Israel Zangwill, a guest of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents at their dinner at the Lafayette Tuesday night, took occasion to rebuke Germany for its present pogrom wave.
Mr. Zangwill told of a dinner he gave the German prisoners of war in a camp near his village in Sussex on Armistice Day, 1918. “I, a Jew, did this. I was the only one in England to give such a dinner. It was done with the consent of the war office who tried to have the permission for the dinner recinded but could not”, Mr. Zangwill said. Pointing a finger at the audience, Mr. Zangwill then said “If there are any German correspondents among you, I want you to know this. And how do you repay for this Jewish kindness except by pogroms.”
Voices from the audience assured Mr. Zangwill there were no German correspondents present.
The dinner last night served as a platform for a debate between Mr. Zangwill and S. Stanwood Menken, President of the Security League, who said he resented bitterly Mr. Zangwill’s strictures of America uttered during his lectures before the League of Political Education in Town Hall last week.
Mr. Zangwill, who, judging from the hearty applause during his speech and his rebuttal of Mr. Menken had the better of the argument, assured Mr. Menken and his audience that he was a friend of America. “America carries the future of humanity in her hands”, he said. “Let her see if she is worthy of the burden”.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
