It couldn’t last—this Anglo-French cordiality. Several times since the end of the war relations between these two historical enemies were fraught with tension. Artificial stimuli of one sort or another kept the patient alive. But the end was inevitable. Crystalization of the foreign interests of both powers showed two divergent roads. And so England and Germany take one another to their bosoms—and France stands alone.
The economic balance of power was bound to overcome England’s superficial antagonism to Nazism and to its concomitant violent anti-Semitism. We rejoiced when England voiced her stern disapproval of Hitler and his sadistic degenerates. We could surely depend on England—our proven friend. And we were depressed at our own government’s failure to raise its voice in horrified protest.
HITLER’S ORGIES CONTINUED
But Hitler’s orgies went on—the Jews suffered. It was purely an “internal matter” for the German “people” to settle. Even England, with its comparatively modern tradition of freedom and democracy accepted this cataloguing of the Jews as an “internal matter.”
It was too bad that the German government was controlled by despots and it was a pity these despots murdered and ostracized a section of their population, but England and Germany might be of use to one another— the line-up of nations for the next war, and after all it really was none of England’s business; it was an “internal matter.”
WHERE SAFETY LIES
We have no one to look to for help—no one to give us real protection. We are at the mercy of nations’ quest for economic supremacy. Our safety lies, not in looking to the conscience of the world. That conscience may exist—but the world is little troubled by it. Our safety lies in the eventual destruction of nations’ greed and the elimination of predatory interests. So long as these exist just so long will the Jews offer a convenient and defenseless target for man’s avarice. We need not fool ourselves that such protection and freedom as we now possess in some countries will continue.
And we are now painfully aware that the “internal affairs” of a sovereign nation are truly internal. If we needed proof it is this new, but hardly surprising, friendship between Germany, our enemy, and England, our friend.
A FEW SUPPOSITIONS
The type of government of any given nation has nothing to do with that country’s usefulness in world politics. Capitalitic France joints hands with communistic Russia. Democratic England extends a friendly hand to tyrannical Germany. And as the type of government carries no weight, so does a country’s treatment of its citizens matter little.
Let us do a little supposing. In the next war suppose England and Germany fight France and Russia. And suppose the United States throws in its lot with England and Germany. Suppose Palestine is asked to recruit regiments for its protector, Great Britain. Suppose Jewish legions find themselves side by side in the trenches with “Nordic” Nazis. Suppose a lot of other things—all entirely possible and even probable. To whom shall we then look?
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.
