Foreign News: Youth v. Jews

“The force of Youth at work in Europe is called Fascism in Italy and Hitlerism in Germany!” cried Great Britain’s bristling Viscount Rothermere, hurrying back last week from Adolf Hitler’s bailiwick at Munich to his roaring London newspresses. “In Britain as yet,” he added dolefully, “it [Youth] has no name or organization, but it is working just as strongly here as anywhere! . . . It would be fatal folly to hold it [Youth] back.”

Viscount Rothermere is 62, Benito Mussolini 47, Adolf Hitler 41. The more the “Hearst of England” thought about Youth last week the more enthusiastic he became. Herr Hitler, he declared, has made only one mistake: “His Jew-baiting is a stupid survival of medieval prejudice” (TIME, Aug. 25 & Sept. 29).

But the more he thought about Jews and Youth, the more involved Viscount Rothermere’s ideas became. He sees himself as a “youth”—as The Youth destined to save Great Britain. What would he do, as Dictator, about Jews?

Calling his secretary, dictating a white-hot signed pronouncement for his Daily Mail (daily of world’s largest English language circulation) Viscount Rothermere reasoned himself completely around the Fascist circle thus:

“I freely admit that the Jewish race has shown conspicuous political unwisdom since the War. Prominent British Jews have brought great unpopularity upon their community by clamorous persistence in pressing for maintenance, at the expense of the hard-driven taxpayers, of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, which no Jew above the charity line wants at all.

“Those on the inside of public affairs feel furthermore a good deal of resentment against the activities of wealthy Jewish individuals and organizations who try by every means — financial, social, political and personal — to influence British Government departments and members of parliament for ends serviceable to Jewish interests.

“Tactlessness always has been one of the outstanding defects of the children of Israel. British Jews do not err in this respect nearly as much as their kinsmen of the Continent. Nevertheless they would do well to remember that the fact of leadership of the Bolshevist campaign against civilization and religion being almost entirely in the hands of men of their blood has done inevitable and incalculable harm to the reputation of the Hebrew race in every country of its adoption.”

Lenin was no Jew, Trotsky (born Bronstein) is but has been exiled. “The present Soviet Dictator, Josef Stalin, is no Jew. The chief of the dread Ogpu or Soviet secret police, Comrade Menzhinsky, is a Jew.