Lord Rothschild 63

Lord Rothschild, the head of the English branch of the Rothschild family and eldest son of the first Lord Rothschild, the first Jew elevated to the British peerage, celebrates his 63rd. birthday to-day. Born in London on February 8th., 1868, Lord Rothschild is chiefly interested in scientific work. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Trustee of the British Museum. He is a distinguished zoologist and founded the well-known Zoological Museum at Tring. He is the author of numerous studies on zoology and joint-editor of Novitates Zoologicse, published at the Zoological Museum at Tring.

From 1899 to 1910, as the Hon. Lionel Walter Roths child, he sat in Parliament as a Conservative member. He has held a commission as Major in the Royal Bucks Yeomanry, and he is Lieutenant for the City of London. He is unmarried, and his heir is his nephew, Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, who will attain his majority on October 31st. of this year.

It was to Lord Rothschild that the late Lord Balfour, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressed the famous Balfour Declaration on November 2nd., 1917.

Speaking last October at the meeting of the Jewish Board of Deputies on the White Paper, Lord Rothschild said: It looks very strongly, I do not say it is, as if the Government were trying to upset the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration by roundabout methods.

In many directions, Lord Rothschild is active in Jewish communal affairs. He is Vice-President of the Board of Jewish Deputies, where he often presides in the absence of the President. He is Honorary President of the London Jewish Hospital and he is Trustee and Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Health Organisation of Great Britain. He is also President of the British O.R.T.-Oze Appeal and last October he took the chair at the big gathering held at the Savoy Hotel, in aid of the O.R.T-Oze Appeal, addressed by Professor Einstein, Mr. George Bernard Shaw, Sir Herbert Samuel, the Chief Rabbi and others. He considered it his duty, he declared on that occasion, to help in the wonderful beneficent work done by the O.R.T.-Oze for the regeneration of the poorest of the poor among our brethren, to make them self-supporting and happier in their lot. I deserve no thanks, he said, for having come here. I am glad to have had this opportunity to be able to do as much as I can.

This week, as President of the Appeal, Lord Rothschild is a co-signatory to a letter in the Jewish press announcing a campaign of intensive propaganda in Great Britain for the O.R.T.-Oze, with Committees being set up all over the country, to help to over-come “the gravest crisis to Jewry of modern times”, by enabling the Jew of Eastern Europe “to turn his energies to handicraft or to the land”. “We cannot remain apathetic”, the letter says. “We dare not evoke the present economic depression and stand by unmoved”.