Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1911-01-19
They Stand in Front Ranks
Of Patriotism in the
United States
ADDRESS BY OSCAR STRAUSS
Annual Council of the Union of
American Hebrew
Congregation.

est approach to the ideals of the
prophets Of Israel that has ever been
incorporated in the form of a State,
declared Oscar s. Straus, ambassa-
dor to Turkey. in an address deliver
ed tonight at the second annual coun-
oil of the Union Of American Hebrew
Congregations, held at the Hotel
Astor america is peculiarly a
promised land wherein the aspirants
OF the teachings Of the ancient pro-
phets inspired the work OF the fathers
Of our country"
Mr.. Straus spoke upon America
The spirit of American Judaism
His address follows:
The spirit of American judaism
first asserted itself when Stuyvesant,
the Governor of New Amsterdam,
would not permit the few Jews who
had emigrated from Portugal. TO
unite with the other burghers in
standing guard for the protection OF
their homes. When the tax cOllec.
tor came to Asser Levy t. collect a
tax on this account, he asked if that
tax was imposed on all the residents
of New Amsterdam. No, was the
reply, cit is only imposed upon Jews
because they do not stand guard Il
have not asked TO be exempted re
piled Asser Levy am not only will
hut ho rio ty. cta
guard
THAT right the Jews have/asserted
and exercised as officers and in the
ranks of the Continental Army and in
every crisis of our national history
from that time until the present day
The American spirit and the spirit of
American Judaism were both matur-
ed in the same cradle of liberty, and
united together in origin, in ideals,
and in historical development. The
closing chapter of the chronicles of
the Jews g, tLa Ibvz:a an PENN 2
forms the opening chapter of tJ4/
history on this continent 1t Tda
Luis Santangel. the Beaconsfield of
his time assisted by his kinsman
Gabriel Sanches, the Royal Treasu-
rer of Aragon, who advanced out of
his own purse seventeen thousand
florins, which made the voyage of
Columbus possible Luis de Torres,
the interpreter as well as the surgeon
and the physician of the little fleet,
besides several of the sailors, who
were with Columbus on his first
voyage, were Jews.
Looking back through this vista
Of more than four centuries as Amer
leans and as Jews, We lave reason to
remember with justified gratitude
the foresight and signal service of
those Spanish Jews who had the wis
dom to divine the far-reaching posi-
bilities of the plans of the great nay
igator, whom king and queen, dukes
and grandees regarded as vission.
ary babbler and "a schaming adven-
turer.' The royal patrons were fl
nally won over by the hope that Co
! lumbus might discover new treas
urers Of gold and precious stones to
enrich the Spanish crown. But not
so with the Jewish patrons, who
caused Columbus, or, as he was then
called christopher Colon, to be re-
called, and who advanced the money
to fit out his caravels without securi-
ty and without interest, as they saw,
as by divine inspiration, the prom
Use and possibility of the discovery
of another world which in the words
of the late Emilio CASTELAR,, the his
torian, statesman, and one time pres
ident of Spain would afford to the
Iquickening principles of human liber-
ty a temple reared to the God of en-
franchised and redeemed conscience,
a land that would offer an unstained
abode to the ideals of progress.
The records of these transactions
are fortunately still preserved in the
archives of Simancas in Seville.
1T is idle to speculate upon hypo-
thetical theories in the face of the
facts of history. OF course, Ameri-
ca would have been discovered and
colonized had Columbus never lived,
but had the streams of the begin
nings of American history flown
from other sources into other direc.
tions it would be futile even to make
an imaginative forecast of the effect
they would have produced upon the
history and development of this con-
tinent. The merciless intolerance of
an ecclesiastical system and the hor-
ror of its prosecutions stimulated the
earliest immigration, and subsequent
ly brought about the reformation in
Saxon and Anglo-Saxon lands, and
the same spirit drove to our shores
the pilgrim and the puritan fathers;
which chain of circumstances destin-
ed this country from the very begin
ming to be the land of the immigrant
and the home for the fugitive and the
prosecuted. "The difference between
government by kings and mobiles and
! government under Democracy, is
| that the former rests upon the power
to compel obedience while the latter
rests essentially upon the sacrifice by