given with full detail, and with a very apparent journalistic appreciation of horror. Names, dates, places, circumstances are all in order.
Very well. It is no part of this article to deny or minimize the suffering of Jews wherever or for whatever cause it may occur. There is nothing whatever to be said in extenuation of injustice inflicted on the humblest human being. The murder of even one person, the terrorizing of even one family, is a very terrible thing to contemplate. It is a great pity that the world has become so accustomed to the piled-up tales of horror that it no longer has any sensibilities left to feel the shame and degradation of these things. From the days of Belgium onward, all races in Europe have suffered, and by sympathy all races in America have suffered with them, though it is a fact that we hear more, far more, about the sufferings of the Jews than of any other people.
There is, however, this reaction of the practical mind: Why do these things occur? Grant that robberies, assaults and murders described in the complaint, have occurred, why should they occur?
Are the Polish people naturally given to perpetrating such acts? Have such acts marked the residence of the Jews in Poland for the last 800 years? And if the Polish people are not naturally abusive, if the story of the Jews’ residence in Poland has been mostly pleasant, what causes the change now?—that is the way the practical mind works. It seeks to know the background.
Mr. Morgenthau, apparently, put in too much of this background, though at that he put in very much less than the other investigators, except Mr. Samuel. Therefore, Mr. Morgenthau’s report was pigeonholed by American Jewry, because the facts make very poor material for the kind of propaganda which American Jewish leaders had in mind. Apparently they did not dare publicly to criticize or renounce his report; they simply passed it over. Captain Wright, who endeavored to put in all the background he could find to make Polish conditions comprehensible to the British people, has been handled insultingly by the Jewish press. They don’t want investigation. They want sympathy for themselves and denunciation for the Poles.
