General Hugh S. Johnson, in his syndicated column published in the New York World-Telegram, today counselled American Jews against seeking “any European tie-ups with America, either as to military alliances or ideas of government.”
Commenting on a Toronto speech by Jules Bache, New York banker, who urged American support of the Allies against Germany, General Johnson said that “for Jewish sakes as well as those of all other Americans, prominent citizens who really are Jewish international bankers and self-announced interventionists, should in this dangerous world, impose at least as much discretion on their statements as we vainly expect of some of our own ill-chosen and singularly inept American ambassadors.”
Referring to Bache’s reported statement that the United States should support the Allies “if for no other reason than that of good business,” General Johnson said that such an argument “is playing into the hands of Hitler, who accuses us of being guided by just such men for just such reasons.”
“The worst current libel on patriotic Americans of Jewish faith is to say that they are ‘internationalists who seek to involve us in this war,'” the columnist said. “If they have money they are called ‘Jewish international bankers who got us into the last war and want to get us into this one.’ That’s what Hitler says, too.”
Denying the validity of this accusation, General Johnson continued: “I can see why any Jew would hate Hitler above every monster that ever came in the shape of man. There never was a deadlier or more cruel, cowardly and unfair enemy of their race. But I can’t see why any American Jew would want to mix any part of our destiny in any way with the affairs of European nations.
“This country offered them and many other races and creeds the most effective haven of refuge and toleration that has existed on this earth. Such anti-Semitism as there is here today is, I think, negligible and prevails only among the least Informed people in more remote places, who see so little of Jews in general that they have been unable fairly to examine the substance of their prejudice.
“But there is no important European nation that has not at some time in its history some background or incident of persecution of Jews almost, if not quite, as inhuman and insane as Hitler’s sadism. British treatment of Jews in Palestine is much more defensible on the ground of necessity than things that have been done elsewhere in Europe, but it is certainly no most-favored-nation policy. Hore-Belisha didn’t get kicked out merely because he was efficient.
“In these circumstances, it seems to me that intelligent Jewish people should be the very last, in their hearts or in their minds, to seek any European tie-ups with America, either as to military alliances or ideas of government. In my observation, few of the best informed do.”
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