thousand years. Now that the world is in trouble, as it is at present, there is likely to be a recrudescence of anti-Semitism. The Jews know it by the experience of centuries of pogroms, inquisitions, and of agony and torture. For the first time in their history they have called together a Conference to combat a new period of anti-Semitic ‘terror.’
“What resources have they at their disposal? Not many. They are a scattered people numbering some sixteen millions taking the world over. They are separated by the national restrictions of immigration which are so strong in the world today.
“Most of them are very poor, and having for centuries been denied access to the land they have become by habit and tradition traders and middlemen, who, in present world conditions of diminshing trade, suffer severely. They are unable to provide themselves with food as do the peasant populations of Poland, Roumania, Germany and that part of the world where a great proportion of the Jewish people have remained since they were driven northward by the Romans twenty centuries ago.
“A sort of mysterious and almost mystic power is sometimes ascribed to the Jewish people, because of their connection with finance, and particularly international finance. This connection is the effect of the same causes which made them predominantly traders.
“As finance comes to be better understood by a world which has suffered bitterly from the defects of an obsolete financial system, the myth of the mystic financial power of the Jews, which was earnestly believed in by the ruling classes of mankind two centuries ago, is rapidly fading in the light of increased knowledge. In any event, common sense indicates that there could be no worse time than the present, with its multitude of exchange restrictions and the depression which has undermined financial power all over the world, for the Jews to call any such elusive and uncertain power to their assistance.
“What means of defense, then, have they against the growing storm clouds that threaten to break and overwhelm them? The power of eloquent protest in Geneva is of remarkably little use to a man who is trying to protect his wife and children against a bloodthirsty mob, or an excited Dictator determined upon encompassing his ruin in Berlin.
“The resolution passed at Geneva at the present Conference significantly points the way.
“It sets forth that England alone among the nations of the world has achieved that condition of civilization which relegates anti-Semitism to the background of ‘crank’ movements.
“England—who replied through the clear voice of Arthur Balfour to the cry of world Jewry for a National Home in Palestine, where the soul of a great and noble nation might be redeemed by contact with the soil of their historic country; England—who led the nations of the world in the ratification of the famous ‘Balfour Declaration’ which created the Palestine Mandate—if England, true to her reputation for maintaining justice for the weak and oppressed, for honoring her word, stands by the Jewish people in this hour of danger, she has the power and the prestige to lead the world away from a nightmare of reactionary oppression, and even slaughter, into the modern and enlightened paths of truth and peace.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
