R. D. B Speaks

For thirty years Editor-in-chef of the Daily Express in London, England’s most celebrated journatislist and chairman of the Board of Directors of the London Daily Express

I have been trying streuously but ineffectually to impress world Jewry that there is neceslty for concentrating on simple truth-bearing propaganda so that the world’s mind shall not be longer poisoned by Nazi falsifications of history and the miasma of anti-Semitsm. The ignorant world-and believe m# the more enlight ened people are in others ha# begun agian t# take for truth alanti-Semitic libels poured ou# mainly from the months and pen# of interested German hatemongers and from what I can observe, the Jews do little to counteract them.

Here and there I see literature from sound sources, notably the American Jewish Committee which I would like to commend, but the libels procced practically unchecked. Are good deeds, millions of good deeds which history must in the end credit to individual Jews held up to humanity in such a light as to reflect credit on the hearts and minds of Jews in general ? Not if it can be avoided.

I have just been reading an old lecture on the Chosen People by the late Irael Zangwill. It was the first of the annual Arthur Davis Memorial Lectures established sixteen years ago in commemoration of the hard studying, hard-working unostentatious student and interpreter from the Hebrew language which, like some others, is outliving for purposes of ritual its use in ordinary speech and which, indeed, has renewed its old vitality. It is likened to the roses of Jericho which appear to be dead and shriveled but when placed in water recover their strength and their bloom.

In the foreword to the above-mentioned lecture, Sir Herbert Samuel, former High Commissioner of Palestine, says this man “was one of those not rare among Jews thouth the rest of the world does not al ways recognize it, who are philan thropic in spirit, practical in action, modest, self-sacrificing, devoted to a fine family life, haiving in them much of the student and something even of the saint.”

That is the sort of epitaph which any man should consider worthy of the best there is in humanty and human effort and that is the sort of propaganda which should be fostered by Jews throughout the world whenever there is a subject who will fi# such a setting.

Let the world know that spiritual prizes are more precious to the Jews in general than material ones. I believe that to be true although, unfortunately, whenever a Jew has made a money coup, its importance far transcends all his other acts.

In Germany where madness stil#eigns particularly in Prussia which Napoleon humorously decribed as “hatched from a cannonball”, they are now attempting to prove the very first words of the Bible rferred to Germany: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth”, which is exactly the same spirit in which the ancient Hebrews regarded the prospects of universalism. He created heaven and earth for the Jews. The only difference now is that the Jews have begun to realize something, whereas the savages in Germany are only emerging a little more in the light of their own stupidity.

All the above is meant to emphasize the necessity of keeping high the light of understanding which in this instance is best called propaganda. Every Jew, individually and collectively, should consider his first duty to spread this light and not turn away from slander and evildesigned misinformation.

This is all part and parcel of my ever insisted on plan to get the Jews to organize. I shall yet see it perfected. I am sure of that.