Difficulty of differentiating between the purely domestic and foreign policies of totalitarian States is cited by the New York Times today in an editorial commenting on the Baltimore speech of Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, in which a “hands-off” policy on other nations’ internal affairs was enunciated.
“The Nuremberg Laws, for instance,” the editorial declares, “may be domestic legislation as far as Germany is concerned, but they have all the effects of a foreign policy in the public indignation and the practical problem they create in other countries.”
Asserting that “a nation that forces unwanted citizens on other nations makes them a foreign affair,” the editorial concludes: “Official spokesmen must be guarded, but American public opinion cannot be restrained and cannot be expected to restrain itself when the domestic policies of any country shock the moral sense and shake the moral order of the world.”
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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.