The Wilmington morning star., 1941-01-15
Fair Enouuh
By WESTBROOK PEGIER

sAAAS
are those of the author and
may not always harmonic
with its position.-The Editor.
NEW YORK, Jan. 14.-Grover
Hall, the editor of the Montgomerv
Advertiser, who died last week
was n of the greatest Journalists
IN the history of the profession or
craft This has the stuffy sound Of
the standard obituary tribute. but
let that not be held against JUDGE
Hall. Hold it against me and the
practice of heaping floral gates
ajar and lodge emblems high on
the graves of departed mediocri.
ties which tend to cheaper super-
latives. This little newspaperman
was wise, brilliant and brave, but
with his wisdom and courage he
stirred in an ingredient of human
understanding which distinguished
his fighting tracts from mere
flames of anger and hatred, Ha
did hate the evils that he fought,
the greatest of which was the bru.
tai bigotry of the modern Ku Klux,
but Witout sparing the evils them
selves he nevertheless couIo sparo
those Who were guilty of them in a
way which somehow shamed them
inWardly without humiliating then
to the point of obstinate violence.
Hate, however, was not his
weapon. He fought hatred without
melting it and, though many men
were for a time aroused against
him when he was fighting the Ku
klux in a focus of that strange in
lection, he lived to see a day when
he was honored in his home town
as an honor to the town and the
people were proud to say they
knew Grover Hall, personally.
Man of Renown
He was so much better journalist
than any columnist of the New
York or Washington cult that with.
out leaving Montgomery or at
tempting to extend his earnings
and celebrity through syndication
in the package-goods trade, he new
ertheless became a man of good
renoWn, as distinguished from
mere fame or notoriety, throughout
the newspaper trade. I wish it
were possible to say that he was
popularity well known to the same
extent, for his influence would have
been helpful, but that wouldn't be
true. Beyond his own fork of the
creek he wasn't very well known
outside the calling which he
adorned.
ALI this seems to call for some
example of his greatness. That I
am able to quote from an auto
graphed copy of an editorial of his
C allied The Egregious Gentle
Called to Account.
This was an essay on anti-Semi-
tism in which Judge Hall, as he
was called, began by saying that
the Gentle brother Of the Jew,
Invites and deserves arraignment
before the bar of his own con-
science" The turn of thought and
phrase in which the judge called
the Gentle before the bar "of his
own conscience" was an example
of his wise tact by which he ap.
pealed to the honor of his defend
ants and won them when the lack
of it might have provoked them
to barn-burning.
1.-THE EARTH" he wrote, ''swarms
with men who think they are ex-
perts on Jews. Nobody attempts
a critical estimate of the Gentle,
as a Gentle. Nobody audits his
balance sheet. Nobody invited him
to give an account of his long, IN
broken stewardship as the undis-
puted master of the human race.
If the Gentle could but bring him
self to face his own microscope,
held in his own steady, ruthless
hand, the experience might save
him from possible disaster which
his demeanor invites. We think we
do no harm to ourselves and our
common institutions when, in in
dividual social relations, we pa
tronize the Jew. We think we are
shreWd, discerning fellows when,
in contemplating a citizen and
neighbor who happens to be a Jew,
we think of him and discuss him,
first, as a Jew and then whatever
else he may be. We attribute vir-
tues to him as a class that are
characteristic only of individuals;
we attribute vices and frailties to
him as a class that any man of
sense should know a r peculiar
only to individuals, whether Jews
or non-Jews.
Thus we hound the Jew while
imagining ourselves to be his
friends, meaning by we those Of
us that comprise the majority Of
us Americans, and could not con-
sciously injure the Jew. We for
get that the fools who form our
mobs may be influenced profound
ly by the manners and prejudiced
department of people Of their own
kind above them in the scale OF
life. =. I have no disposition to low
rate the status of the Gentle. Our
political and social position are
more secure. We make more mon
ey than the Jews. We know moth
ing of the bitterness that flavorS
the acrid cup of a helpless MI
nority group. We have been SO
long in undisputed power, po-
itically, economically and spirit
ually that we have never had an
opportunity to know whether in fac