The Jews at Hamburg It is regrettable that any force
had to be used in getting the Jews ashore at Hamburg on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the occupants of only one of the three ships gave serious trouble, and it is clear that the British soldiers concerned displayed, with few exceptions, the maximum of patience and good humour. Before hasty judge- ments are passed on the whole affair there is a good deal to be borne in mind. To begin with, the whole 4,500 were illegal immigrants, or would-be immigrants, into Palestine ; so far as they might have succeeded in getting in, legal immigrants from Central Europe would have been kept out. Few of them were genuine refugees ; they were instruments or agents in an attempt to enter Palestine illegally. The French authorities were gravely at fault in allowing them to embark at all ; it was perfectly proper to take them back to France, where they were all of them completely free to land, instead of being taken on to Hamburg. Now that they are in Germany, any one of them is still free to enter France, with the full concurrence of the French Government. Germany, of course,
has tragic associations for Jews, but no single one of them need have gone there, and no single one of them need stay there now ; none who do choose to stay will be in any sort of danger. If it is held that all Jews should be free to take the law into their own hands and land in unlimited numbers in Palestine there is no more to be said. If that anarchic doctrine is rejected, little exception can be taken to the Government's action. There are already more than enough Jews in Cyprus ; these Jews in any case would be far better off in France—to which they have so far refused to return.
