The Southern Jewish Weekly

U. S. Spurs Drive On Race Hatred: Murphy Hits Bigotry; F. D. R. Plans Anti-Spy Unit

WASHINGTON, D. C. — The United States Government and other authorities this week presented a drive against racial hatred and other subversive activities, with these principal developments:

(1) Attorney General Frank Murphy, recently appointed Supreme Court Justice, told the National Conference on Palestine that bigotry was a menace to American democracy; earlier he told a press conference there would be "startling developments" in the Justice Department's investigation at anti-sedition.

(2) President Roosevelt announced plans for a 250-man unit in the Federal Bureau of Investigation to combat foreign espionage agents and subversive activities, after telling Congress in his annual message that agitation for race, religious and class hatred was a ruse of foreign dictators to set Americans fighting among themselves.

(3) The Dies Committee, reporting to Congress on its year-long investigation, found subversive activities on the rampage, but recommended increased vigilance by the American people and law-enforcing agencies.

(4) Governor Lehman addressing the New York Legislature in Albany, urged extension of the ban on job discrimination; later he told a Bnai Brith meeting in New York that totalitarian propaganda in the U. S. menaced national peace and security, his brother, Chief Judge Irving Lehman of the Court of Appeals, making the same point.

MURPHY CALLS ANTI-SEMITISM "SMOKE SCREEN"

Addressing the Palestine conference on "The Challenge of Intolerance," Murphy declared the Jews were serving "not merely as a scapegoat but as a smoke-screen to conceal more aggressive designs of power-mad men." He stated that the worship of force," to which Jews have been sacrificed not only anti-Jewish but anti-Christian... a revolt against reason and God.

The warning pointed not only abroad but at this country as well. The work of anti-Semitism has made itself felt here as well as abroad."