HITLER AND THE JEW.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20898, 4 July 1933, Page 13

HITLER AND THE JEW.

TO THE EDITOR 0» THE PRESS Sir,—ln varying degrees most countries have thought to do God (and themselves) service by heavy discrimination against the Jews. Here and there, for long or short periods, the immortal race has enjoyed comparative respite from persecution, chiefly, perhaps, under the mild regime of rulers who, lacking in zeal for church and dogma, have been all the more free to listen to the dictates of humanity, and the arguments for toleration. And then in more recent times the growing general enlightenment had done something to mitigate the traditional Christian hostility to the people over whom hung the black indictment of deicide, and we had begun to think that the time had almost arrived when such madness might be definitely left to the dark past. We have been rudely awakened. Not in Russia, nor in the Balkans, but in highly educated, philosophic Germany we have a volcanic outburst of "Judenhetze" that astonishes and outrages mankind. Surely it is one of the most profoundly discouraging phenomena of our time, that a great people like the Germans, so eminent for their contribution to the world's enlightenment, culture, and efficiency, should be swept by a fierce end exclusive racial fanaticism; especially while the nations are in the throes of an unparalleled crisis, and have been driven together, in an agony of concern, to seek and agree upon some way of avoiding what great statesmen have referred to as impending disaster. The cry everywhere is for international goodwill, and an end to the suspicions and hatreds of the dark past. Such is the time Germany has chosen for its extraordinary dramatics. We have some light on the subject in Heine's distinction between the patriotism of Germany and that of France. He says: "The patriotism of the French consists in this: the heart warms; through this warmth it expands; it enlarges so as to encompass, with its all-embracing love, not only the nearest and dearest, but all France, all civilisation. The patriotism of the

German, on the contrary, consists in ! narrowing and contracting the heart . . . in hating foreigners: in ceasing to be European and cosmopolitan, and in adopting a narrow-minded and exclusive Germanism." In the present case it would almost seem that, foiled in its attempt to dominate the world, Germany seeks revenge in excluding the world; and so readily submits to be brow-beaten, cowed, and manipulated by a dictator from the ranks, compared with whom Bismarck and the ex-Kaiser appear to have been but mere nervous experimenters. But for the fact, it would seem altogether incredible that this virile nation, but yesterday inflamed with the passion of world-conquest, should yet. within its own borders, be so easily whipped into submission to the despotic mandates of Herr Hitler. It may be that one of the dictator's main qualifications for the role is a consummate grip of the German psychology. In his cruel measures against the proscribed race as a public and political menace, the policy of the despotic chancellor is plainly inspired by the ancient religious hatred of the Jew as an outlaw, accursed of God, and the common enemy of man. "God hath forsaken him: pursue and take him, for there is none to deliver." Nothing has more clearly revealed the intellectual limitations of Herr Hitler, and the depth of antiJewish prejudice than his proposal to ban what we call the Old Testament, and substitute something more distinctively German! Has he forgotten that Jesus was a Jew? Has it never struck him that Christ and the Christianity He taught and exemplified arc but the historic and spiritual culmination of all that is divinest, most universal and forward-looking in the Hebrew scriptures? Has his bitterness never relented as he considered the undisputed fact that the Jew under the most awful sanctions, ever regarded himself as God's chosen custodian for the nations of the supreme religion—an ethical monotheism, as it is called, and that his frantic devotion to his high calling meant centuries of martyrdom to his people? Herr Hitler's specific charge against the Jew is that he is such an astute financier with an uncanny genius for Retting a grip of big business. Even so, is he to be outlawed and treated as a pariah for what in a German would be admired and applauded? However true his alleged gifts and efficiencies in finance, have they not been fostered and forced upon him through centuries of persecution, in which his abilities, have been denied every avenue of healthy ambition and public distinction. So frequently deprived of the primary rights of citizenship, crushed by public prejudice, and robbed by every species of extortion, who can blame the Jew if he has been reduced to the necessity of measuring his wit against the thriftlessness and stupidity of his Christian persecutors. If 2000 years ago, in the very madness of their zeal for the externals of "the law and the testimony," the chief priests and rulers of the Jews, in the greatest tragedy of spiritual blindness in all history, failed in their apprehension of the true significance of Jesus, and, conceiving him to be the enemy of their thrice-holy national calling and destiny, delivered him over to the Roman for execution, they are far from being the only people who have "killed the prophets, and stoned them that were sent unto" them. Let the nation that is without offence in this respect cast the first stone at the Jew. If it was the awful fate of the .Tews to encomnass the death of the Holy and Just, their Christian accusers strangely enough found eternal salvation in the fact, and have never been slow to draw both heavenly and earthly revenues from the wounds of the crucified. In view of the atrocities suffered by the Jews at the hands of Christian authorities and the savages they have let loose upon them. T would rather-not express myself on the subject of Christian missions "for the conversion of the Jews."

Face loved of little children long ago. Head, hated of the priests and rulers then. Sav was not this Thy passion, to foreknew. Tn Thy death-hour, the deeds of Christian men.

I would sooner be lost with the neoole that pave the world the Hebrew Bible and Jesus Christ, than saved with the bantised nhilist'nes who have been their tormentors.—Yours, etc.. I. SAROTNSON. P S.—lt is a nice question as to the extent of the disagreement between scholarjv, cultured Jews, and our leadin? modernists. July 2. 1933.