J. D. B. News Letter

that the Jewish population is deeply impoverished.

Suicides of former large Jewish merchants and industrialists form daily reports in the press.

In a season where anti-Semitic agitation has calmed down, the Jewish population finds it less difficult to endure its general need and unemployment. The general situation is bad and the Jews are not the sole sufferers. But they are grateful that the additional burden of anti-Semitism is not imposed upon them. Owing to this situation the Jewish deputies in Parliament are able to turn to questions of a purely economic nature. In the last six months not a single Jewish deputy has made representations either in Parliament or from a public platform concerning special discrimination against the Jews. This should not be interpreted, however, that Hungarian Jewry is satisfied with the economic and financial politics of the government concerning commerce and industry in which fields the Jews formerly played important roles.

The Jews long ago lost this standing. Then, too, all the economic holdings in the country are so shrunken that it no longer appears as if there is an economic discrimination against Jews. The Bethlen regime sharply discriminated between Jew and Christian in its credit policy. The present government extends no credit relief either to Christian or Jew. The protest of the against the heavy taxation of the government are made together with all craft guilds, without difference of creed.

Is anti-Semitism in Hungary really a corpse? Os only asleep? One cannot forecast in the present stage of the economic situation of the land and with Germany and Austria infested as they are by the Hitlerite movement. It should be recalled, however, that when the government has called for peaceable relations with the Jews, the Hungarian masses of their own accord have not started anti-Semitic riots. How long the central government will be interested in maintaining this peace is the crux of the question.