[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Sin,—When Miss Beryl Savage argues about the Eastern standards and individualistic traits of the foreign Jew she opens an interesting line of argument, although it would be open to apologists for the Jews of Eastern and Central Europe to ask why these people who have never in history been accorded the full rights of citizenship should be expected to be so fully conscious of its duties.
But when Miss Savage proceeds to extend her inquiries to the Jewish community in Britain and asks, one must assume in complete innocence, " of the Jews already naturalised in Great Britain how many volunteered for her A.R.P. defence and how many would be prepared to fight for her? " she leaves us amazed.
The answer is so obviously " Every single one " that one hesitates to remind your correspondent that 6,000 British Jews gave their lives in the fighting forces during the last War, a proportion (if these loathsome distinctions and comparisons are to be drawn) rather above the average for the rest of the community—i.e., 6,000 in a community of 300,000, whereas our total lives lost were 800,000 in a population of 40,000,000.
Miss Savage thinks banks were raided by Jews anxious to remove their deposits in the crisis. There probably were cases, but my own inquiries show that the proportion of Jews to others was not undue and must be reckoned in dozens, whereas literally thousands of refugees volunteered their services for our national defence.
If Miss Savage reads her Times she will see that only last week a refugee Jew was appealing for the formation of volun- teer battalions of refugees to fight for Britain like the eighteenth-century Hessians. These stories of withdrawn deposits are part of the Nazi whispering campaign, spread by not entirely disinterested nor underpaid agents. It is unwise to accept them without personally checking the facts.
But most unfair is the conclusion that there could be any significance in the fact that British Gentiles gave more in proportion to Lord Baldwin's Fund than British Jews. It completely ignores the fact that the Jews had already sub- scribed L400,000 to their own fund for their co-racials and, before Lord Baldwin's Fund was launched, actually contributed more to the relief of Aryan Christian refugees from Germany than Gentiles had done. Thus, up till the invasion of Austria Jewish money accounted for 98 per cent. of all subscribed for refugees from Germany, whereas only 90 per cent. of the refugees were Jews.
I suppose we shall now have some Jew writing of all the sums subscribed by British Jews for Gentile sufferers and British Gentile charities.
Would it not be better to ignore the false distinction between Jew and Gentile and to regard all refugees, whether Jewish, Basque, Czech, Austrian Catholic or White Russian, with rather more regard to the teachings of- the founder of Chris- tianity than some professed Christians appal{ to do?—Yours
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