A crass White Paper, preparations for war
A policy against right and reason
One day the whole miserable story of this root cause of the Palestine problem today will be revealed. Posterity will learn with astonishment of an administration so feeble and inept that it opened wide the door to every unscrupulous adventurer who wished to carve out a political career through the flesh and blood of Jew and fellow-Arabs, often openly conspiring with Powers hostile in all but the act of war to the British Empire. Future generations will point with scorn to an administration charged to facilitate the establishment of the Jewish National Home, yet many of whose officials were openly and avowedly opposed to the trust they were called upon to fulfil.
(Extract from the JC leader on the White Paper of 1939 which severely limited Jewish immigration to Palestine and called for joint JewishArab rule, suggestions the JC branded ‘ morally detestable and crass’)
Opinions change
It is of interest to observe the changes of attitude recently executed towards questions of what it is right or wrong to do in war or under the threat of war. At one time it was regarded as an unpatriotic act to hoard food. Recently, however, the population was recommended by expert advice to store a week’s supplies — a wise and obvious precaution…It was once considered mean and cowardly to flee the great cities on the eve of war. But during the present crisis we have seen great business concerns, including the newspapers, making preparations for evacuation. Removals, indeed, are now being organised by the authorities to the tune of 3,000,000 individuals who have reserved nearly a million rooms in the country, are to be assisted by the authorities to travel to them over eight one-way roads.
Speakers wanted
One would have thought that in a Community such as ours, with its highly developed capacity for “holding forth” and argumentation, speakers would not have been hard to come by. But in spite of repeated appeals for open-air speakers in the Jewish defence campaign, there are, at the moment only some forty men and women engaged in this vitally important work.