W. N. Ewer

William Norman Ewer (22 October 1885 – 25 January 1977) was a British journalist, remembered mostly now for a few lines of verse. He was known as William or Norman, and by the nickname Trilby. He was prominent writing on foreign affairs for the London Daily Herald. It is now increasingly well established that he spied for the Soviet Union during the 1920s.

Often quoted is

This is the refrain of his anti-war poem Five Souls, which Ewer contributed to the British Nation on 3 October 1914.

Also attributed to him is the epigram

This is often taken, perhaps with some justification, to be anti-Semitic in intent, though it would have passed at the time as wit. It provoked at least three capping replies.

is attributed to Leo Rosten.

is given as Cecil Brown's or Ogden Nash's.

Another runs,"Not odd of God / His son was one."

Still another, "Not so odd / The Jews chose God." with its variant "Not odd, you sod /The Jews chose God"

Even more effective is the anonymous

Then again, there is Jim Sleeper's riposte:

"Moses, Jesus, Marx, Einstein, and Freud; No wonder the goyim are annoyed."

Ewer was writing in support of guild socialism and the National Guilds League during World War I (in A. R. Orage's The New Age). He became a Fabian socialist, and then apparently a communist, shortly. From 1919 he was writing in the Daily Herald.

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