Digest of World Press Opinion

The Chicago Tribune, commenting editorially on the naturalized Germans who proceeded from the United States to participate in the voting in the Saar plebiscite next Sunday, writes:

The political pilgrimage of a number of naturalized Americans along with aliens resident in the United States to the Saar for the plebiscite has aroused a bit of curiosity as to the standing of these people in the country in which they have chosen recently to live and obtain citizenship.

In principle it is not to be admitted that persons who have accepted the privileges and responsibilities of American citizenship shall retain a voting privilege in important affairs of other countries. Congressman Dickstein of New York has introduced a bill covering future contingencies of this nature. The Saar incident, as it affects American citizens, is an extraordinary affair, and, although it in itself may be negligible, it does involve American people in an acute European situation which is none of their business, however much it may engage their sympathies and their sentiment.

A FRENCH PAPER ON REVISIONISM

The Mercure de France, in an article analyzing the Zionist-Revisionist movement, says:

Will Revisionism be yet another failure of the Jews to constitute or reconstitute themselves as a nation? Or will it open a new era in Jewish history? Facts and figures seem to indicate that Revisionism will be victorious. The number of active members was 500 in 1925; 8,436 in 1927; 55,848 in 1931, 96,818 in 1933. At the moment there are more than 150,000. If we take sympathizers and readers of Revisionist literature into account, the number exceeds half a million. The Jewish people has regained confidence in its capacities and creative powers. For a long time it believed that the Arabs were the stronger. It now knows that the Jewish population, already a quarter of the total, is strong enough to conquer the country by force, provided no third party intervenes.

PEASANTS AND WORKERS IN BIRO-BIDJAN

The Review of Reviews, analyzing the Jewish situation in Soviet Russia writes:

The Soviet government forbade all anti-Semitic tendencies, and inflicted severe punishment on those who defied this prohibition. The intellectual sponsors of anti-Semitism were liable to the death penalty. But the Soviets were not content with purely negative measures.

The injection of large bodies of Jews into the industrial process was at first impossible. There was widespread unemployment in the towns and the period of reconstruction had only just begun. All the more eagerly did the Jewish youth force its way into the giant factories which sprung up during the first Five Year Plan.

At the same time appeared the plan of creating a Jewish autonomous territory in Biro-Bidjan, a district in East Siberia on the Manchurian frontier Biro-Bidjan is 8,000 kilometres east of Moscow and 1,000 kilometres west of Vladivostock. Its area is 70,000 square kilometres, three times as large as Palestine, and the Trans-Siberian railway runs through it for 832 kilometres. The habitable parts lie along the railway and the rivers Amur and Urmi.

The northern part of the district is virgin forest (1.2 million hectars). In the west are mountains of great mineral wealth (chalk, iron, gold, graphite, coal, granite, marble and precious stones.) The northwestern part has sulphur springs, believed to possess valuable medicinal properties, and a sanatorium. “Kuldur,” has already been established there, which serves the whole of the Far East. The third great metallurgical complex of the Union is going to be developed in this district. For the first time in recent history a nation of merchants and middlemen is being transformed into a people of peasants and workers.

MOSLEY PAPER REPORTS TROUBLES IN FRANCE

Sir Oswald Mosley’s newspaper, The Blackshirt, reports feeling against the Jews in France. Under the heading, “Low Class Aliens” it declares.

Feeling is becoming accentuated against the large numbers of low-class aliens in this country, in particular against the refugees from Germany and also the permanent Jewish resident population. Too often latterly has the French press shown Jews to have been the instigators of crime and corruption.

The French are up against the most pregnant crisis of their history and they must face the results of two centuries of false teaching, secretly organized and directed by able unscrupulous brains, and subtly imposed on the less competent and ignorant masses. The issues have come down to the bedrock of morality and the touchstone of truth, and already a spirit of renaissance breathes suspended in the air. The changing tone of the press and the nature and direction of the applause at political meetings are witness of this. Our enlightenment in Britain will come later when the public mind starts thinking.

Despite all external difficulties Hitler’s appeal for direct conversations might well result in inestimable benefit, if France had a Man with the French nation at his back to negotiate. The French have a little confidence in overtures through a body like the League of Nations, whose Jewish origin and influences are becoming more and more widely known.

POSITION OF JEWS IN AUSTRIA AND GERMANY

The Western {SPAN}###{/SPAN}, published in Cardift, Wales, finds a similarity between the condition of the Jews in Austria today and in Germany before Hitler:

The position of Jews is similar to that in Germany before Hitler got into power. They are small in number and mostly occupy positions of importance. Their brilliant, artistic, and intellectual gifts have contributed largely to national achievement. Finance and the press are in the hands of the Jews, subject to the government. Of the 4,800 doctors in Vienna, 4,000 are Jewish; in the legal profession the proportion is even higher. Hostility to Jews is, of course, one of the main points of National Socialism.

The National Socialists, although “verboten,” are numerically the strongest party. They are the middle classes reduced to poverty, often to utter misery, by the War; most of the former wealthy classes, and especially the younger generation.

WESTERN PAPER FINDS RAYS OF LIGHT

Opening of {SPAN}S##ria{/SPAN} to Jewish settlement is welcomed by the Western Jewish Bulletin as a means of alleviating some of the pressure in Central and Eastern Europe. Under the caption, “Rays of Light,” it declares:

The pressure of millions of hungry Jews in Poland, or de-Judaised Jews in Russia, of insulted Jews in Germany, of threatened Jews in Austria, of pogromized Jews in Rumania— had hitherto been relieved only by the relatively small immigration into Palestine.

Not only has this relief been small, but the pressure has brought into Palestine elements that threatened the further absorptive capacity of the country by undermining the principles of Jewish labor, by indulging in land speculation, and by ignoring the needs of a country in the state of becoming Jewish.

Under these circumstances it comes as a welcome message that the government of Syria has allowed Jews to enter and to buy land there. The fact that the land bought is on the Palestine border will ensure the safety of the Jewish population and will help to relieve the speculation with real estate that has threatened and is still threatening the solid foundations of the national upbuilding in the Jewish homeland.

From Biro-Bidjan, too, reports indicate that Jewish colonization may be increased and that immigration of Jews from capitalist lands may be allowed to a degree.

It is to be hoped that the relief thus provided, small and insignificant as it is compared to the tremendous need of the millions of stricken Jewry, will not drive us into a frenzy of enthusiasm and will not turn every Jewish settlement into a new Zion. What is necessary now is careful and scientific settlement with a minimum of local “patriotism.”