Event in Honor of Jewish Young Men

Another 255 men are scheduled to leave Troy tomorrow for military training at Camp Meade in Maryland. The Jewish members of that contingent are honored tonight at the Division Street synagogue.

Guest speakers include county judge Pierce H. Russell and former assistant district attorney William M. Keenan. Russell calls it “an honor for him to be present and bid farewell to the boys who are going to leave our midst to protect our institutions and homes in order that we may enjoy to the fullest extent the liberty for which our forefathers sacrificed our lives.”

The judge predicts that

“the beat of the drum or the roar of the cannon would not cease until Prussianism, the greatest foe humanity has ever known, is completely destroyed.”

Keenan calls the farewell occasion “really one of joy … the parents of the departing boys should feel proud that they lived to raise a boy who was fit, both mentally and physically, to be accepted as one of Uncle Sam’s defenders of democracy.”

Rabbi Hyman Lasker praises American soldiers as “enlighteners of liberty and democracy” and predicts that German autocracy will go the way of Babylon and Rome. He looks forward to “the time when the Stars and Stripes would float together with the flag of Zion and the boys march home to the tune of America and Hatikvoh.”

— Kevin Gilbert