dark ages of the past. I see the Russia of the Czars, and the Black Hundreds killing the Jews as they would kill so many rats in a cel lar. 1 see the Spain of the Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews, which led to the downfall of that country. I see the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of a helpless and homeless people to the four corners of the earth. I see the long years of ghettos and syn agogues, of pogroms and massacres, which constitute the darkest chapter in the history of Christianity. I see a small and feeble group of men and women, a few millions among the hun dreds of millions of the world, harried and hunted, tortured and spat upon, writhing in agony and dying in blood, treading through every century and in every nation that perpetual I’ia Dolo rosa which Christ trod on that fateful day when he made his way to crucifix ion—that crucifixion, as we now know, not of one man but of an entire race! We had thought, in this modern age, that these horrors were no more. I at least had never dreamed, in the wildest stretches of my imagination, that I should ever seen another wholesale per secution of Israel. I knew of course that Jews were everywhere still the ob ject of discrimination and abuse—the victims of that prejudice which may be not inaccurately described as persecu tion reduced to its lowest terms, or per secution in the last stages of degenera tion. I had never supposed, however, that the violence and terror of earlier days would return. But now we see the imminent collapse of our civilization. Suddenly, without any warning of any kind, we are being carried back into the Hark Ages with all their bigotry and hate, their superstition, ignorance and savagery. And central today in this renaissance of barbarism is the persecu tion of the Jew. Which raises once again the old familiar question: Why are the Jews forever persecuted among men? Why should the Jews be selected, as it were, out of all the tribes of earth, to meet “the slings and arrows of outra geous fortune?” What have the Jews By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES Dr. John Haynes Holmes, outstanding religious teacher of this country, whose leadership of the Community Church in New York, has stamped him as one of the noblest spokesmen of liberal Amer ica, analyzes anti-Semitic prejudice. done, or neglected to do, that in every country and in every age they should be obliged to bear the rod of oppression and face the sword of massacre? Is there anything peculiar about these peo- people—any quality that challenges hate, or any danger that dictates destruc tion? What is the meaning of this per petual mystery of a tortured tribe and an outraged people? This is the ques tion which I shall attempt so far as pos sible to answer. The first thing that I would empha size is the simple fact, not often recog nized or remembered, that the Jews are not alone in their experience of perse cution. The agony which they endure is an agony which they have shared with other racial and religious groups. The Jews, for example, were not the first to see their country ruined, their capital leveled to the ground and their people scattered to distant countries and among alien races. This was the fate which Rome visited upon Carthage three hundred years before Titus visited it upon Jerusalem. The Jews are not the only people who have been tortured and slain for heresy. What they suffered at the hands of Antiochus Epiphanes the Christian martyrs suffered at the hands of Nero and Diocletian. The Jews were not the only victims of the Spanish In quisition. The pains they endured were the same pains which were ruthlessly in dicted upon thousands and thousands of perfectly good Christians. The Jews were not the only people to be expelled in a body from the only country they ever knew. The expulsion of the Hugue nots from France in the reign of Louis XIV was not less terrible than the ex pulsion of the Israelites from Spain in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. More than a thousand years ago the Christian Albigenses in southern France were utter ly exterminated by the bloody sword of Simon de Montfort. Less than one hun dred years ago the Bahaists of Moslem, Persia, were ravaged in a massacre which, among other things, took the lives of thirty thousand men and women in a single day. The same period which wit nessed the Russian pogroms witnessed as well the Bulgarian atrocities and the Ar menian massacres. In Germany today the Jews are meeting no more ghastly a fate than the Socialist Republicans on the one hand and the Red Communists on the other. The Jews, in other words, have no monopoly of suffering. They are not the only people who have been persecuted by their fellows. Which means that there must be certain general causes of persecu tion which apply to all peoples under the same given conditions! Yet the Jews are unique in this hideous field of oppression and death—unique in the sense that their sufferings are uni versal and eternal. They have been despised and rejected not in one place but in every place; they have been tor tured and butchered not in one age but in every age. Which would seem to im ply that there are some special factor* work in their case which for some reason do not appear anywhere else! Th< pro! lem before us is therefore a simple one It is to discover, on the one hand, what are the causes which lead to persecution in general; and, on the other hand, what are the specific causes which operate in the life of Israel. Before coming to grips with thi-s prob lem, I want to answer a question, ot rather meet an indictment, which alwav* appears whenever we encounter the rid die of discrimination or prejudice agaimt the Jews. Why are Jews persecuted- Because, we are invariably told, the Jew» are an objectionable, even an obnoaiou* people. In their natural condition thn are dirty and unclean. In their higher condition they still remain coarse, vulgar and unrefined. Always, we are informed, they are loud-mouthed, arrogant and in trusive. Jews have no standards of cul ture and no good tnanners, and are thu* a constant offense to decency. In their personal habits they are unendurable. In their business methods they are shrewd and cunning, and almost invariably un scrupulous. Exploiters not only of other but of their own people, they are utterh materialistic and have no higher passion in life than that of money-making. No body can live, or at least wants to live, with Jews. Wherever they move in even- body else moves out. They are objection able even to themselves, for Portuguev and German Jews arc frequently the first to Hee from the company of Russian and Polish Jews. These people are obnoxious that is all. If persecuted it is for the same reason that stones are removed from a road, or weeds torn up from a garden I think you will agree with me that thi* is the most frequent charge which i' brought against the Jews, and the com monest explanation of the disadvantage' and ills which they are made to suffer. What now are we to say to this indict ment? I would say, with great empha'i' two things: In the first place, the accusation i* un true. In this famous speech in the Briti'h House of Commons on “The Conciliation of America” the great liberal orator, Ed mund Burke, made the immortal state ment that he did not “know the method of drawing up an indictment against * whole people.” What Burke thus said of Americans is true as well of Jew' Neither against this people, nor again** any people, can a charge of universal ap plication be brought. I am willing to concede that there are objectionable Jf w -- many objectionable Jews, just as there are many objectionable persons in ever} social group. I am willing to concede that I have seen individual Jews wh' 1 were as obnoxious as any Gentiles I e yfr met in my life. I am willing to concede that there are whole sections of the Jewi'» people, those who are only a generatu ,r or two removed from the Europea p ghettos, who are objectionable to a!' p« r sons of culture and refinement. A American Jew has himself drawn in '> v colors the ugly picture of these fellow tribesmen of his in the pages of that un- forgettable novel, which most of c* rea some years ago, “The Rise of Ha' Levinsky.” I am even willing to cone* f that the offenses of offensive Jews are _ a peculiarly distinctive and en ph» n '- character, due, I may hasten to point (Please turn to page 12) [8] » THE SOUTHERN I SR AI LIT*