REFUGEES: LIABILITY OR ASSET?
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I am afraid that I cannot accept Mrs. Savage's ipse dixit that what she says must be true, and that all I wrote must be wrong. In short, she will forgive me if I suggest that she should take to herself the advice she gives me, and which is contained in the last paragraph of her letter, to use discretion before writing so glibly on matters on which she is obviously quite uninformed, and without any real experience of the types under discussion. I flatter myself that, having lived all my life among my own co-religionists, I have perhaps a little more knowledge of the Jewish Community than has this lady. As I pointed out in my first letter, this discussion, which originally was directed to the question as to whether the refugee was a liability or an asset, was used by Mrs. Savage as an excuse for dragging in anti-Semitic propaganda, and she drew quite a number of red herrings of this kind across the track. Her last letter has produced not individual red herrings, but quite a shoal of them, for she is now con- cerned with the question of-bankruptcies among Jews, and she takes one example of a refugee who- fled to Switzerland at the crisis as illustrating the refusal of the refugees to assist in the defence of the country which has given them shelter.
This procedure is illuminating, for it is the usual gambit of the Jew-hater to argue from the particular to the general, and to condemn the whole community for the faults of a few. Her example can be treated with contempt. I wonder if Mrs. Savage ever reads the newspapers, for the fact that refugees were offering their services and were being registered for that purpose at Woburn House was published in every leading newspaper in the Kingdom. But there are none so blind as those who will not see.
It is indeed remarkable that Mrs. Savage uses all the arguments which we have been accustomed to read in those sheets which pass as newspapers among the B.U.F. Mrs. Savage knows perfectly well that price-cutting is not confined to Jews, that the remedy for price-cutting is in the hands of the wholesale manufacturers and of the public, who should refuse to patronise such establishments. As to the bankruptcies which she has somehow managed to drag in, however dis- creditable these bankruptcies are, and they are thoroughly condemned by the Jewish Community, they are very small beer compared with bankruptcies of which we read almost weekly where non-Jews are concerned, and compared to which the liabilities of these small traders are but chicken-feed. But, as a matter of fact, the number of bankruptcies in this country are grossly exaggerated and constantly declining, as anyone who studies the returns well knows. But all this is beside the mark, and merely illustrates the glib manner in which Mrs. Savage endeavours to evade the issues by dragging in matters which have no concern whatever with the question at issue.
Equally nonsensical, if I may say so, is her attempt to refute my assertions as to A.R.P. work. We are now told that in the City and at Cripplegate Jews were not conspicuous among those working for A.R.P. But I venture to think that the proportion of Gentiles in this area as compared to Jews could sufficiently explain that. I repeat once more that if Mrs. Savage will address her attention to those districts in which there is a considerable Jewish population she will find no lack of A.R.P. workers of my faith. We now find that the statement of the run on the banks came from the secretary, whatever that may mean, of one of them. It is rather extraordinary that while the newspapers carried stories of an exodus to the countryside, I cannot recall any newspaper which featured this fact, which I think would not have been left unadvertised.
In conclusion, I note that she does not explain what she meant by "practical Christianity," the term she used in her last letter as sufficient to excuse the turning of refugees from this country. She shows a lack of real knowledge and she displays all the prejudices of those people who, under the guise of wishing us well, contrive to do us harm, and, quite frankly, I have no use for that type of mentality which always prefaces its attacks on my co-religionists by the allegation that they are not prejudiced and indeed pretend to admire indi- vidual members of my race, while hating them in bulk.—Yours
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