January 2011

In the summer of 1852 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vacationing with his family in Newport, Rhode Island, happened one day upon the old Jewish cemetery, established in 1677. Impressed by the quiet of the ancient burial ground amid the bustle of the busy seaport, he persuaded “Mr. Gould the Tailor, a polite old gentleman who keeps the key,” to admit him into its silent serenity. The now-famous poem at right resulted from his walk among the crumbling tombstones.

Isaacs, Judah, Moses, Alvares, Rivera…these first Jews of Newport had arrived in the New World in 1658, fleeing religious persecution. The settlement of Newport, then only nineteen years old, welcomed them…and, later, a group of Spanish Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition.

In the fall of 1923, Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell, then Assistant Chief of the young Army Air Service, was sent on an inspection tour of the Pacific. Upon his return, Mitchell publicly voiced opinions about the inadequacies of our Pacific defenses and the very real threat of Japanese aggression that caused a furor in the War Department.

Among other things Mitchell warned that the Hawaiian Islands—and, in particular, the great naval base at Pearl Harbor—were open to a Japanese surprise air attack. He then proceeded to outline how such an attack could be made successfully. Because Mitchell failed to reckon on the development of the aircraft carrier, many details of his plan now seem unnecessarily elaborate, if not fantastic; but in the light of what happened on December 7, 1941, his total concept proved alarmingly accurate.

An Enraged Actress.—Stanwix Hall, Albany, was the scene of what might have proved a tragedy a few days since. Miss Henrietta Irving—one of the Irving sisters—was the heroine of the affair. She entered the room of J. W. Booth, who was stopping at the Stanwix, and attacked him with a dirk, cutting his face badly. She did not, however, succeed in inflicting a mortal wound. Failing in this, she retired to her own room and stabbed herself. Again she failed in her destructive purpose. What promised to be a real tragedy in the outset was, after all, but a farce.