The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-11-03

From the San Antonio Star.
 THE Jews do not necessarily stand
 together on political questions.
 ! They differ among themselves, just as other races, in which the race sympathy and cannishness are less marked, differ from each other upon questions of minor import. In public life the Jew stands as an individual, not as the representative of race; and his actions are controlled by individual opinion, not by race sympathy.
 But there is one political issue upon which the Jews invariably stand together. That one is the prohibition issue. Every member of tne Hebrew race. irrespective of party principle. of politiSal affiliations. or of personal attitude toward the use of liquor, is an ardent anti-prof ibitionist Yet the average Jew is a. ttempcrate man; and actual drunkenness among the Jews is almost unknown. Neither are the Hebrews as a race interested to any ap- preciable extent in the liquor traffic. Among the 450 or more saloons of San Antonio perhaps not over half dozen are owned by Jews. Why in view of these facts, the Jewish people are so unani- mously opposed to prohibition Is a ques- ton that has often been asked. This article has been written by way of partial answer to that question.
 Personal temperance, to the Jew. means voluntary moral virtue; not hard ship forced upon him by an arbitrary power. The Jew is temperate in his use of wine because his religious beliefs, his early training, his education. his moral sense, and his self-respect make 1t inn possible for him to be any other way, whether the laws of his state allow him the freedom of purchasing liquor or not. The Jews protect their children from the evils of excessive drunkenness. not by advocating the abolition of the saloon, but by teaching their boys from infancy the beauty of temperance and self-con- trol; and the glory and power of an un- clouded mind in a perfectly developed body They believe that excessive drunk enness is eradicable by education. never by legislation and in the example the temperance of their own race sets before the world they bear out their belief. But the one thing above all else that makes the Jew an anti-prohibitionis is the instinct of race preservation. The thinking Jews knows, for he has had aooo years of bitter history behind him to teach him the lesson. that whenever the Gentle churches combine in any one Issue other than a strictly moral issue the Jews must suffer for it. AS far as the mere moral aspect of the matter goes. the Jew would not. care if every sermon ever preached in Gentle church was based upon a temperance text. But he knows that prohibition is not moral question and never has been; 1t Is a politi- cal issue. He knows that when the lead CTS of the churches take up the prohi- bition fight 1t carries them into politics. He knows that after they win their fight they will stay in politics-and the Jew ish race will suffer from 1t.
 America is almost the only civilized na- ton today that has never plotted the pages of her history with the records of unholy, struggles between church and state This distinction is due wholly to the fact that in America the church or ganisations have hitherto confined them selves to moral possibility of friction be- tween the conflicting powers Just as soon as the. churches invade the realm of political and economic control. just that soon will trouble begin, and just that soon will religious federation cease and personal freedom be curtailed. The prospect of such condition of affairs is viewed as a calamity by every liberty loving American of whatever race or de- nomination.: by the American Jew 1t: ia
 regarded as more than a calamity-for il
 would practically mean the death sentencs
 and prosperity of his race.
 Look at the records of history in Eng Hand. in France. in Itaiy-in almost every country of Europe. Wherever the
 churches have concentrated in one de.
 nomination and asvomed powers rightb belonging to the state. the. result hal
 been oppression intolerance and endlesl strife Sometimes the Protestahts tff. umphed, and the Catholics were op' pressed beyond words to describe; agejr