PERSECUTION OF JEWS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21470, 19 April 1933, Page 14

PERSECUTION OF JEWS

Sir, —It is shocking and revolting to read the cabled accounts of the barbarous murder, of Jewish citizens, in Germany. Your contributor "Matanga,"*in using the words "faggot and sword," senses tbe trend of Hitlerism. This scabbard-clanging and murder could be carried on only in a country where the shoemaker of Kopenick incident happened. Tbe late megalomaniacal Kaiser at least had the intelligence to know Jews were, as a race, loyal, law-abiding citizens, endowed with more than the average intelligence and tenacity of purpose. The writer has had a long and intimate association with Jews, and because of it possesses a high opinion of the Semitic people, Many of them hare proven to be the best of men and womenkind I have known, men of letters, scientists, philanthropists, rausi-; cians, good parents and of abounding hospitality. Karl Marx was a philanthropist first; ft was his philanthropy that begot his de&ire to alter the existing system of civilised affairs to a. condition free from poverty and misery. Hitlerism speHs .myopia, plus a callous military vaingloriousness- As one who has not forgotten the ruthless slaughter committed upon defenceless Londoners by Zeppelins I have thought it would have been only retributive justice had we bombed the Berliners with our airships built to effect reprisals, and which the armistice forbade. "Why a large body of kindly, peace-loving Teutons permit themselves to be dragooned into becoming active or passive participants in cowardly crimes is a psychological problem: perhaps this splenetic attack upon Jews is the expression of an inferiority complex. Law is broken like a twig in a storm, terrorism and murder stalk the land, the more eminent tbe person the worse his treatment. Sir Austen Chamberlain has expressed in our Imperial Parliament views that every good citizen must endorse; he did not mince matters. For colossal brjjzenness, nothing in late years of the world's history can approach the German request to have the crime of responsibility for the war expunged from official records. As one at this distance watching the trend of European affairs, in my belief, there could be no greater folly than granting military equality to "a country swayed by a band of swashbucklers. Just as we agree with Sir Austen Chamberlain, so do we agree with Mr. Winston Churchill, who just as forcibly voices the same denouncement. It was Voltaire that said the saddest and most valid indictment of Christianity was its inhuman persecii« tion of God's chosen people. I hope ojir Government will cable its sympathy with and endorsement of Sir Austen Chamberlain's views. C. E. Major: April 18, 1933. ;