De zoon van een gazzen

Jacob Israël was geslagen.

Het gevolg was een taaie correspondentie, die jarenlang zal duren en hem geen succes zal brengen. Want voor de Britten was de casus-De Haan even hachelijk vóór zijn dood als daarna. Zij gebruikten hem achter de schermen, maar distantieerden zich zelfs van hem in het openbaar, waar hij voor hun belangen scheen op te treden. Politieke feeling wees geroutineerde ambtenaren de weg van voorzichtige afstand.

Government of Palestine Legal Secretary’s Office Jerusalem March 6,1922.

Personal

Dear Dr. De Haan:

Thank you for your letter. The Directorate of the School has no intention whatever of appointing or recognizing any other lecturer than yourself for the Penal Law and Commercial Law in the Hebrew section. Mr. Bent-wich and I are doing our best to secure the return of the students, but, if we fail, the alternative is not the appointment of another lecturer but the suspension of the lectures in Penal Law with, of course, the result that all the students of the Hebrew section would lose their year. I mention this possibility though I still hope that the good sense of a sufficiënt number of the students will triumph over their feelings and lead them to return.

May I, however, take this opportunity of impressing upon you the desira-bility of avoiding any remark with even the mildest political flavour about it, in the course of your lectures. The students may be unduly sensitive, but they are sensitive, and the fact must be borne in mind. Moreover, these events will have probably convinced you that you are not in harmony with the ideas of the bulk of your students in political matters. I am not required to pronounce on which side the right lies, for the question in dispute in no way concerns me, but it is quite clear that not all the learning in the world possessed by a lecturer will always suffice to make him ac-ceptable to a body of students who regard his political action as intolerable. I am sure that during the War had there been any youths left in the Univer-sities in England there would have been trouble similar to that which has arisen here, had some professor, however learned, made himself conspicu-ous as a leader of conscientious objectors.

While, therefore, I cannot require you as though you were a Government official to refrain from all political activity, I want you to understand that

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