"The local Jewish parish populations already are said to be setting up
Soviet and Communist governments."
Of course. Yet this is in strange contrast with what we are constantly told through the press of the sufferings of the Jews under the Soviet form and of their abhorrence of the Reds. However, most of what we read concerning this in the public press is Jewish propaganda, pure and simple, and the reports of men on the spot contradict it all. One relief worker testifies that relief work in Poland is frequently "hung up because some Jew landlord asks an exorbitant rent for his premises," while another testifies that though railroad fares in the supposedly famine-stricken districts have gone up 1,000 per cent, the best and highest-fare trains are "exclusively occupied by Jews." He adds, of his trip through Hungary, "The Hungarians have no money any more, but the Jews have."
"But American Jews abhor Trotsky and Sovietism" is the plea sometimes made.
Do they?
On page 9 of the American Jewish World, of July 30, a letter signed
"Mrs. Samuel Rush" appears. It is headed: "Are We Really Ashamed of
Trotsky?" Read a few excerpts from it:
"I have read of late several laments from editors of Jewish publications that the Jew is now libeled as a radical.
"It is true that many Jews are radicals. It is also true that some of the radical leaders are Jews.
"But before weeping over the downfall of the race, let's think a bit.
"Trotsky himself has never been represented as anything but a cultured man, a student of world economics, a powerful and efficient leader and thinker who will surely go down in history as one of the great men our race has given the world.
"* * * Very few of us doubt any longer that behind the absurdities written about Russia is the great truth that Russia is in that unsettled state which attends reconstruction. There is a plan behind this seeming disorder, and out of the upheaval will come order. It will not be utopia, but as good a government as the undoubtedly high-minded practical idealists who are building for Russia can build with the necessarily imperfect materials—human beings—with which they must work.