Press Intervention As Government Duty

At the time of the anti-Jewish excesses in Roumania the South African Jewish Board of Deputies approached the Union Government and asked it to bring the facts to the notice of the Council of the League of Nations with a view to action. In reply to questions now put in the House of Assembly by Morris Alexander, General Hertzog the Prime Mimister, stated that “the Union Government did not consider itself justified to act under Article Eleven of the League’s Covenant.”

At the meeting of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies held here a discussion took place with regard to General Hertzog’s reply. It was felt by the deputies that while the cause that brought about these representations had been removed for the present there being a new Roumanian Government which has announced a more lenient policy towards minorities, the fact that the Union Government when asked to make representations to the League of Nations took the attitude that it bad no looms stamdi in the matter-which the Board has been advised is not so-makes it necessary for the Board not to allow this matter to remain where it was as there is no knowing when similar incidents might recur making it incumbent on the Board, as a South African body again to ask the Union overnment to make representations. Accordingly the Executive has been requested to take further action in this matter.