THE DANGER OF UNCONTROLLED ZIONISM.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Mr. Grad tries to show in your last issue that the League of British Jews, which, like the Catholic Union of Great Britain, has been founded partly to assert the independence of religion and politics, is not a representative Association, because it does not contain among its members the Earl of Reading, the Right Hon. Herbert Samuel, and Lord Rothschild. (I cannot contemplate the participation of the Chief Rabbi, who would obviously not join a propagandist Society.) But Mr. Grad, like so many foreigners, is dazzled by the glitter of English titles, and is naturally not acquainted with all the facts of Anglo-Jewish life. I am not sure if Lord Reading professes Judaism : certainly, his son, Lord Erleigh, does not; and it is usually the anti-Semites who insist on Lord Reading's Hebrew origin. His Lordship's distinguished services to the Allied cause in America do not qualify him for the distinction, which he has never emulated, of a representative Jew. Mr. Samuel springs from a Jewish family, but he holds no com- munal office; and until the Zionists sought to politicize Judaism, this busy politician was never seen on a Jewish platform. Lord Rothschild is an amiable man, and takes an intelligent interest in biology, but he has left his late father's place in the Jewish Community to be worthily filled by his kinsman, Major Lionel de Rothschild, M.P. I am sorry to descend to these personalities, but your readers might naturally be misled by Mr. Grad's display
of titles, and might think that the President of khe United•Syna- gogue, the President of the Federation of Synagogues, the Chair- man of the Council of the Reform Congregation of British Jews, the founder and President of the Liberal Synagogue, the President of the Board of Guardians for the Relief of the Jewish Poor, and other representative Jews, elected to their offices by their co- relig,ionists, and all of them members of the League, are less well qualified to speak for British Jews than H.M. Ambassador at Washington. There are aspects of loyalty to country and creed inconceivable by a politico-Jewish "nationalist," even though, with unconscious humour, he dates his letter from the " National " Liberal Club.--I am, Sir, &c.,
A MEMBER OF THE LEACICE. [We cannot continue this correspondence.—Ea. Spectator.]
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