News Brief

ment is not sincere in its avowed policy of preventing such disturbance but had the power to do it completely and could only be frightened into carrying out that policy by the fear of anti-Roumanian campaingns.

(3) The economic position of Roumania was so flourishing that it could not be hurt by such a campaign and therefore the Jews themselves would not suffer.

As these three conditions are not fulfilled, I think Jewish leaders should oppose anti-Roumanian campaigns, particularly in a powerful financial market like America, with all possible means.

Even if all the stories of anti-Jewish excesses were true, still it seems to me that under present conditions it would be to the ultimate interest of the Jews to ignore the undoubtedly regrettable cases in which some few Jews have been beaten or their shops looted, in order to ensure for the vast majority the possibility of earning a good living, instead of doing everything to perpetuate the misery of the great mass of Jews, if reports of Jewish charitable organizations are to be believed.

To conclude, I believe there is only one solution: the return to normal business and economic conditions in Roumania. And the less anti-Roumanian campaigns are launched abroad, particularly in powerful financial markets like America, the sooner that will happen.

I hardly need add that this letter is not intended for publication, and only represents my personal views. I have no objection, however, if you wish to show it to your fellow officers in the various Jewish organizations.

Yours sincerely,

(singed) F. C. Nano.

MR. RICHARD’S REPLY

Dear Mr. Nano:

I have received your letter of the 24th instant and beg leave to acknowledge also your telegram of the same date as well as your letter of the 26th, all of which relate to our representations made on behalf of the Jewish victims of disturbances and riots which have recently occurred in Roumania.

DISTRESSED AT CORRESPONDENCE

Replying chiefly and first of all to your lengthy letter of the 24th, which I read with the utmost care, I cannot refrain from telling you that I was as much distressed as I was surprised to note the direction which you have given to this correspondence. In answer to our earnest attempt to bring before you the seriousness of the situation created by the various acts of violence, and our respectful plea that your Government take emphatic action to allay all fears and to assure the safety of Jewish lives and property, you launch into a discourse on the subject of campaigns against Roumania, which are now and ever have been furthest from our thought or intention.

In our letter of May 2nd as well as in all previous correspondence, we endeavored to assure the representatives of your Government that “our interest in the welfare of Roumanian Jewry is inseparable from our good will to the Roumanian people as a whole”. But it was hardly necessary at any time to offer such assurances.

SEEKS TO PREVENT INJUSTICE

It should be perfectly clear to you that the primary purpose of this and similar organizations is to prevent injustices from being visited upon our brethren wherever their rights are being infringed upon, and everywhere to be of service in bringing about a better understanding and closer cooperation between the different elements of population. To forment any feeling such as you allude to would be to defeat our chief purpose.

Unfortunately, circumstances have only too often made it necessary for us to intervene in behalf of our people, to protest against, wrongs being done to them, to defend their constitutional fights, or to plead for fair and just treatment in their behalf. But we have always named the specific acts of injustice and have always pointed to the possible remedies, seeking to make clear the exact issues involved and avoiding at all times any utterance that may be construed as the indictment of a whole people. To read such intention into our simple statements or demands is to confuse our role with that of the assailants of the Jews who proceed on the basis of wholesale mistrust and denunciation and whose indiscriminate and reckless acts and utterances alone bring discredit upon the Roumanian Nation.

NO DESIRE TO DEAL DIRECTLY

You do not, to our deep regret, manifest a desire to deal directly and specifically with the matters which we endeavored to place before you, when, in the face of such occurrences as took place in Maramuresh and Targu-Fromos, where instead of the assailants the victims of the attacks were arrested, you respond with vague and far-fetched generalizations about an alleged propaganda against Roumania, proceeding to lecture us with assertions that our plain and humble pleas in behalf of considerations of common humanity “add weight to the argument of anti-Semitic groups in Roumania that the Jews are at heart incurably hostile to that country and that they should, therefore, be terrorized until a great number at least leave it.”

You then go on to repeat with a certain implied approval similar, damnable attempts to justify all manner of downright brutality, when as a matter of ordinary human sympathy and sense of justice they should arouse in you nothing but a feeling of horror and abomination. But, without shrinking from the cruelty involved, you continue to reiterate various pretexts, excuses and improvised causes, which