Did you hear that Henri Bernstein, the pugnacious French playwright, who has probably fought more duels than any living Frenchman, has sent back all his Italian decorations with an appropriately worded letter to Signor Mussolini on his expulsion of the Italian Jews? Arthur Rubinstein, the Polish Jewish pianist, has now done the like and has cancelled the series of 12 recitals he was to have given in Italy this winter. Rubinstein's protest will tell more in Italy than Bernstein's, as he is popular with the Italians, has always been a favourite with their Royal family, and, with the decorations he sends back, is an autographed portrait of the Duce himself, given to him last year when he played in Mussolini's house, What the latter really means to do about the Jews is a matter of much guessing, the most popular idea being that he hopes to found a colony of Jews in Abyssinia to help him in making a profit out of that costly conquest. But the expulsion order is brutally unnecessary. As Signor Mussolini said so recently as 1935, there is no Jewish problem in Italy. In London Jewish organizations are starting a boycott of Italian products, chiefly fruit and marbles. This is said to have caused no little alarm in Italy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.