SIR,—Your issue of to-day exhales such anti-Semitism that it is very difficult to realise that this is indeed Catholicism; or that I have not been misled. To put a biased case and make wrong appear right seems to me no part of Christian teaching and cannot be acceptable to the Church.
This is no time, as you say, to embarrass the Government : nor to enlarge upon what was completely summed up by Mr Amery, M.P., for National Conservatives, and by Mr de Rothschild, M.P., for Liberals, in the debate in the House. Why not, in justice, print reports of those speeches?
Why not, indeed, print the very fair arguments put forward by the Government itself? Mr MacDonald, for example, said that the problem was one of " right against right." Why not print the reasoning of Sir Thomas Inskip, who showed that the Government is giving " safeguards " to the Jews and to the Arabs; that nothing is defined yet as to the future? Why not discuss the suggestion heard in the House, that the way out of the difficulty might be found if Palestine became a British Colony?
But no: without any Christian charity you give in to force, and unfairly weigh the scales on the side of terrorists.
AMELIA DEFRIES.
London, S.W.3.
[We do not think of the matter in terms of Nemitism or anti-Semitism., but in terms of history. We happen to believe on the evidence that Palestine is Arab and that the promises made by Britain pledge us to giving Arab independence to Palestine. The promises to the Jews were posterior to the Arab promises, and the Jews have been imported into the country against the wishes of its inhabitants. If this is not aggression," what is? As for not giving space to the arguments put forward by the Jews and the Government, the answer is that these have been ventilated throughout the Press and are readily accessible to all our readers. The CATHOLIC HERALD'S space is given over to the things that the general Press dare not emphasise, especially when they are of importance and, in our view, true. We do, nowever, believe that the unfortunate promises given to the Jews (the danger of which Cardinal Bourne foresaw) throw upon Britain the duty of doing all in its power, short of injustice to the Arabs, to see that the Jews in Palestine, having entered there on our guarantee, shall receive protection and their religious and human rights.—EniToR.]