§ MR. ALDERMAN SALOMONSsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If Her Majesty's Government heard of renewed outrages against the Jews in the Danubian Principalities; of whole families in the country districts expelled from their homes, left without food or shelter, and suffering from disease at the road sides; and, if Her Majesty's Government continue to co-operate with the representatives of the Great Powers in awakening the Roumanian Government to more humanizing influences, and to a policy more congenial with the age in which we live?
MR. OTWAYIn reply, Sir, to the hon. Member, I regret to say that we have received recently news of outrages having been renewed against the Jews in the Danubian Principalities. Only this morning we have received from Vienna a copy of a telegram which Baron Rothschild thought it right to communicate to the English Ambassador in that city, detailing outrages perpetrated against the Jews in the Danubian Principalities, which we could hardly expect to occur in a civilized country in these days. I will read to the House an extract from that telegram. After describing some other treatment which the Jews have received in those provinces, it proceeds as follows: —
Our wives and our children are ill-treated by the soldiers of the Prefect. Many of our coreligionists are drowned, and our hair is shaved off in a manner to disgrace us, and we are subjected to every sort of torture and violence by the agents of the Government. We are most rigorously questioned and persecuted.The hon. Member asks me whether Her Majesty's Government continues to cooperate with the representatives of the Great Powers in awakening the Roumanian Government to more humanizing influences, and to a policy more congenial with the age in which we live. Our instructions to Her Majesty's Con- 1526 sul General at Bucharest have been invariably in the sense that he should not cease to represent to the Roumanian Government the bad effects produced in other countries by the treatment the Jews received in that country, and we shall continue to co-operate with the representatives of all the other Powers, who, I understand, have made similar representations. With regard to the effect of these representations, I regret to say that it has not been such as we might reasonably have expected up to the present moment; but it is hoped that under the influence of the enlightened Prince who now governs that country a new state of things will be inaugurated, and that the treatment which I do not hesitate to say with the hon. Member is not congenial with the age in which we live will henceforth cease to be used towards the Jewish population of Roumania.