R. D. B. Speaks

For thirty years Editor-in-chief of the Daily Express in London, England’s most celebrated journalist and chairman of the Board of Directors of the London Daily Express

As I go through the country I find myself more and more impressed by the fact that (1) this is the greatest Jewish country in the world and (2) that the Jews whom I have met are anxious and ready to make sacrifices on behalf of their co-religionists in Germany. They are divided on the question of the efficacy of the boycott. I find that those who have relatives in Germany are invariably opposed to the boycott for fear of possible reprisals on the part of the Nazis. There is also, I regret to say, a certain proportion of anti-boycotters who have business interests that might be affected. Les affaires sont les affaires! On the whole, however, I feel convinced that the average Jew in the United States does not wittingly pay money for goods of German manufacture and thus does his bit to impress the dear Nazi in the only way in which that strange, inexplicable compound of sloppy sentimentality and elemental brutality can be impressed, namely by way of his pocket or his stomach. It follows that if his pocket becomes empty the state of the stomach must be similarly affected; which would be all to the good. But it is slow work.

Another thing that has struck me is the intense Americanism of most of the Jews I have met, native born or foreign and so now, for the first time, I understand why the Jews of Germany persist in flaunting, almost joyously, their Germanism in spite of the humiliation and degradation to which they have been subjected by their German oppressors. I saw today a statement by a Rabbi who has just returned from Europe that no less than 600,000 Jews will leave Germany within the next eighteen months, all anxious to go and all equally God-speeded by the Nazis who wish to get rid of them. Of course, that is pure day-dreaming. Fifty to a hundred thousand participants in an exodus under the aegis of Mr. McDonald is about all that can be taken care of.

I find also considerable speculation among Jews with regard to an amiable gentleman in the South who, on following the sartorial precedent of Mussolini and Hitler and Mosley, has taken the silver shirt for his shibboleth and has started a sort of modern Ku Klux affair for the purpose of rescuing Uncle Sam from the unwelcome grasp of the all-conquering Jew. The only way to deal with this gentleman’s pleasantries is for the Jews of the United States to make an effort to show to the people of this country what the Jews have actually accomplished in the way of world betterment, in philanthropy, in education, in science, in art, in literature. Let the American world really see the definite benefits which it has derived from its generous attitude in admitting the Jews to citizenship and not brow-beating them. You would be surprised at the figures.

Anyhow, for Heaven’s sake, do not be always on the defensive.