British M.p. Apologizes for Unintended Slur Against Jewish People

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

The Jewish Board of Deputies issued for publication a correspondence it has had with Sir Alan Burgoyne M. P. in regard to a speech he delivered in the House of Commons in which he had said:

“The Soviet ship of State is a noisome hulk, rotten from truck to keelson, with a starving and verminous crew, which has been drawn from all foul ghettos of Europe, and which is the scum of all the international prisons.”

Mr. Philip Guedalla, Chairman of the Press Committee of the Board of Deputies wrote to Sir Alan pointing out that only two of the eighteen members of the Russian Cabinet are Jews, and that the Communist Party Census of 1922 shows that whereas 32.8 per thousand Lithuanians and 16.3 per thousand Esthonians were members of the Communist Party, the corresponding figure was only 7.2 per thousand Jews, and asking him to withdraw his statement as being inaccurate as well as offensive in the highest degree to a large body of loyal citizens and a considerable number of distinguished public men both in the service of the Crown and of the political party to which Sir Alan belongs.

Sir Alan replied expressing regret that his statement had in any way hurt the feelings of Jews. He had no idea that ghettos were purely Jewish localities, he stated, and far from being in any way hostile to the Jewish faith, or to Jews, he has a very great number of close personal friends amongst them, and the last thing he would wish to do would be to cause any offense, he declared in his reply.

A. Einhorn of Shanghai, China, will arrive in New York shortly to enter the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, according to an announcement made by the Yeshiva.