The Press: Hush-Hush Ends

Whether anti-Semitism is growing in the U. S. is a question on which men disagree.* That talk about anti-Semitism has grown like a weed in the U. S. during the last decade is a fact that no well-informed U. S. citizen can truthfully deny. Yet the U. S. press has for the most part studiously, purposefully and almost universally ignored the subject. Though some segments of the press itself are not altogether free from anti-Semitic bias, its attitude in general has been a reflection of the belief of many influential Jews that to recognize anti-Semitism is to encourage it. Last week two publications made news by reversing this stand.

"Demand for Action." On the newsstands appeared Vol. 1, No. 1 of Equality, "A Monthly Journal to Defend Democratic Rights and Combat Anti-Semitism and Racism." Conceived by Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein (a Catholic), Equality has on its editorial council such prominent Jewish intellectuals as Publisher Bennett Cerf, Playwrights Moss Hart and Lillian Hellman, Anthropologist Franz Boas. Its first issue contains articles on anti-Semitism by such potent non-Jews as Columnist Dorothy Thompson, Author Donald Ogden Stewart, Warden Lewis E. Lawes, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick. Its credo:

"We believe that the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the United States—and we condemn those who ignore it for one reason or another—cannot be understood as a so-called religious or racial problem. We beg that the bitter lesson of Europe be learned: that where anti-Semitism triumphs, Fascism triumphs as well. . . . Equality will combat all those who attempt to cover up manifestations of antiSemitism. . . . It is becoming clear that all the forces in American life concerned with . . . combating anti-Semitism are veering from the hush-hush position to a demand for action."

Hooton on Jews. Harvard's Professor Earnest Albert Hooton is a popeyed, witty anthropologist who is noted for his pessimistic views on the state of mankind in general. Last week Anthropologist Hooton, no Jew, published in Collier's as outspoken and provocative an article on the Jewish question as the U. S. press has printed in many a day.

After postulating that facial characteristics set the Jews apart, that they are "a people representing the supersophisticated product of intensive selection and long-continued evolution," Dr. Hooton proceeds to embark upon "a discussion which will arouse the ire of many an idealistic democrat with an inferiority complex and of all scientists who labor under the delusion that only negative findings are sound." Says he: