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The American Hebrew
October
31, 1919: page 582
By Martin H. Glynn
(Former Governor of the State of N.Y.)
From across the sea six million men and women call to us for
help, and eight hundred thousand little children cry for bread.
These children, these men and women are our fellow-members of the
human family, with the same claim on life as we, the same
susceptibility to the winter's cold, the same propensity to death
before the fangs of hunger. Within them reside the illimitable
possibilities for the advancement of the human race as naturally
would reside in six million human beings. We may not be their
keepers but we ought to be their helpers.
In the face of death, in the throes of starvation there is no
place for mental distinctions of creed, no place for physical
differentiations of race. In this catastrophe, when six million
human beings are being whirled toward the grave by a cruel and
relentless fate, only the most idealistic promptings of human nature
should sway the heart and move the hand.
Six million men and women are dying from lack of the necessaries
of life; eight hundred thousand children cry for bread. And this
fate is upon them through no fault of their own, through no
transgression of the laws of God or man; but through the awful
tyranny of war and a bigoted lust for Jewish blood.
In this threatened holocaust of human life, forgotten are the
niceties of philosophical distinction, forgotten are the differences
of historical interpretation; and the determination to help the
helpless, to shelter the homeless, to clothe the naked and to feed
the hungry becomes a religion at whose altar men of every race can
worship and women of every creed can kneel. In this calamity the
temporalities of man's fashionings fall away before the eternal
verities of life, and we awaken to the fact that from the hands of
one God we all come and before the tribunal of one God we all must
stand on the day of final reckoning. And when that reckoning comes
mere profession of lips will not weigh a pennyweight; but deeds,
mere intangible deeds, deeds that dry the tear of sorrow and allay
the pain of anguish, deeds that with the spirit of the Good
Samaritan pour oil and wine in wounds and find sustenance and
shelter for the suffering and the stricken, will outweigh all the
stars in the heavens, all the waters in the seas, all the rocks and
metals in all the celestian globes that revolve in the firmament
around us.
Race is a matter of accident; creed, partly a matter of
inheritance, partly a matter of environment, partly one's method of
ratiocination; but our physical wants and corporeal needs are
implanted in all of us by the hand of God, and the man or woman who
can, and will not, hear the cry of the starving; who can, and will
not, take heed of the wail of the dying; who can, and will not,
stretch forth a helping hand to those who sink beneath the waves of
adversity is an assassin of nature's finest instincts, a traitor to
the cause of the human family and an abjurer of the natural law
written upon the tablets of every human heart by the finger of God
himself.
And so in the spirit that turned the poor widow's votive offering
of copper into silver, and the silver into gold when placed upon
God's altar, the people of this country are called upon to sanctify
their money by giving $35,000,000 in the name of the humanity of
Moses to six million famished men and women.
Six million men and women are dying -- eight hundred thousand
little children are crying for bread.
And why?
Because of a war to lay Autocracy in the dust and give Democracy
the sceptre of the Just.
And in that war for democracy 200,000 Jewish lads from the United
States fought beneath the Stars and Stripes. In the 77th Division
alone there were 14,000 of them, and in Argonne Forest this division
captured 54 German guns.This shows that at Argonne the Jewish boys
from the United States fought for democracy as Joshua fought against
the Amalekites on the plains of Abraham. In an address on the
so-called "Lost Battalion," led by Colonel Whittlesey of Pittsfield,
Major-General Alexander shows the fighting stuff these Jewish boys
were made of. In some way or another Whittlesey's command was
surrounded. They were short of rations. They tried to get word back
to the rear telling of their plight. They tried and they tried, but
their men never got through. Paralysis and stupefaction and despair
were in the air. And when the hour was darkest and all seemed lost,
a soldier lad stepped forward, and said to Col. Whittlesey: "I will
try to get through." He tried, he was wounded, he had to creep and
crawl, but he got through.To-day he wears the Distinguished Service
Cross and his name is
Abraham Krotoshansky.
Because of this war for Democracy six million Jewsh men and women
are starving across the seas; eight hundred thousand Jewish babies
are crying for bread.
(Continued from page 582)
In the name of Abraham Krotoshinsky who saved the "Lost
Battalion," in the name of the one hundred and ninety-nine thousand
and nine hundred and ninety-nine other Jewish boys who fought for
Democracy beneath the Stars and Stripes won't you give copper, or
silver, or gold, to keep life in the heart of these men and these
women; to keep blood in the bodies of these babies?
The Jew Has Helped Everybody But The Jew.
In the world war the Jew has helped everybody but the Jew. "Over
there" he helped in camp, in council and in conflict. "Over here" he
helped the Red Cross, the Y.M.C.A., the Knights of Columbus, the
Masons, the Salvation Army and everybody else. So now is the time
for everybody to help the Jew, and God knows now is the time he
needs it.
From out of the gloom of this war every other race, save one or
two, has snatched a ray of sunshine. But amid the encircling gloom
there is no light for the Jew "to lead thou me on." The war is over
for everyone, but the Jew. The knife is still at his throat and an
unreasoning and unreasonable century-old lust for Jewish blood opens
his veins. The Jew in Roumania, Poland and Ukrainia is being made
the scapegoat of the war. Since the armistice has been signed
thousands of Jews in Ukrainia have been offered up as living
sacrifices to diabolical greed and fanatical passion -- their
throats cut, their bodies rended limb from limb by assassin bands
and rabid soldiery. In the city of Proskunoff one day a few weeks
ago the dawn saw the door of every house wherein lived a Jew marked
as a shambles for slaughter. For four days, from sunrise to sunset,
fanatics plied the dagger like demons from hell, stopping only to
eat with hands adrip with the blood of Jewishvictims. They killed
the men; they were less merciful to women. These they violated, and
then they killed. From a purpose to a fury, from a fury to a habit
ran this killing of the Jews, until within four days the streets of
Proskunoff ran red with blood like gutters of a slaughter house,
until its homes became a morgue for thousands of slaughtered human
beings whose gaping wounds cried out for vengeance and whose eyes
had turned to stone at the horrors they had seen. As Hon. Simon W.
Rosendale, aptly paraphrasing Bobby Burns' thought, in his speech
not long ago, said it is the age-old story of "man's inhumanity to
man that makes countless thousands mourn." For as it has been at
Proskunoff, so has it been in a hundred other places.The bloody tale
hath repetition ad nauseum. It is the same tear-stained story
-- the same old stain upon the escutcheon of humanity. Verily, Byron
was right when he wrote:
Tribes of the wandering feet and weary breast
Whither shall
ye flee to be at rest?
The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his
cave,
Mankind their countries, Israel but the
grave.
[Illegible] to a place in the sun, and the crucifixion of Jews
must stop. We repeat the war is over for everybody, but the Jew.
Like Isaac the knife is at his throat, but unlike Isaac no power
seems able to stop the steel from thirsting for his blood. But some
power the world must raise up to prevent this decimation of a
deserving race. For the peace of the world a League of Nations let
us have by all means; but for the Humanity of the World, to give
justice to the Jew and other oppressed peoples on earth, let us have
a Truce of God! -- Albany Times Union.
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