necessary to bring to the Jew a consciousness of the significance of his new-world freedom so that the cringing attitude towards life, born of Ghetto misery, might be undone. This challenge was fully met by Emil G. Hirsch, during forty-five years of courageous and uncompromising labor, and if today the Jew has the pride of sharing in the citizenship of America, the land of his love, then in no small measure must this be credited to Sinai's peerless leader and teacher, Emil G. Hirsch.

JULIUS KAHN

By HARRY SCHNEIDERMAN

On December 19, 1924, the day following the death of Julius Kahn who had been a representative in the Congress of the United States for twenty-four years, President Coolidge addressed a letter of condolence to Florence Prag Kahn, the widow, in the course of which he said:

"It was his fortune to possess the talents and the opportunity to do an incomparable work in connection with our country's participation in the World War. His high place among public men of his time is assured." On the same day, the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives adopted a resolution in which it is said of Julius Kahn that "he was foremost in fostering his country's welfare," and that "in his death the country has lost a true, just and wise man, one possessing the loftiest patriotism and self-sacrificing devotion to his conception of the right."

These eloquent tributes refer to a heroic period in the life of this man. Although of German nativity, he was one of the foremost human factors in that vigorous and large scale prosecution of the World War which brought it so speedily to a close, nineteen months after the United States became associated with the Allied Powers against the German Empire and its allies. Although he was a Republican, he brushed aside all partisan considerations and

aided, with the best efforts of his heart, head, and hand, the Democratic Administration then in power, in the prosecution of the war; and when Stanley H. Dent, Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, and several other members of that Committee, who were opposed to President Wilson's conscription plans, declined to sponsor the selective service act, Representative Kahn, ranking minority member of the Committee, took charge of the bill and vigorously pressed it to passage. It was his firm conviction that the best way to end the war most quickly was to bring to bear every possible force. He was also convinced that the methods employed in the United States for raising troops in previous wars, could not possibly be used in a struggle of such gigantic dimensions, and that selective conscription was not only the quickest and most effective method of mobilization, but also the most just and fair. As the Outlook said in an editorial tribute to Mr. Kahn in its issues of December 31, 1924, "The passage of the Selective Draft Act marks a turning point in the military history of this country, and its power in bringing military service under a practical and just system cannot be exaggerated."

One of his colleagues described Mr. Kahn's part in this episode in the following dramatic terms:

'It had been half a century since our land had trembled under the tread of marshalling armies. The hour of this great world tragedy was upon us.

"The strange question arose as to how and upon what principle of equality our millions of American manhood should be brought into military service to compose the Army of the Great Republic of the West. It was at this time and at this juncture, not only of our country's