The British press virtually unanimous in demanding a full explanation of Leslie Hore-Belisha’s replacement as War Secretary, but the Liberal London News-Chronicle is the only paper to state that the campaign against Hore-Belisha was based on anti-Jewish prejudice.
A.J. Cummings declared in the News-Chronicle yesterday that soon after the outbreak of the war, Hore-Belisha was made the subject of a whispering campaign which expressed itself in the form of narrow prejudice against him because he was a Jew and in stubborn objection among officers of high rank to his insistence on making democratization of the Army a practical reality.
“It cannot be doubted,” Cummings wrote, “that Chamberlain found himself face to face with these prejudices and, without apparently offering any ground for criticism of the war administration, sacrificed his youngest and most energetic minister to mean and spiteful intrigue.”
The Star warned editorially that public resentment would be deep and lasting if it was shown that “Hore-Belisha was thrown overboard to satisfy a clique of generals who disliked him on social grounds.”
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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.
