Polish Press Urges New Pact with Jews As Minorities Bloc is Negotiated

Threaten Jewish Leaders with Consequences if Bloc is Formed (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The necessity of an agreement with the Jews in Poland to prevent their joining hands with the other national minorities at the forthcoming parliamentary elections is stressed and urgently recommended by the Liberal Polish Press today, as the negotiations for the forming of a bloc, promoted by Deputy Isaac Gruenbaum, go forward.

The entire Polish press, both the nationalistic and liberal organs of public oimion. oppose the plan for a minorities bloc. Such a bloc would be a move against the Polish state, the papers argue and threaten the Jewish population with “the consequences of the people’s warth,”as was the case in the 1912 election to the Russian Durma, when the Jews in Warsaw declined to vote for the Polish nationalist candidate, Kuchrzewski, but elected, instead, the Polish socialist candidate, Jagiello.

The Jewish leaders who are conducting the negotiations with the other minorities, point out in reply to this argument that the national minorities bloc would be nothing but a technical understanding for the election period, necessary because the election ordinance makes it impossible for the Jewish population to send to the Sejm a proportionate number of Jewish representatives.

The liberal papers, advocating a new Ugoda (agreement) propose that in this agreement, there should be an undertaking on the part of the government and the parties to secure legislative relief from the compulsory Sunday observance by Jewish workers and shopowners, that the Jewish schools be granted a state subvention and that credit facilities be opened for Jewish merchants. The idea, however, of an agreement at the present moment is declared by the Jewish leaders to be not on the agenda.