Dr. Charles F. Aked, famed Congregational preacher of Kansas City, recently preached a sermon on the text, “Salvation Is From the Jews” and in the course of his message, he took occasion to refer to Mr. Ford’s anti-Semitic campaign. Dr. Aked, it will be recalled, was one of those chosen by Mr. Ford to go with him to Europe on his notorious peace expedition when it was proposed to bring the war to a peremptory close.
Dr. Aked says that the expedition was the most colossal farce of the ages and that Mr. Ford discovered it before he had completed the voyage over. He says that Mr. Ford had been grossly deceived and tricked by Rosa Schwimmer, the well-known Russian agitator, who had made Mr. Ford believe that the governments of Europe were anxious for some mediator to step into the breach and give them an opportunity to bring the war to a close.
When Mr. Ford discovered a little early in the course of the expedition that the woman had deceived him, that the governments of Europe were not anxious to end the war at all and that they regarded him as a fool, Dr. Aked says his disillusionment was so complete and his hatred for Rosa Schwimmer became so intense that he has since then allowed his passion against her to pervade his entire thought. It has more lately become a passion against the Jewish race. Dr. Aked believes that this accounts entirely for the campaign of prejudice which Mr. Ford is conducting against the Hebrew people of this country.
The American people are not at all likely to cherish ill-will against the Jews under the leadership either of Mr. Ford or any other man or group of men. Current facts disprove the contention that they are disloyal, or that they have banded themselves as a race for the purpose of boycotting Protestants. Prominent in many of the movements which have been started in this country during and since the war, movements of Christian origin, have been some of the nation’s most illustrious Jews. When did any man ever hear of Henry Morgenthau or Nathan Strauss or some of the big-hearted rabbis of the nation withholding their help and leadership from any cause in which the Christian people of America had a part? Right now, in the campaign for Armenian relief, the names of some of these men are right at the top. They are directing the campaign in many of the great cities. In others they are among the largest contributors, and the money thus being raised is going to Christian Armenians. Certainly there is no suggestion of religious or racial prejudice in such whole-hearted efforts as these great Hebrew leaders are expending in these times.
More than that and intensely more vital is the fact that the Jews have given to the christian era its most cherished traditions and possessions. The Bible has been handed down by them; it was written by Jewish prophets under divine inspiration and they have guarded it through the long centuries with jealous care. The Jews have given us also our basic conception of what God is. They shook the foundations from ancient polytheism and gave humanity its credal belief in the existence and immanence of a great Creator. And then, too, “salvation is from the Jews,” the world’s greatest fact.
Humanity’s debt to the Hebrew race, therefore, is so stupendous that fanatical fervor in this enlightened day will not allow prejudice against it to ascend to respectable proportions.
From the editorial page of the Charlotte News and Evening Chronicle, Tuesday, February 22, 1921
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