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IN
Brunswick, Georgia
It's
THE
OGLETHORPE
MRS. JACK GARDNER
Managing Owner
THI COMMERCIAL MEN'S HOME
Visit the new ROSE ROOM
European Plan Reasonable Rat.
THE
NEWNAN
TIMES
NEWNAN, GEORGIA
H. E. COHEN
CHARLOTTE, N. C.
Hosiery and Underwear
to the Wholesale Trade
[20]
Priorities for (iood Will
I Continued from /hifir 71
erence for Jewish professors!
The problem of inter-marriage often
occupies the foreground in any study
of Christian-Jewish relations. A rather
large number of both Jews and Chris
tians expressed a willingness to marry
outside of their faith. Among the Jew
ish students we found that the longer
they remained in college, the weaker
was their expressed antipathy to
wards marrying a non-Jew. It was
not dear whether their education or
their absence from home environment
accounted for this trend. Among all
the groups it was quite apparent that
girls were most hesitant about break
ing from family tradition, and nearly
all of them preferred to marry within
the fold. Analyzing the reasons given
for marrying a co-religionist, we
learned that Jews were strongly in
fluenced by a desire to please theii
parents: Christians were more clearK
motivated by religious considerations.
What effect docs a college educa
tion have on anti-Semitism? While
our survey is far from conclusive, as
it was not taken over a period of
years, we were intrigued by the un
canny regularity of our “chart of
prejudice.” From freshman to senior
year and on to graduate study, the
score decreased in a uniform pattern,
from 30.5 to 15.8. Sophomores indi
cated less prejudice than freshmen,
juniors less than sophomores, and
graduate students had little more than
a trace of intolerance. The obvious
conclusion one might reach was that
a higher education tended to break
down irrational prejudices, though we
are all too keenly aware of intoler
ance in “higher places.”
Education, we are cautioned, is not
the open sesame to complete toler
ance. Our Jewish groups often op
erate on the principle that the better
v ou know a person, the more you like
him. Personal exjierience tells us that
our regard for certain individuals va
ries inversely with tin* extent of our
acquaintanceship. Our invitation to
the gentile world to come and learn
more about us should be tempered
with the thought that one of our tasks
is to be worthy of being known better!
The rise of Nazism was natural!) at
the heart of many of our problems.
Has the virus developed on the other
side of the Atlantic spread to our
shores to attack the body of American
life? The answer is a most logical
one. W here resistance to the disease
has been lowered by a poor constitu
tion. the infection of anti-Semitism
has taken hold. But whenever the body
was well-fortified, it not only threw
off germs of bigotry, but built up pro
tective antibodies to withstand the on
slaught permanently. In other words,
the menace from abroad has drawn
the lines of demarcation more sharplv.
I he liberal-minded American has be
come more convinced that anti-Sem
itism is the opening wedge in the
destruction of the American way of
life, while the bigot has found con
firmation for his prejudices in the vic
ious mouthings of the Coebbels and
the Coughlins.
We were universally agreed that the
present world conflict, in which the
moral issues are more clearly defined
than in any war fought in modern
times, offers us a unique op|K>rtunit\
to drive home the lesson that tolerance
is the hand-maiden of democracy.
The writer has found ample con
firmation of this point of view during
the past summer, when he served as
chaplain for the l nited States (.a\airy
at Fort ffiley. Kansas, \mong the
hundreds of Christian boys in uni
form whom he met, there was a gen
uine spirit of fellowship, and a sense
of recognition that ours is a common
struggle against an enemy who would
destroy the Hebrew-Christian way of
life.
One dillicultv in making our study
was in sifting the honest and the forth
right answers from those that were
facetious or evasive. \\ e were at a loss
to understand this comment by one
student “I like objectionable gentiles
much better than objectionable
Jews!" I leave the reader to draw his
ow n conclusions.
I hese are a few of the observations
made by our little study group over
a period of four months. Our conclu
sions should v indicate those of us w ho
are optimistic enough to envision a
more liberal \merica in the post-war
world. After our last class-meeting, a
young man came to see me with a
complaint about prejudice. \ young
Catholic with a fine Irish name and
a well-known Big Ten athlete, he ex
pressed deep concern about a letter
which lie received from a Protestant
friend who was in training for a
branch of the Air Force. Apparentlv
his Protestant friend was convinced
that a Jewish boy in his squadron has
been “washed out" as a pilot because
of the prejudice of a certain oflicer.
What interested me was not the al
leged cv idence of discrimination,
which in all likelihood was largelv in
the mind of the Jewish candidate, but
rather that a young Protestant and
his Catholic friend should have felt a
sense of personal hurt at this evi
dence of discrimination against a Jew.
These young men. who at this mo
ment may be flying over a distant
desert or a remote Pacific isle, are
truly representative of the youth of
America. They are willing and glad
to offer their lives for America, so
long as they are assured that the de
mocracy for which they are struggling
is a genuine democracy: they are will
ing to pay the price if the world of
tomorrow will be a free and tolerant
world.
HEYWARD MAHON
COMPANY
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Greenville, S. C.
Compliments of
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GREENVILLE, S. C.
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Phone 137 109 W. North St.
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