Not the First Time Jewish Paper Argues: As Soon As Foreign Opinion is Reassured “independent” Judici

The foreign press is publishing telegrams from Bucharest to the effect that our Government has decided to take the most severs measures in order to put down the terrorist organisations and to prevent the repetition of occurrences like the attempted assassination of M. Socor, the editor of the “Adeverul” and the “Dimineatza”, the “Naye Zajtung” of Czernowitz, the organ of the Bund, writes in an editorial to-day. The Roumanian press, it proceeds, confirms these foreign reports, adding details of all the Government has already done in this matter. Several leaders of the Cuzist organisation, including Zelea Codreanu, have been arrested, and the Iron Guard has been suppressed. Many important secret documents have been seized, and the press has had hints from Government quarters that a law setting up a state of emergency is to be proclaimed for the safeguarding of the State.

We know this refrain, the paper comments. It is not the first time that the press, particularly the press abroad has been flooded with statements about the energetic measures which the Government is going to take against the student criminals. It is not the first time that the terrorist organisations have been dissolved, or pogromists arrested and put on trial, or emergency laws proclaimed to deal with Cuzists. Whenever something occurs that goes beyond the normal kind of every-day hooliganism, to which we have grown accustomed, we find that there are statements issued all over the world declaring that this time drastic measures are to be taken. We do not want to prophesy, but it is not our fault if anyone with common-sense remembering what has happened in the past refuses to place confidence in the Government’s assurances.

If the Government is able to put down the student hooliganism, why has it allowed it to go on till now, even assisting the students in their activities? This applies to all Governments, to-day, yesterday and probably to-morrow, too. It is a sort of tradition with Roumanian Governments. Every Government tacitly allows the hooligans to indulge in their activities against the Jews. Every Government gives facilities for the so-called student congresses, which are nothing more than rallying-places for the purposes of carrying out acts of terrorism. As for emergency laws, we remember that the Liberal Government, ten years ago, proclaimed a state of siege in Bucharest, because of the student terrorism, and the result was that large numbers of workers were arrested and brought before court martials, while the students continued to indulge in their anti-Jewish hooliganism, with the police and the military looking on.

What we want, the paper says, is not drastic measures, or emergency laws, but the application of the ordinary laws against the Cuzist terrorists. It is an accepted tradition of all our Governments to give the Cuzists plenty of latitude and when they have gone too far, and a shot is fired somewhere, or a town is burned down, and the world starts making a row about it, we get official communications and statements, issued about the drastic measures which are to be taken, and then, after some time has passed, and foreign opinion has been calmed down, our “independent” judiciary takes the job in hand and acquits the people who had been arrested.