[To THE EDITOR. OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sus, Is Mr.
Herman Cohen pulling your leg or are you pulling his? There is a lack of equipoise, which means a luck of humour, somewhere in his suggestion of a Commission of Eight (did he mean hate?) to inquire into the " Jewish question " and your acceptance of it. His proposed chairman, Mr. Belloc, is ruled out by your fear of a divided duty in the conscience of an ultramontanist Englishman, and presumably there might be awkward questions as to whether he is racially one and indivisible as an Englishman. Then, suppose you got your Eight, which number, I think, would need to include some- body like Mr. Will Evans or Mr. Stanley Lupino or Mr. George Robey—I mention them at random without invidious- ness—to supply the necessary element of humour which alone would ensure that stability and sensible balance to command respect, and suppose you succeeded, furthermore, in obtaining the evidence from all sides, not omitting the multitude of cranks, would the result be final? Would it, for instance, be any more acceptable or conclusive than, say, the reports of the very elaborate amateur, that is, non-official, but nevertheless professional, Tariff Commission? That, at least, had no need to delve into ancient and mediaeval, as well as modern. history, to take one aspect alone.
May I suggest a more useful inquiry? Let the Commission be composed entirely of non-Jews and of Englishmen whose racial purity can stand the test of investigation up to the nth generation, if you like, and let the terms of reference be on these lines: To inquire and to report into anti-Semitism in England, to determine whether it really exists, its growth (if any), its origin (with special inquiry into its German pseudo- scientific antecedents and characteristics), its value (to its adherents as well as to the country), its revenues—of course, I could not keep out finance—and its compatibility with the British traditional sense of toleration and fairplay. That, I suggest, would be a more novel and useful scheme of research, and would, of course, include the other.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Press Gallery, House of Commons. M. J. LANDA.
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