A dinner given by the Jewish Agency in honor of the Palestine Parliamentary Committee was attended by more than 100 members of Parliament here this evening.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who presided, devoted the greater part of his speech to the German-Jewish situation, which had the effect of making this subject the focus of the speeches and observations uttered during the evening. Dr. Weizmann, in the course of his address, stressed the fact that although Germany was entitled to regulate its own political and social life, yet Jews could not remain silent when the economic and political existence of their brethren in Germany was imperiled by a policy of primitive and medieval anti-Semitism which was becoming daily more intolerable.
Dr. Weizmann went on to say that “We Jews outside Germany counsel courage and endurance for our brethren in their hour of trial. It is well that our fellow-Jews in Germany should know that the full weight of enlightened world-opinion, particularly non-Jewish opinion in England, was solidly behind them in their struggle against the forces of reaction.”
Major C. R. Attlee, one of the leading men in the Parliamentary Labor Party, and Under-Secretary for War in the Labor Administration of 1924, gave utterance to the opinion of the Labor Party on the situation that had arisen in Germany. He emphasized the fact that the conscience of the world had been aroused against the racial persecution and religious intolerance which was so prominent a plank in the policy of the men who now found themselves in power in Germany.
A profound impression was produced by the speech of Lord Melchett, who said that the outcome of the concentrated anti-Jewish pressure might have conceivably been either degeneration or extermination. Instead of that, the world was confronted with the remarkable phenomenon of a Jewish spiritual regeneration, signs of which he had met wherever he had come in contact with Jewish groups and institutions during his recent journeys.
Speeches touching more specifically on Palestine problems were delivered by Sir Herbert Samuel, Major W. E.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.