No Congress Needed

The following is from the address of Mr. Laski, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, delivered Sunday before the twenty-eighth annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee.

The movement for a so-called World Jewish Congress is not a new idea and it is a matter which concerns those of us who live in the Old World rather than you who live in the New World, because we are nearer a center of storm and agitation than you.

We have, not only in England but in Holland, Belgium and France, four not unimportant communities of the Old World Jewish communities, considered this question. And we have considered it and I choose my adjectives carefully, intending that full weight shall be given to the quality of each of them— we have considered this question impersonally and we have considered it intellectually.

ARGUMENTS FOR PARLEY LACK REALITY

I have read, so far as I could lay hands upon it, all the literature and speeches, and they have been voluminous, which has been advanced by those who favor this idea. I have no doubt there are certain limitations which a lawyer’s training imposes upon his ability intellectually to grasp things. I can only say that I feel that sometimes the language of advocacy on the part of the people who wish for this World Jewish Congress, lacks concretness and precision and seems sometimes to come from a lyrical cloudland rather than to belong to a world of reality in which, fortunately or unfortunately, we live.

This Summer we were again invited by one of the most persuasive and competent advocates of this idea, Dr. Goldmann, to adhere to it, and he addressed a specially arranged meeting in Paris. There were present at that meeting outstanding representatives of the English, Dutch, Belgium, and French communities approaching the problem from exactly the basis I have indicated, and it was once more unhesitatingly turned down.

REJECTED ROLE OF OBSERVERS

We were then asked to send observers to the meeting, and we turned that down too, because we were not prepared to believe that we should alter our point of view; if we tried to retain our quality of observers we would very soon be translated into adherents.

I have only heard Dr. Adler read what I am sure is the considered view of the American Jewish Committee. I believe it to be the considered view of the majority of right thinking American Jews. It is certainly the view of those countries I have mentioned, and if the American Jewish Committee and if the accredited heads of the four great communities I have mentioned, refuse to adhere to this World Jewish Congress, it seems to me it will be somewhat of a farce to continue with the idea.

READY TO HEAR NEW ARGUMENTS

We are always prepared, of course, to consider any fresh arguments that will be put forward. I don’t believe there are any fresh arguments. The matter has been pending so long that we have probably exhausted such intellectuality as could be brought into the debate. But if there are new arguments let them be brought forward now and we are always strong enough to change our minds. But I do feel, coming from Europe, from the Old World to the New, that I can say that I would regard it, and my friends would regard it, as a disaster of the first magnitude that this idea should go forward.

Insofar as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, let me say this: Jews and non-Jews have studied with care what is grandiloquently called the protocols of the two preliminary conferences or congresses that have taken place at Geneva. I say nothing, in fact I say everything for the quality of the oratory, as sheer oratory, which distinguished those proceedings, but I have yet to find, after careful scrutiny, that there emerged from either of them one single constructive idea that has advanced in any way any of the many problems that harass us.

CITES SNUB BY GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL

I also want to say this. It may be within the knowledge of some of you that I have somewhat wandered about the earth during the last two years in pursuance of my proper business as president of the Board and chairman of the Joint Foreign Committee, and I was at Geneva during the last assembly of the League, and I can say from my own responsibility and knowledge that there was a representative of a great power who refused to see me and a certain other person with whom I was working at that time, because of the offense he took about a speech made by a certain individual at the last meeting of the World Jewish Congress.

Jews ought not in large measure to deal with these delicate questions involving perhaps the lives of fellow Jews, unless they have a certain technical training in these matters, which is painfully acquired, and I say, also with deliberation, that my experience is that public business is not transacted normally at public meetings.

PROOF OF MISCHIEF WROUGHT BY PARLEYS

Of course the view that I put forward I know is not everybody’s view, but we do endeavor to put forward these views impersonally, without heat. I would like to feel that there could be unification of Jewish affairs everywhere. We in England are a unified community. We are a constitutional body which of course has the advantage of a long history dating back to 1760, and I would like to give you an instance, if I may, of the mischief of these international assemblies. We in Europe have been much oppressed by what are known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The German government, which has unlimitable means for everything except the honorable discharge of her debts, has spent millions of marks in sending those protocols into almost every country of Europe, including the two liberal-minded Scandinavian countries, and on an ignorant and credulous population they have had a very considerable effect, and so long as the Nazi regime and its present intensity of Jewhatred and Jew-baiting continues, so long with greater intensity will the Nazi regime propagate that pernicious doctrine that there is an international political Jewry.

Can you at this time—whatever may be the propriety of another time—can you conceive of anything more in the nature of playing into the hands of your enemy than deliberately to erect the very international political assemblies which you are at pains to deny exist?

CONFERENCE WOULD AID NAZI LIE

It seems to me that if you want to establish, instead of disestablish, the validity of the protocols as being an exemplar of the type of organization secretive in the Jewish community, with the objects that are indicated as being the objects of the learned Elders of Zion, that you couldn’t choose a more speedy or more effective method of saving the German government money and giving the population of Europe the proof of that which the German government alleges. To me it is a very real thing. I believe in international conference, but I believe in international conference within limits, and I believe in it proportionate to the use that can be made of international conference.

It is known that from time to time representatives of the Jewry having a common problem and feeling that meeting face to face will be far more advantageous than the exchange of letters, do meet. I have attended many. I am sure Dr. Adler in his long and distinguished career has attended many also. However, to have this form of continuous session seems to me to be a waste of time, a waste of money and a waste of such safety as remains to the Jewish people.

NOBODY CREDITS OPEN STATEMENT

It is all very well having conferences in relation to specific problems such as Palestine and relief, but it is a much different thing to have unlimited and formal conferences relating to political affairs. One knows about the powers of conferences relating to political affairs, that whatever they may do in the open no one believes that the open statement is anything like the measure of the facts which lie beneath the surface. And the same thing will be said of us.

I feel very strongly on this subject, as a European Jew, and so do many others of my friends. I hope you feel just as strongly and come to a realization of these dangers. I know that there are many Jews in Eastern Europe, and believe me that no one who has seen them as they live can help but have sympathy for them in the conditions in which they live, who want to have some of that free expression which they are unable to get in their own country. We can sympathize with that wish, but we cannot submit to it in affairs relating to world Jewry and to the obligations of citizenships in our respective countries.

WORLD CONGRESS MUST BE RESISTED

This world congress idea must be resisted. We must play no part in it, and I feel that we must, as plainly as possible, give the reasons which induce us to refuse to take part. We have in England—where the question has not arisen in quite so pressing a form—given a public reasoned statement of our attitude.

I end by saying that it would be impertinent of me to interfere with regard to a matter of purely American, domestic Jewish politics. I have not done that because the differences between the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee are matters upon which, if I may use an Americanism which I have acquired since I have been here, I do not propose to pass. I am not going to hand down any judgment on that; that is your business, not mine. But the difference between the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress on the matter of the World Jewish Congress is my business and Europe’s business as much as yours. On this I am entitled to speak and I have spoken.