World Press Digest

The Manchester Guardian, reporting on the plight of Jewish workers in France who are foreign citizens, says:

From 1919 to 1928 France was dependent on immigrant labor, and immigration was promoted especially from Poland; a considerable number of Jews also came into the country. All this changed when the economic crisis set in and unemployment grew in France. From then on the police authorities set to work with energy. The greatest sufferers have been the Jewish immigrants.

Every worker in France has to have a “carte d’identité,” permitting him to remain in the country. This is renewed every second year, and a “carte de travailleur” is issued with it, permitting him to work. For some months now renewal has had to be requested in a special petition to the Ministry of Labor, and before granting it the officials require from every worker a definite contract with an employer. For the Jewish workers this is a special difficulty, for most of them are at work in the poor workshops of the small Jewish employers and cannot show a contract. They thus lose both their permission to work and their support if unemployed. And then the authorities challenge their right to remain in the country.

The consequence is that these Jewish workers have to conceal their workplaces. They work in Paris behind thick curtains in order to evade police observation. They must be reminded of days long past in Tsarist Russia. And if they are expelled where are they to go? Unlike other foreigners, these Jewish immigrants have no country that must accept them. Countless tragedies are now taking place under Jewish roofs in Paris.

There is no suggestion that the French government is inspired by anti-Semitism; it is only anxious for its own country. But its actions involve the fate of Jewish working people who have no political aims but are simply struggling for their bare bread.

BACKS SWITZERLAND IN KIDNAP CASE

Commenting on the kidnaping of Berthold Jacob and on the complaint which the Swiss government is to lodge against Germany at the Hague Tribunal, the Birmingham (English) Post, a daily newspaper, writes:

Great Britain is bound to hope that the Swiss case will be pressed. We, of all people in the world, must support Switzerland’s attempt to protect the refugee from force or fraud. If Germany has a case, she can present it to Switzerland under the Swiss-German arbitration treaty of 1921—to which Switzerland is now appealing. If her case is not strong enough for that, then Germany must accept a Swiss appeal to the Hague Court—which Great Britain most certainly should endorse. To the plain man, outside Germany, it would seem that Nazi methods, effective inside Germany, are now being “tried on” against a little Power outside Germany.