REMEMBER THE STRUMA

The seven hundred and fifty corpses floating on the black waters of the Black Sea are a funeral warning to embattled democracy: "Take heed. Your cause cannot survive another Strum a. You have betrayed us. You have murdered us. Defenders of democracy and freedom, such as you claim to be, do not forsake tortured refugees, do not drive them from their shores, do not send them back to the hell from which they ran in despair and hope, do not send them to certain death at the hands of the common enemy or sacrifice them to the hostile seas in a tiny, worm-eaten, unpiloted tub." 

We take up the cry of the dead. We can be silent no longer. Great Britain, you have betrayed our people. You, the champion of the weak against the ruthless tyrant, have refused sanctuary—we do not even speak of their right to return to their own home—to the refugees from that tyrant's torture. You, who should welcome them with open arms—nay, seek them out and help them escape—refuse them visas on cold, technical grounds and send them—seven hundred and fifty of them in the four-hundred-ton, leaky Struma—through mine-infested waters, back to the hell of Nazi Rumania or a quicker death in the Black Sea.

By this despicable act you have betrayed not alone our people— though that were surely sin enough—but your very own cause. This one deed has lost far more than all your grave military defeats. Defeats, after all, are due only to poor generalship, or to inadequate equipment, or to shortsighted preparation. Brave, clear-visioned, true-hearted people can turn defeats into victories. But now, England, we doubt your very steadfastness in pursuing the struggle.

Can we now, after the Struma, be sure that you are great enough to fight the colossal struggle in which we are engaged? One thing is clear: our enemy's strength lies in his consistency. He is wickedness incarnate. He will be defeated by nothing less than good incarnate. If you, England, do not understand this, you are lost. Give up the fight, for your fighters will lose the faith that must sustain them through the dark days of defeat.

From now on, we know the truth will shout aloud, "Remember the Struma."

When we "remember Pearl Harbor," it is only unpreparedness we guard against. But "Remember the Struma" will be our watchword against betrayal of the cause itself.

From NEWS AND VIEWS, March, 1942