ful, will result in a universal revolution in the methods of wheat-growing. Mr. Aronsohn's discovery of the long-sought prototype of wild wheat, of drought-resistant stocks and dry land grains and forage plants, if he can cultivate them to a point of commercial value, will result in bringing into use in Palestine thousands of acres of land, whose one defect at the present time is the lack of irrigation; the future of Mesopotamia, also, hinges on the success of Mr. Aronsohn's experiments, and, in general, the civilized world will greatly benefit by the successful introduction of dry wheat.
In addition to dry-wheat experimentation, Mr. Aronsohn has in view a number of subordinate objects which have been rather meagerly explained in the articles that have so far appeared, and which will doubtless assume concrete and practical form in the near future.
It is a matter for congratulation that the financial backing Mr. Aronsohn has secured will make it possible for him to go ahead, without let or hindrance, in the realization of all his plans, those known and those reserved for future exposition, every one of which is of immense value to our cause.
IN RE MONTAGUE GLASS.
WHEN it was discovered that a mediocre writer of Jewish extraction had forced-his way into the pages of a popular magazine, the large contingent of Jews who love to measure the progress of the Jewish people by the amount of recognition they receive from gentiles, at once hailed that mediocrity as a genius, who had tapped a well of living Jewish waters. He was classified as a colleague of Israel Zangwill, and his name was registered in
the pages of the American Jewish Year Book as a new literary power. Tobias Schanfarber utilized the new "star" to pile a mountain of eulogy upon him and incidentally to fill a column of space gaping for words, and the editors of provincial Jewish papers waited with bated breath to hear more of the personality of the gifted writer, who had uncovered a new vein of Jewish life.
There is danger in praise of this sort. The new writer who attempts to work his new line, in the course of events says or does something that does not please his eulogists. Israel Zangwill, lahavdel, a great writer of fiction, did not escape censure when he wrote The Children of the Ghetto, and Montague Glass does not escape censure when he writes of the vices of Jewish people. If Glass had only continued as a writer of burlesque Jewish fiction for foreign consumption, all might have been well with him. Schanfarber, that erudite literary critic, would have continued to laud him to the skies. But when Glass involved in one of his stories an incident in which the penchant for bankruptcy in the characters of Pearlmutter and Potash was exposed, he at once lost his standing as a writer.
It did not matter that Glass never gave evidence of being anything more than a facile concocter of cheap plots, spun out to make a half hour's entertainment, with just enough variety about them to give them a piquant flavor. When he was carrying the Jewish mission to the Christian world, all his faults were forgiven. But when his mission showed symptoms of rishus, all the praise that had been bestowed upon him was relegated to limbo, and poor Glass at once became a stirrer up of anti-Semitism.
Nothing will satisfy the promoters of the Jewish mission.
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