tion was given to every sensible opinion that came from any source. Why should not Die Wahrheit tell the truth? Was not the committee efficient? The Federation has the report of a certified public accountant, which gives unqualified praise to the committee for having so efficiently conducted the affairs of the exhibition, all transactions being accounted for, all goods delivered with only one or two mistakes in bookkeeping. In spite of the throngs, everything was maintained on a high level, cordial, democratic, free from snobbishness, free from loose methods. Why does not Die Wahrheit tell the truth? Friendship is best shown in a desire to appreciate the good qualities of another, and not in conjuring up imaginary grounds for complaint. Die Wahrheit cannot come to us and say it is a freind of Bezalel when it gives space for unjust, untrue, and unfair criticisms never even investigated.
Two Other Journals.
Two other Yiddish newspapers, the Morning Journal and the Forwarts, deliberately ignored the Bezalel exhibition. Not one word of praise or blame was printed in either paper. Is this business or principle? The Morning Journal may in principle be opposed to Zionism, as it seems to be, but does that entitle a newspaper to ignore an event of such large proportions, which should be recorded as a matter of news? The same holds good with the Forwarts. The Forwarts, blindly and ignorantly, is opposed to Zionism; it opposes it by ignoring what it does. But the Forwarts is a working man's organ, an organ of democracy, its readers include thousands who are Zionists. What sort of a principle is it that allows the undisturbed exercise of the degrading and demoralizing methods that were supposed to be the stock in trade of the old newspapers? The Forwarts speaks with derision of the "reactionary" press, but it can certainly learn something from the same reactionary press in matters relating to fairness. The one exception in this respect is the Morning Journal, which while prating of Judaism, agrees with the Forwarts that the best way to meet an opponent's argument is not to let its readers know that the opponent lives. But thank God we do not need the Morning Journal or the Forwarts to demonstrate that Zionism lives.
The Maccabaean has given so much space to this matter only to call the attention of its readers to a demoralizing condition in Yiddish Journalism, for which they themselves are to blame, for it is they who countenance such tactics and seemingly endorse it, whenever they patronize these publications
Moguelesco Comedian.
Moguelesco's death was duly mourned by the entire Jewish settlement in New York. This genial artist, who had made thousands laugh and entertained them with his consummate art, was not known beyond the confines of Jewish life. He sought none of the applause of the gentile world, as many of his lesser colleagues did. He remained all his life in the "ghetto", playing continuously in all sorts of parts, and in every one of them a superior player. He was a product of what one may call unadulterated Jewish life. As a boy, a meshorer; later a singer in the crowded Roumanian coffee-houses, frequented only by Jews; then adopted by Goldfaden and playing in his farces to Jewish audiences. Attaining renown as a comedian, in later years he was also a fine character actor, playing in Gordin's dramas in an inimitable manner. He never seems to have been tempted to play in any thing but Yiddish. He probably never studied the actors of other stages. He was a genius unstudied and unlearned. He was superb in "Die Shechita" as the rabbi, as the father in "Gott, Mensch und Teufel." Unlike him, showing the taint of the actor-careerist, is the case of Rudolph Schildkraut. Also a great actor, Schildkraut played in German, attaining his fame in Berlin as leading player with Max Reinhardt. Circumstances brought him to New York, where he played, always an artist, in Yiddish to Jewish audiences. Returning to Berlin, Schildkraut declared that he had never played in the despised Yiddish, hoping thus to appease the injured feelings of his anti-Semitic friends of the Jewish persuasion. This is the kind of character produced by assimilation: a great artist, and a small man. Moguelesco was a great artist, because he served his people without a thought of what the goyim would say. His memory should be prized.