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Note To Jewish Friend
Inspired Great Editorial
V WILLIAM A. AIKEN
One winter day several years ago, William A. Aiken and his
friend Mac Grogan were driving peacefully to the Colorado
Springs Gazette Telegraph, where both were advertising depart
ment employees. Suddenly, they noticed a nauseating display on
a wall—and then several others in various parts of the city.
Swastikas decorating the slogan “Jew Go Home” was the
greeting that met their anguished eyes all along the route to
work, Mr. Aiken was outraged, and Mr. Grogan, a Jew, was sick
with disgust.
When they got to the office, Mr. Aiken relates that his Jew
ish friend was “in a blue funk, holding his head in his hands,
staring at his desk, and not saying a word.” To cheer tip his co
worker, he sat down and spontaneously penned a five-paragraph
note. When Mr. Grogan read it, he immediately recognized its
extraordinary quality and insisted that it be submitted to the
paper for publication.
BIRTH OF AN EDITORIAL
That was the origin of an editorial so moving and eloquent
that it has since been picked up by editors from Maine to Cali
fornia who hailed it as “The Editorial of the Decade.” Mr. Aiken
recently received an award from the Young Judean Lodge of
Trenton, where the editorial was published in a daily newspaper
and by the local anglo-Jewish press.
When it appeared, readers insisted on learning more abou
the writer, and Mr. Aiken was traced to Seattle, where he now
lives.
In describing how he wrote the piece, Mr. Aiken said he
hadn’t planned it for publication, merely as a letter to a friend,
to let him know he didn’t have to “go home” that he was home.
It was, he said, “purely an emotional thing.”
Mr. Aiken’s celebrated editorial follows:—
“A REPLY TO SCRAWLERS”
“Jews go Home”—Well now, this is nothing new. Never in
the past have you ever taken this gentle suggestion to move on.
But Heaven forbid, suppose just this once, you thought that ex
pression of a few sick people actually expressed the conviction
of all the people in this wonderful land of ours, and all of you
started to pack your bags and leave for parts unknown.
Just before you leave, would you do me a favor? Would you
leave your formula for the Salk Vaccine with me before you
leave? You wouldn’t be so heartless as to let my children con
tract polio?
And would you please leave your knack for government,
and politics and persuasion and literature and good food, and
fun and love, and all those things, and would yoxi please leave
me the secret of your drive to succeed?
And please, have pity on us, please show us the secret of how
to develop such geniuses as Einstein and Steinmetz and oh so
many others, who have helped us all. After all, we owe you most
of the A-Bomb, most of our rocket research and perhaps the
fact that we are alive today, instead of looking up from, our
chains and from our graves to see an aging, happy Hitler drive
sloivly by in one of our Cadillacs.
On your way out, Jews, will you do me just one more favor?
Will you please drivd by my house and pick me up too? I’m
just not sure I could live too well in a land where you weren't
around to give as much as you have given to us. If you ever
have to leave, love goes with you, democracy goes with you.
everything I and all my buddies fought for in World War II goes
with you; God goes with you. Just pull up in front of my house
slow down and honk, because so help me, I’m going with yoit.
too.
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