Complaints against the alleged “invasion” of certain professions by Jews were scored by Col. Francois de la Rocque, French rightist leader, in the first press comment on the proposed Jewish statute published in the newspaper Le Petit Journal today.
Col. de la Rocque demanded that “fully assimilated” Jews be not treated with discrimination since they belong to “one big family of citizens” and such discrimination would be “unconceivable.” He advised Frenchmen to safeguard their positions “not by the way of legal requisition but by strenuous work.”
Reasonable precautionary measures regarding future naturalization are not only practical but just to avoid overcrowding in the liberal professions, he said.
While expressing approval of the recently-ordered naturalization revision, the rightist leader said that only those who have violated French laws and traditions should lose their citizenship. At the same time he urged abrogation of the Cremieux Law of 1870 which ordered wholesale naturalization of Algerian Jews.
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