The criticism is often made that the Jews are clannish, and do not amalgamate with the rest of the population. This is only partly true. Clannish they are, not from choice, but from self-respect. They have amalgamated as far as the delicacy of social relations has justified, and there are not a few of the very best families in this and in other cities who have evidences of that amalgamation in their veins. John Howard Payne, who gave us that song which never fails to thrill a patriot's heart, "Home, Sweet Home," was the son of a Jewish mother. No people, ancient or modern, have made so great sacrifices for spiritual ideas and ideals as the Jews; the longest trail of martyrdom in all history is crimsoned with their blood. George Eliot, quoting the historian Zunz, says in "Daniel Deronda": "If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of all the nations; if the duration of sorrows, and the patience with which they are borne, ennoble, the Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes ?" It is sad and a cause for regret that we must direct attention to the mournful pictures oppression has engraved in blood upon the pages of history; but alas! every day brings to our doors the haggard and haunted faces of fugitives from oppression. The Armenians, among the earliest professors of Christianity, once a proud and noble race, whose numbers have been decimated time and again by organized massacres, daily reach our shores, and give thanks to God that they are sheltered beneath the Stars and Stripes, far beyond the reach of their Russian and Ottoman oppressors. Only yesterday we read with throbbing hearts of the massacre of thousands of helpless men, women and children of Odessa, Kief, Kishinef, and a hundred other cities, towns and hamlets throughout Russia. So long as these terrible outbreaks of religious fanaticism and class hatred disgrace our age and our civilization, let us not forget the everlasting meaning of the imprint the feet of the Pilgrims made upon our continent, that it shall ever be a "shelter for the poor and the persecuted." To bar out these refugees from political oppression or religious intolerance, who bring a love of liberty hal lowed by sacrifices made upon the altar of an enlightened conscience, though their pockets be empty, is a grievous wrong, and in violation of the spirit of our origin and development as a free people; for they, too, have God's right to tread upon American soil, which the Pilgrims have sanctified as the home of the refugee. Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod; They have left unstained what there they found- THE ROOSEVELT PILGRIMAGE Address delivered by the Honorable Oscar Straus at Oyster Bay, January 6, 1923, on the third annual Pilgrimage to the grave of Theodore Roosevelt. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, when he departed this life this day four years ago, took his place among the immortals in our national history. This pilgrimage of the associates and friends first suggested itself to one of Roosevelt's closest friends, his graphic interpreter, Mr. E. A. Van Valkenburg of Philadelphia, who thereby gave expression to a universal sentiment which comes straight from the hearts of the American people. This is our third pilgrimage. The former ones were led by Dr. Lyman Abbott, who was selected as the permanent chairman. He too has now joined our leader in the great Beyond. I have been asked on this occasion to act in Dr. Abbott's place. Of course, I cannot fill that place except in sharing with each one of you the love and admiration we entertain for both of these two good and great men who in different ways served our country and have left their indelible impress upon the hearts and conscience of our people. A great statesman is he who discovers the evil tendencies of his times and has the foresight, wisdom and courage to become the leader to correct these tendencies. Disraeli, in one of his famous sentences, declared that it was the business of statesmen to effect by policy what revolution would effect by force. Again and again in varying and reiterating forms, Roosevelt in driving forward his social justice measures, called attention to the widening breach between our political democracy and our social life. He pointed out that unless a fairer consideration be given to the human element by the leaders of industry, that reaction on the part of those at the other end of the economic scale would ultimately produce revolution of the social system. His famous phrase was "this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.' In consonance with this principle, he caused to be enacted into law his social justice measures. In all his reforms, he constantly had a care to keep the balance of right and justice even, and not to arouse unjustified bitterness, or to raise hopes of the masses which were impractical or impossible to realize. Again and again he said "we must set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand, as against demagogy and mob rule on the other." The reformers of the world were not so much innovators or creators of new ideas and startling measures as they were readjustors of the life of the people upon the basic principles of elementary right and justice. This was true of the Prophets of Israel no less than of Washington and Lincoln. It was likewise true of Roosevelt. He was sneeringly referred to by some of his enemies as preaching and acting as if he were the discoverer of the Ten Commandments. This criticism in itself is a confirmation of his high purpose to impress upon the conscience of the American people the elemental truths underlying our democratic system. His consistent purpose throughout his political life was to shape our economic households so as to bring about an accord on the basis of justice, between the big man and the little man; between the employer and his worker. He foresaw that one of the greatest dangers to democracy we must provide against was that with the growth of our industries, and the larger they grew the more impersonal they became, it was of the first concern that the opportunities of the average man should not be abridged, and that every encroachment upon political equality should be jealously guarded against. While partisanship has its high uses in a free government, it also has its disadvantages in obscuring the greatness of contemporary statesmen. No one suffered more from this mystification than Roosevelt; be it said, however, that since his death the appreciation of his transcendent services to the Republic has continually grown in popular estimation not only in this country, but in all free lands. The rising generation recognizes Roosevelt as the personification of their ideals of Americanism. No one compares with him in the services he rendered in vitalizing the public conscience of our people in the world's great crisis, and year by year as his influence and ideals grow greater in the hearts and in the imagination of our people, "his truth is marching on." GEORGE SUTHERLAND PRIVATE RIGHTS AND GOVERNMENT Justice Sutherland of the United States Supreme Court was born in England in 1862, admitted to the bar in 1883, U. S. Senator from Utah 1905-1917, appointed to the Supreme Court 1922. He delivered the following address as the President of the American Bar Association at its annual meeting, Saratoga Springs, N. Y., Sept. 4, 1917. FROM the foundation of civil society, two desires, in a measure conflicting with one another, have been at work striving for supremacy: first, the desire of the individual to control and regulate his own activities in such a way as to promote what he conceives to be his own good, and, second, the desire of society to curtail the activities of the individual in such a way as to promote what it conceives to be the common good. The operation of the first of these we call liberty, and that of the second we call authority. Throughout all history mankind has oscillated, like some huge pendulum, between these two, sometimes swinging too far in one direction and sometimes, in the rebound, too far in the opposite direction. Liberty has degenerated into anarchy and authority has ended in despotism, and this has been repeated so often that some students of history have reached the pessimistic conclusion, that the whole process was but the aimless pursuit of the unattainable. I do not, myself, share that view. In all probability we shall never succeed in getting rid of all the bad things which afflict the social organism—and perhaps it would not be a desirable result if we should succeed, since out of the dead level of settled perfection there could not come that uplifting sense of moral regeneration which follows the successful fight against evil, and which is responsible for so much of human advancement-but I am sure that in most ways, including some of the ways of government, |