J.D.B. News Letter

(By our Paris Correspondent)

A new international league to fight against pogroms has been formed here with the support of Professor Einstein, H. G. Wells, Professor Siegmund Freud, M. Henri Torres, and others.

The formation of the league followed a resolution adopted at a mass meeting held at the Bullier Hail attended by about six thousand people. Professor Langevin was in the chair.

M. Bernard Lecache said that the meeting wa to have been held at the Trocadero, but the Government, which owns the Trocadero, as the result of foreign diplomatic pressure at the last moment refused to allow the hall to be used for the meeting.

M. Lecache declared that since they had launched their campaign of protest against the pogroms, they had found that there was a powerful movement conducted against them. Various French Jews who were anxious to conceal their Jewishness were opposing the protest movement. They were afraid lest the antisemitism which was slumbering in France should be roused by their protests.

M. Lecache denounced the pogroms which had taken place in Transylvania. Since the Middle ages, he said, there had not been such a profanation of the sacred things of Judaism. He called on them to conduct an active campaign against the pogroms. They should boycott Roumanian goods. They should see that Jewish bankers who were giving next to nothing for Palestine and for the Jewish colonization work in Russia, should refuse to give loans to anti-Semitic Governments. They were trying to influence the League of Nations to take up the matter. M. Briand had taken with him to Geneva a large number of protest resolutions which had arrived at the Foreign Ministry from many places, even from North Africa.

M. Dumas, Chairman of the Federal Repubiican Students’ Federation of France, declared that the French students’ organizations were protesting against the pogroms in Roumania. It had been shown that the Roumanian Government was guilty of the pogroms be declared.

Professor Hadarmard said that it was astounding to think that the Government had refused to allow the Trocadero to be used for the meeting. He could not find words strong enough, he said, to express his feelings about the things that had been done in Roumania. “No man. Jew or Christian.” he continued. “ought to fail to make his protest. There are Jews,” he continued, “who want to conceal their Jewishness. I do not hide it. I am a Frenchman, but I am of Jewish origin. I speak here as a scholar. The Roumanian students who strive to gain their diplomas by violence are a disgrace to learning. The Numerus Clausus in Roumania is a disgraceful thing. We French took the barred students to ourselves, and they were the first to fall fighting for France in the war. We have today a famous Polish scholar, Professor Bergson, and he is now one of ours.”

M. Henri Torres said: “We are Frenchmen and Jews by race. We do not acuse the Roumanian or Polish nation. The guilt lies with the Governments who allow hatred and enmity to be taught in the universities. The best professors are excluded from the universities because they are Liberals. Almost the entire French press has been bought by the Roumanian institutions. Roumania, which has not enough money to buy a milligramme of radium, spent 25,000 francs on every journalist who came to Roumania. Roumania is said to be the shevism, but Titelescu and Company are stained with Jewish blood. The complaint is made that the protest movement against the pogroms will not do any good to the Jews of Roumania, but we know the Roumanian character. We must hit at Roumania’s purse. We must influence our Government to influence Roumania. The entire civilized world must stand out against the brutality of Roumania.”