World Press Digest

The Commerce d# Levant, writing on the growth of commerce in Palestine, says:

A graph, indicating the progress of Palestine in recent years, would show a very sharp upward movement in 1934. Trade expanded, new industries were developed, and capital continued to pour into the country, as it has been doing for such a long period. Two events, in particular, stand out in a wonderful twelve months—the Levant Fair at Tel Aviv, and the first utilization of the Irak pipe line to Haifa. The Fair, held in the Spring, which was specially noteworthy for the extensive foreign exhibits, was attended by some 600,000 visitors. One interesting result was the formation of the British Trade Development Association by the local representatives of British manufacturers. In October, the pipe line to Haifa was opened, marking the completion of the project to bring oil by land to the Mediterranean.

The 1933-34 Jaffa orange season opened late, but heavy shipments in the closing months brought the total exports to 5,049,327 boxes. Including grapefruit and lemons, the exports of citrus fruit amounted to 5,414,027 boxes. The exports for the current season should be somewhat larger, and so far shipments are in advance of those of the previous year. The feature of the trade figures, so far available, is the great increase in imports, due mainly to the increased requirements as a result of the expanding population. The larger number of permitted immigrants has given a further arked impetus to the building trades, and an analysis of the imports shows that material for construction played a prominent part in the expansion of the trade.

BERNARD BARON’S CAREER REVIEWED

World’s Press News of London devotes a full page to the late Bernard Baron, famous Anglo-philanthropist. The early rise of Mr. Baron is related in this publication as follows:

He was a Russian Jew who emigrated to America with his parents when a boy and found employment as a cigar-maker, a fellow workman being Samuel Gompers, the labor leader, with whom he continued a warm friendship until the latter’s death.

Cigarettes were then beginning to be introduced and young Baron invented a machine which revolutionized the hand process. He made some money out of this and going from Virginia to New York started manufacturing cigarettes himself. This, however, aroused the opposition of the manufacturers and jeopardized his machine business, so he came to London and started the Baron Cigarette Machine Company, exhibiting at all the tobacco exhibitions and selling to most of the English manufacturers.

LONDON TIMES LAUDS JEWISH HOME LIFE

The London Times, writing on the home life of the Jews, says:

No nation has realized to a greater extent than the Jewish nation the religious nature of home building and home duties. As a race the Jews have worked on the religious Mosaic code for thousands of years, with the result that their maternal mortality is very low and the health rate of their children is very high. The rabbis are intimate with the essentials for good home-keeping and emphasize the importance of the physical as well as the spiritual needs of the home. Behind all the home work of the Jews is the one great religious urge which is utterly alien to home work under any social welfare scheme of political origins.

NAZIS, OLYMPICS AND MR. BRUNDAGE

Ludwig Lore, in the New York Post, writes under the headline “Fage Mr. Brundage,” as follows:

Among the 4,000 German contestants for the International Olympiad of 1936, says the Saarbruecken weekly Grenzland, there were seven young German Jews from the two Jewish athletic associations officially recognized in the Reich. But the seven were dropped, every one of them, as soon as the American Athletic Union on Mr. Avery Brundage’s recommendation had decided to participate in the Olympiad.

Mr. Brundage had been sent to investigate the sport situation in the Reich. Twelve days after he left the seven young Jews were notified by their respective local sport administration that they had been taken from the list by the Reich sport leader. At the time of Mr. Brundage’s visit twenty-two of Germany’s thirty-six athletic stadiums were closed to non-Aryans. The other fourteen have since followed their example.

At the national convention of the A. A. U. at Pittsburgh in November, 1933, a resolution was adopted which called upon the International Olympic Committee to inform Germany that “unless German-Jewish athletes were permitted to train, prepare for and participate in the Olympic Games at Berlin in 1936, United States athletes will not take part.”

After he returned from abroad Mr. Brundage reported that America’s conditions had been wholly complied with and that Jewish athletes would be given adequate opportunity to participate in the various events. If the Grenzland’s information is authentic, Mr. Brundage and the American Athletic Union have been handed a lemon.

What will the A. A. U. do now?

A KINGDOM OF ‘NON-ARYANS’

The London Daily Telegraph, under the headline “A Non-Aryan Kingdom,” writes:

Mr. Vulliamy, the author of excellent studies of Rousseau, Wesley, and Boswell, has turned his pen to satire in “Judas Maccabaeus.” He tells us of the rising of a dictator. He founded a great kingdom for those of non-Aryan blood. Before a man could be elected to any post he was obliged to prove a pure Hebrew descent for twenty generations.

It was conveniently found that Homer was a Jew; thus culture was preserved; and Hebrew doctors proved that the Iliad was profoundly Semitic. The nation flourished until the dictator died, when, strange to say, the nation seemed to flourish still more, “proving, whether we like it or not, that a scattered people, without policy or leadership or the encumbrance of national responsibility, is a hundred times more powerful than the most immovable concrete nation in the world.”

This subtle study in national idiocy should not be shown to a fervent Nazi, lest it awaken a sense of humor disastrous to the N.S.D.A.P. or government by megaphone and megalomania.