Statuesque Jews

Which Jew, by his services to the U. S., deserves to be honored with a statue, was the question that the Jewish Tribune put to its readers last Rosh Hashonah (TIME, Oct. 3). Last week came the decision--the late Oscar Solomon Straus (1850-1926), diplomat. He was the friend and aid of four U. S. Presidents. For Grover Cleveland he went to Turkey as U. S. Minister; at Constantinople he protected the U. S. mission schools & colleges. For William McKinley he again went to Turkey as Minister. William Howard Taft sent him there a third time, as Ambassador. Meanwhile he had served as Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of Commerce & Labor. President Roosevelt appointed him a U. S. member to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1902 and again in 1908; Woodrow Wilson repeated the appointment in 1912 and again in 1920. President Wilson found his advice and services great help in getting the Covenant of the League of Nations written into the Treaty of Versailles. Wherever Jews were harassed Mr. Straus used his public power to defend them. He was pious in his religious observances; and always kept nailed to the door-posts of his homes a mezuzah, a small case containing the Israelitish creed "Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One," together with appropriate verses from Deuteronomy. Such a career, decided the Jewish Tribune readers, was statuesque. It deserved a memorial, and for that the magazine has started a campaign*. When the statue goes up it will be only the third statue publicly erected to a Jew in the U. S. One of the others is in Manhattan, raised for Heinrich Heine, poet. The other is on the city hall square of Paterson, N. J., and honors Nathan Barnert, twice mayor of Paterson. Mr. Barnert began business in Paterson in 1855, four years after it was incorporated as a city./- He prospered; became owner of silk mills; gave away his money--for a hospital, a nurses' home, a home for the aged, a perpetual fund to provide dowries for poor girls. Last week he was still living, 89 years old and a very sick man, whom his daughter was assiduously tending.

* Contributions may be sent to the Jewish Tribune, No. 570 Seventh Ave., New York City. /-Alexander Hamilton founded the town in 1791 to promote U. S. manufacturing.