The Foreign Office today rebuked the German Government in connection with its protest, offered by the German Ambassador to Great Britain upon instructions from Berlin, against an article in the Strand Magazine by Winston Churchill in which Hitlerism is bitterly denounced.
The Foreign Office bluntly informed the German Ambassador that it does not exercise control over Mr. Churchill.
The Nazi Government’s action in protesting the article created considerable resentment in journalistic circles here where it was widely interpreted as a Nazi attempt to censor the British press.
Churchill’s article was entitled “The Truth About Hitler.” Referring in it to the Jews of Germany, he writes that “a community numbered by the hundreds of thousand has been declared a foul and odious race.”
“The twentieth century,” he continues, “witnessed with surprise not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines but their enforcement with brutal vigor by the Government. Past services, proved patriotism, even the wounds sustained in war do not procure immunity for persons whose only crime is that their parents brought them into the world, Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon world-famous scientists, writers and composers, at the top, to wretched little Jewish children in the nation’s schools, was practiced, was glorified and still is being practiced and glorified.
Churchill expresses astonishment that German people not only did not resent the “horrible bloodbath” of June 30 last year, but even endorsed and acclaimed its author with honors as though he were a god.
“Here,” Mr. Churchill concluded, “is the frightful fact before which what is left of European civilization must bow its head in shame.”
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.
