When, during World War II, the late Josiah Wedgwood, a much
respected member of the British Parliament, came to the United States
to seek lend-lease for his country, he appealed in a pamphlet to the American
nation with these words:
“We shall not convert a crusade into Imperialism by
a mean use of your help. May the Lord do so to us, and more also, if once
we break that faith.”
Lend-lease was granted. Soon thereafter Josiah Wedgwood
died. And the British converted the crusade into imperialism by a mean
use of American help.
* * *
Josiah Wedgwood was the greatest champion of the cause of
Zionism, and of every just cause, in Great Britain. Winston Churchill,
in his preface to Wedgwood’s autobiography, “A Fighting Life,”
wrote “The distressed of the whole world learned to look to him and
through him to Parliament for the redress of wrongs.” At his death
there was none to take up the mantle of the champion of “unselfish
courage and constancy in the support of what he deemed honor.” Had
Josiah Wedgwood lived, Great Britain would not have fallen so low in political
morality. Today is “the darkest hour” in British ethics.
* * *
Several months ago we read on the front page of the New
York Times in large letters: “Britain’s Descent to Poverty Marks
New Turn in History.” It is regrettable to have to say that the descent
to poverty is marked also by a deterioration of the British Government
as a moral power and liberating agent in the world of nations.
Great Britain, for some reason inexplicable from the viewpoint
of self-interest, placed Palestine at the top of her politics, although
a quarter of the world is still in British hands.
There she heaped mistake upon blunder, blunder upon injustice,
until she became so enmeshed in colonial intrigue at the expense of the
Jewish people that she lost face and moral stature. Violating the decisions
of the old League of Nations, misinterpreting the mandate and the Balfour
Declaration, she actually became co-culprit with Nazi Germany in the annihilation
of the Jews in Europe.
The wrecking work of Great Britain is causing the breakdown
of the new world organization the United Nations. Great Britain, more
than any other nation, should be interested in the existence of this organization
for Great Britain endures not only by her own strength but by the charity
of the United States and not financial charity alone, but military and
political charity.
But in the calculating mind of Ernest Bevin, Great Britain
could escape the obviously humiliating role of international beggar by
increasing the differences between Russian and America, by infecting both
countries with suspicion.
Bevin tries to use the Palestinian problem as an apple of
discord between Russia and America, applying the old Hitlerian slogans
of “the Jews and the Communists.” From the day when the Chancellery
building in Berlin collapsed over the bodies of Hitler and Goebbels, Great
Britain has taken over Hitler’s work.
Today Great Britain is the main protagonist of anti-Semitism
in the world. Therefore it is futile to argue that Great Britain is a
socialist country with a socialist government.
A socialist country that supports Franco in Spain, King
George in Greece and Chiang Kai-shek in China, the Mufti in Palestine,
and great cartels in Germany, and that spreads anti-Semitism in the world
is a national-socialist government, and Nazi is an abbreviation for this.
The Nazis in Germany also introduced a number of social
reforms. But the attitude of the Nazis toward peoples of other nationalities
made them diverge from the socialist movement, and it is the same with
the British Labor Government. This is the criterion: As long as an anti-Semitic
policy motivates a government, it is not socialist but national-socialist.
As a logical result, such government will side with Franco, the Mufti,
etc.
Britain’s recent action in India with her 350 million
people, with its pauper population and endemic famines, is a liability,
not and asset. The time when a colony was valued for its rubies and emeralds
is gone. Great Britain pulled out of India in order to concentrate on
the deserts of the Middle East with their oil. But instead of bringing
a creative program of peace and development. Britain intrigues there against
American oil interests, crates disorders in the Holy Land, muddles in
the United Nations, and lives a parasitic life on the American treasury.
It has converted a crusade into imperialism by a mean use of our help.
