Alfred, the head waiter of the Mayflower, one of the official hotels in Washington, D.C., was obviously bewildered. The caterer, and so to say, Sargent of Arms at many distinguished Washington gatherings, a gentleman with the accent of a distinguisher foreigner and the mannerisms that would make him a walking book of etiquette, he has seen many a dazzling party in his day. He knows the preferences of every important personage. He is an expert on interpreting the whims, likes and dislikes of the ladies and gentlemen who make the life of Washington what it is reputed to be. He knows the purpose and the inner motive of almost anything that transpires after 6:00 pm. That evening he was at the end of his wits.
The exquisite Chinese room of the Mayflower, the private residence of the Vice-Presicdent of the United States, was open at seven o'clock sharp, for the entertainment of a select group of seventy-five men and women, mostly men at this time. Several days before the Vice President himself had shown keen interest in the arrangements for that evening. The menu had been specially approved. No seating list however had been prepared and no question of social precedence had been solved. Who will occupy the distinguished seats at the rather short head table, and who will grace the ten round tables distributed rather sparsely over the inviting floor of the Chinese room?
Alfred's bewilderment grew stronger and more confusing from minute to minute. Here is the Secretary of Agriculture, Arthur M. Hyde, followed by Senator Thomas E. Watson, Republican majority leader; here is the interesting figure of Henry T. Rainey, Democratic Congressman from Illinois and House majority leader. Here is the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, two personal secretaries to President Hoover, the Solicitor of the U.S. State Department, the Assistant U.S. Attorney General, and here is Ruth Bryan Owen, daughter of the late Wm. J. Bryan and the most brilliant representative of American womanhood in the Congress of the United States, and several score of Senators, Congressmen, high officials, leaders of public opinion. The mere presence of any of the guests, if announced in advance, would be sufficient to fill a Carnegie Hall. At any rate, the oratorical capacity of these guests could easily consume a sizable issue of the Congressional Record.
Still, no flow of oratory or even political argument was heard. The seven dishes composing the menu were served in a rather rapid succession and disposed with rather easily. In the center of the head table there was the amiable and impressive figure of the Vice President, whose attitude would convey the impression of being both host and guest of honor, seated next to Senator Wm. H. King, coming from the Mormon state of Utah, the only place in the world where Jews are Gentiles and Christians are Israelites. At the end of the head table one could see the striking countenance of that youngish figure of the fiery Senator from Wisconsin, Robert M. Follette, a man in his thirties, rapidly rising to a dominant position of national leadership. At the opposite end of the table, almost as a contrast, one had to observe the distinguished appearance of a rather pale-faced equally youngish man and similarly rising in prominence in the Zionist movement -- Emanuel Newman. Next to him there were the pointed features of that intellectual phenomenon who is known in American legal writings and in liberal circles as Felix Frankfurter.
Congressmen and Senators, Republicans, Democrats and Progressives, Supreme Court Justices and high government officials were mingled together, engaging in conversation across the dinner table. Was it reparations? Foreign securities? World War debts? Remedies for the current depression? Presidential candidacies? Fragments of the views exchanged seemed to show that none of these weighty matters were under discussion. The strange names of biblical localities that one has heard long ago in Sunday School or came across while reading the Holy Scriptures, frequently recurred: Jordan, Plain of Esdrealon, Sharon, Jerusalem, Haifa, Dead Sea, Galilee. . . .
Soon the orators turned listeners, the statesmen shaping the policies of a mighty nation and the destiny of the world have postponed for an evening the weighty matters, for the consideration of "The Palestine Situation and its International Aspect." The American Palestine Committee, to create an organized form for the sentiment of the American people and of American public opinion, for the furtherance of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, was to be born. A message from President Hoover, succinctly giving expression to that sentiment, read by Senator King as Toast Master, met with the approval of Democrats and Republicans alike. Expressions of approval from Governors of many states, noted writers and men of affairs, were coached in even warmer and more direct language. Even without further evidence it was clear that enlightened American public opinion is clearly in favor of Zionist aims and wishes to see a Jewish national home in Palestine speedily realized.
The Israelite from Utah presented the case for the land of Israel with a warmth and sincerity of conviction of an enrolled Zionist. He yielded the floor to the guest of honor, the Vice President. A man of few words, he supported the pending "resolution" by revealing for the first time publicly that it was he, at the request of an orthodox Rabbi, Rabbi Simon Glazer, formerly of Kansas City, who was the actual author of the Zionist Joint Resolution (designated in the Congressional Record as the Lodge Resolution), which was passed by both houses of Congress in 1922, just at a propitious moment, when the fate of the Palestine Mandate hung in the balance. There was majestic simplicity and the makings of nearly a legend in the tale of Rabi and statesman working for the restoration of the Holy Land.
Felix Frankfurter startled his distinguished audience with his flow of direct argument and matchless frankness. In nearly an hour he succeeded in sketching in sharp lines the tragedy of the Jew in the post-emancipation era, and the promise beckoning to him from a restored national home in Palestine. Anti-Semitism in the United States is a social and economic fact and was perhaps for the first time discussed in the presence of so distinguished a gathering in Washington. Jewish law students in Boston and New York, the two cities he knows best, find the doors of non-Jewish law offices shut in their faces, Professor Frankfurter related. The United States has a Jewish population larger than any to be found in any other country. The questions of Palestine and Jewry do, as they must, find their way into the U.S. State Department. Even regardless of America's part in the framing of the Balfour Declaration and in the adoption of the Joint Resolution and the special convention between the United States and Great Britain regarding Palestine, there is the concern of a large body of American citizens who have made considerable investments in the mandated territory and who are deeply concerned over its fate and progress along the lines of the Mandate internationally approved.
Only two other speakers were to be heard: Dr. Albert Mead, U.S. Commissioner of Reclamation, who was a member of the Palestine Joint Serving Commission and who spoke of personal experience, and Emanuel Newman, American member of the World Zionist Executive.
"The achievements of the Jewish colonists," said Dr. Mead, "deserve the grateful recognition of the world. They have been wrought under hard and discouraging conditions. Instead of being an injury to the Arab, in many ways he has been an immense gainer. In a hundred ways Jewish settlement has brought modern civilization into all parts of Palestine, transformed poverty-stricken areas into places of opulent vegetation, and multiplied manifold the wealth and opportunities of the country."
For years the leaders of Zionism have been toying with the idea of finding a way for crystalizing American public opinion in favor of the idea, in a manner similar to that which was followed in England, France and Germany, where pro-Palestine committees have been established and have rendered valuable services to the cause. It was left to the vision and sagacity of Emanuel Newman, whose name is identical with an important chapter in the annals of American Zionism during the past decade, to translate this idea into a reality as his first important act as a member of the World Zionist Executive. In twenty-five minutes, in sentences as clear as they were brief, in facts as lucidly presented as the figures he quoted were telling, he presented what what one might rightly describe as the case for Zionism.
"I am a professing Jew," he declared.
(Released by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on January 29, 1932 with the subtitle "Pen Pictures of Washington Figures and Scenes." Publication details unknown. Text taken from typewritten manuscript.)
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