A severe setback was given to Prince Bismark, Nazi envoy, who arrived here on Wednesday in order to enlist the sympathies of the British public toward the Hitler government.
At a private meeting of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, which is one of the most influential bodies in England, Bismark attempted in his address to minimize the anti-Jewish campaign in Germany by throwing responsibility for the anti-German propaganda on the Jews abroad. This effort, however, met with derision. Speakers who followed Prince Bismark in discussion, without exception expressed unqualified condemnation of the Nazi policy.
Sir Alexander MacFadden, in a striking statement, declared: “I ask Prince Bismark to take the following message to Germany. Undoubtedly many influential people in England developed a real friendship for Germany since the War. But now they openly declare their sympathies to lie more with France than with the Germans. As long as the German government acts in the fashion it is doing at present it is useless to expect that Germany will receive fair play, which it complains it does not receive because nobody believes the news emanating from Germany which we consider to be officially tainted. The anti-Jewish persecutions are causing irreparable harm in Germany, especially in an economic sense.”
MacFadden rejected the excuse offered by Prince Bismark that the maltreatment is confined to East European Jews, citing Professor Albert Einstein, Lion Feuchtwanger and Bruno Walter. “I do not wish to ask Prince Bismark any questions, but I would like him to take this statement back to Hitler,” he concluded.
The Secretary of the International Law Union pointed out that some of his friends, comprising the most brilliant minds in Germany, have been turned out and if Prince Bismark has any influence with Hitler, he would ask of him nothing more than that the policy of mistreatment of innocent men and women in Germany be abandoned.
Bismark’s intention to convert intellectual England toward Hitler resulted in the opposite effect. The entire audience displayed definite antagonism and instead of being impressed by Prince Bismark’s statements, asked him to tell Germany that intellectual England is horrified by the policy of Jewish persecution in Germany. The unanimous condemnation of the policy pursued by the Nazis against the Jews could permit of no doubt in the mind of the Nazi envoy where the sympathies of the leading British circles lay.
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.
