Gleanings from the English Press

Who invented this boycott? Not the Jews: If there is any moral turpitude in it, let it be fastened on our enemies, the sole patentees. We have been boycotted for years. Nation after nation has laid about our scattered and defenceless people with this lethal weapon. The Germans used it, long before Hitlerism came to power, and they have employed it with Teutonic thoroughness and barbarious indiscriminateness ever since…. To Germany belongs the odium of having proved how the boycott can be wielded to the point of extermination. Her discovery will go down to posterity as her one practical contribution to the art of government—or misgovernment—and future generations, if they retain a remnant of civilization, will curse her for it. But if nations must fight with such arms, who are we to say that we shall not wield them when half-a-million lives are at stake?—The Jewish Chronicle, London.

THE ARAB BENEFITS TOO

The Arab is no fool; having lived in poverty for centuries he now realized the advantages of trade, and as the Jew has something to offer he is ready to do a deal with him. And seldom does he get the worst of the bargain, be it in land, cattle, or anything else. In short, trade is the cement which is binding one and the other, and if things go on as they are at present, Commerce will absorb Racialism and Communism as well, “and the land will bring forth her increase” undisturbed.

And the same spirit of change is seen in towns and villages alike—an awakening to a new order, in which the Arab takes part. Well-built houses and streets are replacing the wretched hovels and gutter-ways of twenty years ago, and large areas, once desert, are now cultivated and built over on the plan of garden cities.

Jerusalem, for example, has altered out of all recognition—not to the liking, it is true, of the mediaeval-minded. The Walls and the Holy Places remain. But even here one notices a certain furbishing and polishing up. It had to be. Time ends or mends. Only the same crowd in the narrow streets surges on with an increasing denseness. There are suburbs, however outside the city walls, where houses and sites are equally expensive. One has heard a great deal about the Jewish invasion, but when all is said, the Arab has not done so badly by the sale of his land. Any-how, he is ready to sell more; for thereby he can live in comfort. In short, Zion is an earthly Valhalla!—Sir T. Comyn-Platt, London Morning Post.

GERMAN YOUTH TWADDLE

In the Daily Mail of July 10th Viscount Rothermere published an article called “Youth Triumphant.” It is a eulogy of the Nazi revolution in Germany. It surprised me for two reasons: I thought Wyndham Lewis had debunked once and for all the Youth racket on Fleet Street, and I had never realized that even the Daily Mail could be so wilfully perverse as to devote its main page to boosting Hitler’s gang of ruffians. The article is worth examining in detail for the light it throws on the strange mental processes of a press-lord: it makes a fascinating pathological record.

The talk about youth is twaddle pure and simple: “through the picturesque streets of the little country towns stride the sturdy, brown-shirted young men—and their brown-frocked girl-helpers — who have taken over the rulership of Germany from their ineffective elders”—gush, lovely treacly gush. Germany is governed by a tiny oligarchy and Rothermere knows it, but goes on blathering as if the Reich were the fatherland of youth and democracy. “I maintain that youth has a right to rule,” he continues and begins to babble about the youth of our leaders during the Napoleonic wars—all quite irrelevant but giving a pleasing hint of the profundities of his historical knowledge: Northcliffian culture coming out into the sun. We know that Hitler and Mussolini are both in the prime of life, but Rothermere is very well aware that Fascism and Hitlerism have not arisen for the sake of youth but are busy exploiting youth for the benefit of the handful of men who have grabbed the reins.—Meyrick Booth, in New English Weekly.