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In London potent Baron Melchett (Alfred Moritz Mond), one of the foremost British industrial tycoons, pledged £5000 ($25,000) to feed and succor the hundreds of Palestine Jews burnt out of their homes or left orphaned, widowed, destitute. London Bankers James A. de Rothschild quickly followed with a like sum. So did Manhattan's Felix Warburg, who was in London. A fourth $25,000 was pledged by Chicago's Julius Rosenwald, and a fifth by Manhattan's Nathan Straus. Before the week was out, Mr. Straus had doubled his $25,000 pledge and lesser contributions from world Jewry poured in at such a rate that officials of the Palestine Emergency Fund said that they would be able to forward a quarter-million dollars weekly to the Holy Land "as long as the need for immediate relief exists."
Borah on Zion. Most potent of Jewish demonstrations last week was a meeting of 25,000 (including many a Gentile) who jammed Manhattan's Madison Square Garden and roared approval of a tactful telegram read on behalf of President Herbert Hoover (see p. 11). Slouching forward to keynote from the platform came famed Friend-of-Oppressed-Peoples William Edgar Borah, Chairman of the U. S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. Said he:
"This catastrophe was the result of carelessness or stupidity or both. Whose carelessness and whose stupidity time alone will reveal. . . . Knowing the Premier of Great Britain as so many of us do, we know that it would be impossible for him to be indifferent or careless where human life was involved. . . .
"We know now, and with a little reflection we could have known in the beginning that the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine is a task calling not only for the highest of statesmanship, but calling also for eternal vigilance and vast sacrifices.
"The Arabs are a virile people, resourceful in character, indefatigable in purpose and imbued with a national spirit which, at times, partakes of fanaticism. To deal with such a situation, there must be an understanding, there must be some definite arrangement, some definite program."
Without dreaming of saying so, Senator Borah seemed to imply that Zionists may have proceeded too rapidly in colonizing Palestine without first achieving a sufficiently "definite arrangement" with the British for adequate protection. Jewish speakers who followed the Senator of course squarely blamed the whole crisis on the laxity of the British administration in Palestine. Meanwhile in London the World Zionist Organization was actively negotiating with the new British Labor Cabinet. In the London press the issue of whether it is worth while for the Empire to retain Palestine as a mandate was sensationally aired.
Imperial Reaction. "Let Us Get Out of Palestine!" blared last week the potent London news organs of Baron Beaverbrook, famed "Hearst of England." Above his own signature the blatant Baron declared:
"The money that Chancellor of the Exchequer Snowden has just gained at The Hague after weeks of anxious toil (see p. 25) has been thrown away in a few days on the sands of Palestine, from which we shall never receive a penny in return either in cash, trade, prestige or political advantage. . . . Let us get out now!"