Stratified Straton

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

There is more than one way of telling an untruth, but perhaps the most insidious way is that of omission. "The Devil can cite Scripture to his purpose" for this very reason. A statement divorced from its context is often capable of an interpretation that is directly opposed to its real meaning.

Dr. Straton has recently been the victim of the falsehood by omission. A communication to you recently published in the CRIMSON affirms quite acidly that, when the Doctor addressed the Debating Union some days ago, he declared that "He (a man referred to by Dr. Straton) had some elements of human decency about him even if he was a Jewish judge." Dr. Straton, on the other hand, denies making any such statement. He maintains that what he said was "Though the judge was a Jew and not a Christian, and though he had had in the case to deal with matters involving Christian truths, he showed a right spirit and was absolutely fair."

Now I believe that anybody who listened intelligently to the speech of Dr. Straton must admit that both what he is quoted as saying and what he maintains he said are true. Literally he did say, "He had some elements of human decency about him even if he was a Jewish judge." But never in the world did he mean by this that a Jewish judge is not the kind of person in whom human decency is to be expected. Anybody who listened to what directly preceded and followed this rather infelicitous utterance must conclude that he meant what he now maintains that he literally said. And a this sense, the only true sense of interpreting a man's remarks, he "said" what he maintains that he said.

Dr. Straton's revised version of his statement, for it undeniably is a revised version, is a true report of what he said for it conveys what he originally meant in its context by the remark quoted by his critics.

To be prejudiced is to be immoral. And who would think of charging Dr. Straton, with immorality? If we are to accuse him of anything, we must accuse him of choose English, not of loose morals. Saul Rosenzweig '29.