Judge — April 1938 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE JUDGE ON THE BENCH I cannot say how the truth may be. I say the tale as ‘twas told to me. ERE is that great Jew who could today seize immortality? Where, among all the great Jews of the world, is that one man who, for his race, will cease apologetic docility and stand forth in shining armor, the six-pointed Star of David upon his lance as well as upon his shield? Where is that great Jew who will lift his voice and say to his people: “We are in the gravest danger in the history of our race. Not danger of extinction; that can never be. But danger that the world will soon believe we cannot and will not fight back. The time is come when Jews must at- tack as well as defend”? The writer of this page springs, with but one genera- tion between, straight from the soil of Ireland—the North of Ireland, as well—so that neither his race nor his religion know current criticism or attack, except up- on the isle itself. This is written that we might make it clear we are not asking another to remove an axe from our own neck. Jews, the time is come for you to fight. Too long you have left your explanations to your religious men. This will not do, since the world accepts their statements as a part of their job. You need some great figure to step from the ranks of business, or the law, or finance, and lead your legions in attack. Can you not see how the world would gasp and ad- mire and applaud if, tomorrow morning, the newspa- pers of the world should announce that a Justice Bran- deis had resigned from the Supreme Court of the United States with this statement: “I have today ten- dered to the President my resignation, that I may de- vote the rest of my days to puncturing the silly twad- dle of Hitler, who maligns and crucifies my people”? Or if a Bernard Baruch should say: “I have long ago made all the money I need; for years I have not tried to make more. I have given my counsel to government and to business, but from this day hence I renounce every activity except to strike back, and to lead my peo- ple in striking back, against their enemies”? Or if a Herbert Lehman should say: “It is a great honor to be the Chief Executive of my great State, but it is a greater duty and a greater honor that I undertake today, to join in battling my people's enemies”? Or if a Henry Mor- April, 1938 —Sm Watter Scorr. genthau should say: “Today I leave the Cabinet of the President of the United States to say to the enemies of Jews everywhere in the world that until my last breath I shall spend my every energy for the sole purpose of destroying their calumny and slander"? J EWS, add to the great virtues which your race pos- sesses—love of home, loyalty to friends, love of parents, and the guarding of your children—the virtue of willingness wholeheartedly and unashamedly to wage war, and aggressively to demand that you be un- derstood for what you really are. Too, too long you have let the world believe your humility is fear. That is not true, so stop it now. In thirty days, under such a leadership, you can make Adolf Hitler the most ridicu- lous man alive, and in six months you can see him re- moved from the leadership of the German people by the Germans themselves. You can make the world, which does not measure itself by its worst elements, stop meas- uring your race by yours. Of course, you have to clean house. But who doesn’t? There are bad Irish, bad English, bad Americans, bad people of every kind. You have furnished fighting leaders for every other people and every battle for the right since your race began. You have made Jewish names respected and revered in every cause but your own. There are among you so many who could fill this role of Leader. One of you must come forward; and on the day you do you will find that the love that has been experienced in the communities and in the nation for the great Benjamin Cardozo, for Howard Loeb, for Jules Bache, for Felix Warburg, for the Rosenwalds, the Strauses, and the thousands upon thousands of others, will be multiplied a millionfold. You Sulzbergers, you Sterns, you Blocks, you Annen- bergs: roll your mighty presses into the teeth of your petty attackers. Fight, Jews! You don’t need armies and navies. You need only a fighting leader, to mass behind him the great intelligence and ability you already possess, to make a mass attack. Fame beyond the power of man to measure waits for such a Leader. If this is effrontery, it is first a Prayer. 23 comicbooks.com