Zionism is a mistake, declared Professor James T. Shotwell, director of economics and history of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, yesterday, on his arrival from Europe on the French liner “Champlain.”
Returning from Paris, London and Geneva, where he headed the American delegation to the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, Professor Shotwell said:
“Speaking frankly, I do not think that the Zionist movement, in the sense that its purpose is to create a Jewish nationality in Palestine, has any chance of success in the present condition of international politics. If its purpose is to establish a few thousand people there, all right. But as a movement for founding a Jewish nation, there is no hope for it “under prevailing conditions.”
Professor Shotwell added that in his opinion it was not benefitting Jews in general, to have the accusation levelled at them that while claiming citizenship of other countries, they were attempting to set up as a nationality in Palestine. If a state could have been established immediately, it would have been another matter, he said.
Professor Stillwell asserted that German Jewish refugees he had met were as patriotic citizens of Germany as the so-called Nordics. Referring briefly to “Aryanism,” he declared that the whole idea was an old exploded pseudo-scientific myth and called it nonsense.
“Hitlerism,” the professor declared, “is waning in Germany, but will leave a residue for a long time to come. The position of the Jew who clings to Jewishness in a world where he necessarily is forced to mingle with people of a different physical appearance in many cases, increases his hardship in avoiding exaggerated attention. A Frenchman in a small middle-western town in the United States, for instance, who retained his accent and the mannerisms of Paris, would find himself in the same situation.”
Professor Shotwell repeated his observation that German Jews had appeared to him hardly distinguishable from other Germans in respect to their patriotism, and declared that chauvinists in Germany had used the dislike of Germans for Eastern European Jews to stir up the current troubles for the whole German-Jewish population.
In commenting on the possibilities of another European war, he said that in spite of appearances, war on a large scale was not as likely as the newspaper headlines appear to indicate.
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.
