It was by Mass Meetings that Congress was co¬ erced into breaking off our commercial treaty with Russia.
It was by Mass Meetings that the literacy test was defeated.
It was by Mass Meetings that every attempt to re¬ strict immigration has been defeated.
In 100 important cities a Mass Meeting could be held tomorrow night if President Harding should at¬ tempt to remove a Jewish official, or if the census bureau should attempt to record Jews under their proper racial name.
It is a very perfect system, even if a little anti¬ quated. Doubtless its main purpose is to let the Jewish masses believe that they too have something to say in Jewish affairs. Jewish leadership of the Jews is never quite what the Jews think it is, and its weak¬ ness was never more apparent than today. There has not been any “persecution” of the Jews in the United States and never will be any, but all that the Jews have had to carry in the way of misunderstanding has been the result of the leadership which has misled them into paths of bloated ambition, instead of substantial human achievement. At this moment there is trembling, not among the Jewish masses, but among their leaders. The Jewish people will presently take their own affairs in their own hands, and then their affairs will go better. There are too many “com¬ mittees,” too many “prophets,” too many “wise men,” who think that two minutes with a President consti¬ tutes greatness, and that a busy bustling overseas and back constitutes statesmanship. The Jews have suffered from the personal ambitions and pathetic incapacity of some of their most advertised men.