(By Our London Correspondent)
The Right Hon. T. P. O’Connor, M, P, recently celebrated his eightieth birthday.
“Tay Pay,” who has spent fifty of his eighty years in the British House of Commons, took occasion to state his views on Jewish questions and to comment on conditions in the United States in so far as the Irish and the Jews are concerned, when the representative of the Jewish Daily Bulletin called to interview the Irish leader on his eightieth birthday.
“There is much anti-Semitism in the United States,” said Mr. O’Connor, when the present outlook of the Jewish population in that country was mentioned. “But,” he added, “I should not worry too much about it, if I were a Jew.”
“Why?”
“Because there, they have all the means of fighting against it successfully. They enjoy all those political rights which make it possible to fight it effectively,” he said.
“As for the Jews in England,” he continued, ” you know, of course, how little they feel the effects of anti-Semitism. Speaking for myself, I may say that I have a large number of good friends among Jews here. There is Mr. Bernhard Baron, for instance. There is Lord Rothschild, Mr. Joseph Gluckstein, and many others. And in the United States, likewise, I have plenty of good friends among your people, for instance, Mr Rosenwald of Chicago.”
At this point Mr.O’Connor recalled a dinner which the Chicago Jewish philanthropist gave in his honor during a visit to the United States. Some one at this dinner told him that the reason they liked him so well was that he “spoke our own language,” meaning evidently that Irish brogue which which has clung to him all these long years with all the faithful loyalty with which he himself has stuck to the guns of his many battles for Ireland. It was an allusion to the power which the Irish clement exercises in the political life of Chicago and so many other big cities in the United States, of course, and a man called O’Connor should have felt quite at home in such company, and he probably did feel so.
Asked for his opinion of Governor Smith’s chances, Mr. O’Connor naturally, as befits a parliamentarian, preferred to express no opinion at the present moment.
Recalling the prejudices against which Irish immigrants had to contend in earlier years in the United States, Mr.O’Connor was able to point with much gratification to the present position of his people in that country. In this connection he related an experince he had during one of his visits there. At some gathering arranged in his honor, a typical Yankee lady from one of the New England states confided to the distinguished visitor nothing more nor less than that he was “the first Irish gentleman she had ever met”!
There was a half wistful, half amused smile on the aged statesman’s lips as he related this incident, to illustrate the prejudice against which the Irish had to fight also in the United States before they reached their present state. The moral of the story being, he said. that the prejudices against Jews would likewise diminish as soon as they made themselves more felt in the political life of America. He felt certain that they would ultimately win all the respect and fair treatment to which they were justly entitled, the Ku Klux Klan to the contrary notwithstanding.
Turning to the question of Palestine. Mr. O’Connor expressed himself as not very optimistic about the future of that country as a Jewish National Home. Its resources, in his opinion. were not adequate to support a large population, and he did not feel as if Zionism were really a solution of the Jewish problem.
“While I can understand that Jews all over the world are interested in helping this experiment to succeed, I should advise them to work for Palestine only as loyal. patriotic citizens of their present native countries, and establish themselves more firmly wherever they are at present.”
Speaking of his views upon Jewish character generally, Mr. O’Connor said:
“The abject and dismal ignorance prevailing among most people in the world as regards the virtues of the Jew, especially in his home life, would seem incredible, if it were not so sadly true. What does the world know of that intense family life, of that respect of children for their elders, and of that sympathy with the poor, which I know of among Jewish people? Nothing!”
After a moment of silence, he continued: ” I could tell you of a Jewish woman in Chicago, whose name I do not just now recollect, who devoted her entire vast fortune to the building of houses for the poorer sections of the population. And then, after she had spent her last penny on these houses, there came a day when she herself had to move into a few small rooms in one of these houses, because she could not longer afford to pay any rent!.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
