FOOTNOTES:

What We Owe to the Jews.

"One beautiful June evening in Paris the 'Easy Chair' strolled with a friend into a café on the Boulevard. They had been to hear 'Robert le Diable' at the French Opera, and gaily humming and gossiping they sat upon the broad walk that was still thronged on the still summer night. Presently a dark-haired man came quietly along and seated himself at a table near by. He was alone, and seemed not to care for recognition. He was simply dressed and was entirely unnoticeable except for the strong Jewish lines of his intellectual face. The 'Easy Chair's' companion whispered, 'That is the man to whom we owe the delight of this evening; that is Meyerbeer.' After a little while he added with feeling, 'How much we owe to the Jews and how mean Christendom is!'"It was remarkable how much of the conspicuous work and influence on that evening was due to the genius of a people whose name is so constantly used as a word of reproach. A few months before, Mendelssohn had been buried in Leipsic, and in Berlin the 'Easy Chair' had heard the memorial concert of his music at the Sing-Akademie. Rossini was still living, and Verdi was writing operas, but Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were the recognized masters of music. The evening before, the 'Easy Chair' had seen the Jewess Rachel in 'Phedre'—the one woman who contests the laurel with Mrs. Siddons, and who was then the great living actress. Beyond the channel, Disraeli, the child of Spanish Jews, was just about to kiss hands as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to become the political leader of the British Tories. In the vast city in which they were sitting, the 'Easy Chair' knew that the Jewish Heine was living, breathing his weird and melancholy song, while in Paris and London and Frankfort and Vienna the great masters of the mainspring of industrial activity, the capitalists, who held peace and war in their hands, and by whose favor kings ruled, were Jews. The philosophy, the arts, the industry, the politics of Christendom were full of the Jewish genius, the gayety of nations, the delight of scholars, the scepters of princes, the movements of civilization, hung in great degree upon it. It is as true to-day as in that long summer night, and the words of the 'Easy Chair's' friend are still as shamefully true. 'How mean Christendom is!'"Recently in New York an estimable and accomplished gentleman was rejected as a member of the Bar Association 'for no other reason that can be conceived,' indignantly said one of the leading members, 'except that he was a Jew.' Doubtless a few votes would procure the rejection. But the Association is not a social club, and presumptively a man who is an honorable member of the Bar is a fit member of the Association. The few hostile votes, however, represent the prejudice. It is very old and very universal. To the audience of to-day there is nothing in Shakespeare more vital and intelligible than the ferventappeal of 'Shylock' to the common humanity of the world around him. The Jew is still separate, and the prejudice which has pursued him for generations is but slightly relaxed. The lines of demarcation are fine. They are often almost invisible. But they are deep, and apparently absolute. It is one of the most common and most tenacious of the objections to 'Daniel Deronda' that it deals with Jews and Jewish life and character. The fact is sometimes almost resented as an offence to the mass of readers. Even in 'Ivanhoe,' although torrents of Christian tears have flowed over the closing pages, where the noble and beautiful 'Rebecca' asks to see the face of the fair 'Rowena,' yet such is the fell and weird outlaw of the Jew from general sympathy, that the catastrophe seems to be an inevitable fate. There is no doubt that this prejudice is as cruel in its effects as it is unreasonable in its origin...."The legend of the 'Wandering Jew' has a pathos beyond the usual interpretation. The story is told that the Jew, who refused to comfort Christ as he toiled under the weight of the cross, was condemned to tarry until he came, and so wanders around the world until the second coming. But it is the symbol also of the restlessness of the race, roaming through Christendom, homeless and rejected. It is the curse, says many a Christian heart, of the people that crucified the Redeemer. This is the common theory of the origin of the traditional antipathy to the Jews, and, undoubtedly, this is with many persons a vague justification of the feeling with which a Jew is regarded. But should it be nothing to such persons that when, as they believe, the Creator would incarnate himself, He became a Jew? Or, again, do they reflect that if it was in the eternal decrees that the sins of men were to be atoned and condoned by the innocent sacrifice, those who accomplished the sacrifice were but the agents of the Divine will? Are all such ingenious speculations other than devices to explain and justify a mere prejudice of race, such as some African tribes cherish against people of white skins? Those who find in such prejudice a profound significance will continue to plead the feeling as its own sufficient reason. But honorable men will be careful how they carelessly use the name of a race to which the religion, the literature, the art, the civilized progress of humanity, are so greatly indebted, as a term of utter derision and scorn."

"It was remarkable how much of the conspicuous work and influence on that evening was due to the genius of a people whose name is so constantly used as a word of reproach. A few months before, Mendelssohn had been buried in Leipsic, and in Berlin the 'Easy Chair' had heard the memorial concert of his music at the Sing-Akademie. Rossini was still living, and Verdi was writing operas, but Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were the recognized masters of music. The evening before, the 'Easy Chair' had seen the Jewess Rachel in 'Phedre'—the one woman who contests the laurel with Mrs. Siddons, and who was then the great living actress. Beyond the channel, Disraeli, the child of Spanish Jews, was just about to kiss hands as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to become the political leader of the British Tories. In the vast city in which they were sitting, the 'Easy Chair' knew that the Jewish Heine was living, breathing his weird and melancholy song, while in Paris and London and Frankfort and Vienna the great masters of the mainspring of industrial activity, the capitalists, who held peace and war in their hands, and by whose favor kings ruled, were Jews. The philosophy, the arts, the industry, the politics of Christendom were full of the Jewish genius, the gayety of nations, the delight of scholars, the scepters of princes, the movements of civilization, hung in great degree upon it. It is as true to-day as in that long summer night, and the words of the 'Easy Chair's' friend are still as shamefully true. 'How mean Christendom is!'

"Recently in New York an estimable and accomplished gentleman was rejected as a member of the Bar Association 'for no other reason that can be conceived,' indignantly said one of the leading members, 'except that he was a Jew.' Doubtless a few votes would procure the rejection. But the Association is not a social club, and presumptively a man who is an honorable member of the Bar is a fit member of the Association. The few hostile votes, however, represent the prejudice. It is very old and very universal. To the audience of to-day there is nothing in Shakespeare more vital and intelligible than the ferventappeal of 'Shylock' to the common humanity of the world around him. The Jew is still separate, and the prejudice which has pursued him for generations is but slightly relaxed. The lines of demarcation are fine. They are often almost invisible. But they are deep, and apparently absolute. It is one of the most common and most tenacious of the objections to 'Daniel Deronda' that it deals with Jews and Jewish life and character. The fact is sometimes almost resented as an offence to the mass of readers. Even in 'Ivanhoe,' although torrents of Christian tears have flowed over the closing pages, where the noble and beautiful 'Rebecca' asks to see the face of the fair 'Rowena,' yet such is the fell and weird outlaw of the Jew from general sympathy, that the catastrophe seems to be an inevitable fate. There is no doubt that this prejudice is as cruel in its effects as it is unreasonable in its origin....

"The legend of the 'Wandering Jew' has a pathos beyond the usual interpretation. The story is told that the Jew, who refused to comfort Christ as he toiled under the weight of the cross, was condemned to tarry until he came, and so wanders around the world until the second coming. But it is the symbol also of the restlessness of the race, roaming through Christendom, homeless and rejected. It is the curse, says many a Christian heart, of the people that crucified the Redeemer. This is the common theory of the origin of the traditional antipathy to the Jews, and, undoubtedly, this is with many persons a vague justification of the feeling with which a Jew is regarded. But should it be nothing to such persons that when, as they believe, the Creator would incarnate himself, He became a Jew? Or, again, do they reflect that if it was in the eternal decrees that the sins of men were to be atoned and condoned by the innocent sacrifice, those who accomplished the sacrifice were but the agents of the Divine will? Are all such ingenious speculations other than devices to explain and justify a mere prejudice of race, such as some African tribes cherish against people of white skins? Those who find in such prejudice a profound significance will continue to plead the feeling as its own sufficient reason. But honorable men will be careful how they carelessly use the name of a race to which the religion, the literature, the art, the civilized progress of humanity, are so greatly indebted, as a term of utter derision and scorn."

Mr. Curtis in his reference to Shakespeare's "Shylock" truly says that "there is nothing in Shakespeare more vital and intelligible than the fervent appeal of Shylock to the common humanity around him." Much has been said and written concerning this remarkable creation of the dramatist's genius, and often and again it has been remarked that Shakespeare's Jew was not the real Jew, not even the Jew of his own imagination, but the Jew as mirrored in the distorted consciousness ofmediæval Europe. The great pathologist of human feeling only then failed in his diagnosis when he sought to realize the Jew, the real Jew and his attributes were beyond his ken.

One of the grandest and most cherished of our poets, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, long the editor of the New YorkEvening Post, in a trenchant criticism of the character of Shylock on the occasion of a presentation of the drama by Edwin Booth, wrote as follows:[118]

"In terming Shylock 'the Jew whom Shakespeare drew,' there is a perfect logic, for Shylock is, of all Shakespeare's characters, the only one untrue to nature. He is not a Jew, but a fiend presented in the form of one; and whereas he is made a ruling type, he is but an exception, if even that, and the exception is not to be met with either in the Ghettos of Venice or of Rome. Shakespeare holds up the love of money that marks the race, although he does not show that this passion was but the effect of that persecution which, by crowding the Jew out of every honorable pursuit, and thus cutting off his nature from every sympathy with the world around, sharpened and edged the keen corners of his brain for the only pursuit left to him."It is true that money-changers once spat on in the Ghetto are now hugged in the palace. But we fear that it is not so much that the prejudice against the Jews has ceased, but that the love of money among the Christians has increased. Shakespeare was not true in the picture he has drawn of the Jew's cravings for revenge, and in the contempt with which he is treated by his daughter. Revenge is not a characteristic of the Jew. He is subject to sudden fits of passion, but that intellect which always stands sentinel over the Hebrew soon subdues the gust. However strong in Shylock's time might have been the hatred of the Jew towards the Christian, the lust of lucre was more strong, and Shakespeare might have ransacked every Ghetto in Christendom without finding a Jew, or a Christian either, who would have preferred a pound of flesh to a pound sterling; and Jews also shrink from physical contests. Their disposition is to triumph by intellect rather than violence. It was this trait more than any other that rendered them, in the Middle Ages, so repulsive to the masses, who were all of the Morrissey and muscular Christianity school. The contempt of a daughter for her parent is equally uncharacteristic of the Jew. The Jews are universally admired for the affections which adorn their domestic life. The more they have been pushed from the society of the family of man the greater has been the intensity with which they have clung to the love of their own family."No one can ever have visited the houses of the Jews without having been struck by the glowing affection with which the daughter greets the father as he returns from the day's campaign and the slights and sneers his gaberdine and yellow cap provoke, and without observing how those small, restless eyes that sparkle and gleam, shine out in a softened, loving lustre as they fall upon the face of Rebecca, or Jessica, or Sarah, and how he stands no longer with crooked back, but erect and commanding, as he blesses his household gods with an exultation as vehement as the prejudices which during the day have galled and fretted his nature. To do justice to the grandeurs of the Jewish race, and to brand with infamy its infirmities, it is not enough to produce a repulsive delineation of the latter. It would only be just to give expression to the former, and to exhibit that superiority of intellect which has survived all persecution, and which, soaring above the prejudices of the hour, has filled us with reluctant admiration on finding how many of the great events which mark the progress of the age or minister to its improvements, or elevate its tastes, may be traced to the wonderful workings of the soul of the Hebrew, and the supremacy of that spiritual nature which gave to mankind its noblest religion, its noblest laws, and some of its noblest poesy and music."

"It is true that money-changers once spat on in the Ghetto are now hugged in the palace. But we fear that it is not so much that the prejudice against the Jews has ceased, but that the love of money among the Christians has increased. Shakespeare was not true in the picture he has drawn of the Jew's cravings for revenge, and in the contempt with which he is treated by his daughter. Revenge is not a characteristic of the Jew. He is subject to sudden fits of passion, but that intellect which always stands sentinel over the Hebrew soon subdues the gust. However strong in Shylock's time might have been the hatred of the Jew towards the Christian, the lust of lucre was more strong, and Shakespeare might have ransacked every Ghetto in Christendom without finding a Jew, or a Christian either, who would have preferred a pound of flesh to a pound sterling; and Jews also shrink from physical contests. Their disposition is to triumph by intellect rather than violence. It was this trait more than any other that rendered them, in the Middle Ages, so repulsive to the masses, who were all of the Morrissey and muscular Christianity school. The contempt of a daughter for her parent is equally uncharacteristic of the Jew. The Jews are universally admired for the affections which adorn their domestic life. The more they have been pushed from the society of the family of man the greater has been the intensity with which they have clung to the love of their own family.

"No one can ever have visited the houses of the Jews without having been struck by the glowing affection with which the daughter greets the father as he returns from the day's campaign and the slights and sneers his gaberdine and yellow cap provoke, and without observing how those small, restless eyes that sparkle and gleam, shine out in a softened, loving lustre as they fall upon the face of Rebecca, or Jessica, or Sarah, and how he stands no longer with crooked back, but erect and commanding, as he blesses his household gods with an exultation as vehement as the prejudices which during the day have galled and fretted his nature. To do justice to the grandeurs of the Jewish race, and to brand with infamy its infirmities, it is not enough to produce a repulsive delineation of the latter. It would only be just to give expression to the former, and to exhibit that superiority of intellect which has survived all persecution, and which, soaring above the prejudices of the hour, has filled us with reluctant admiration on finding how many of the great events which mark the progress of the age or minister to its improvements, or elevate its tastes, may be traced to the wonderful workings of the soul of the Hebrew, and the supremacy of that spiritual nature which gave to mankind its noblest religion, its noblest laws, and some of its noblest poesy and music."

Treating the same subject the great German critic, ROBERT BENEDIX, writes as follows:[119]

"Let us look at this Shylock closer. Antonio calls him an usurer; the proof he fails in. Shylock takes high interest; so did all the merchants of Venice. Shylock deals in money; to-day we call him a banker. Why does he deal in money? Because it is the only trade permitted. He does not carry on an industry, has no agricultural pursuits, no official station—only trade. If the Jews, under centuries of restriction, ostracised from social life, did cling to money and its uses, whose fault was it? No one can say anything dishonorable of Shylock. He is penurious; in no law-book of the world is that denominated as a crime. What is against this man? Simply nothing more than that he is a Jew. But for the poet, who, enthroned on Olympian heights, there should exist onlythe man, not the Jew. Shylock is revengeful. Well, who has instigated it? Only they who have despised him. After persecuting and deriding him, they crown their infamy by asking him to turn Christian. That is the very depth of baseness. What is left to the poor Jew, whom you have trodden under foot, when you rob him of his faith? It is the bond that binds him to his fathers, to his home. It has been his solace in persecutions a thousand times repeated. To this faith Israel clings with devoted love, and from this faith shall Shylock turn to become a Christian? No wonder he turns with abhorrence from those who torture him so cruelly. Christians they may be. Men they are not. And is there no feeling for a father? To exalt a daughter who absconds and robs him whom she should honor? Is that Jewish or Christian? The grand speech, 'Has not a Jew eyes,' etc., is the exclamation of a martyr people who for centuries had been the victims of debauched, bigoted priests."It is impossible to acquit Shakespeare of the prejudice of his age. He has morally sinned; artistically erred. Contrast Lessing; and he wrote in an age of equal intolerance. His 'Nathan the Wise' is an embodiment of morality and sublime virtues; his figures are apostles of true humanity. Nathan is an evangelist of true worth; and Lessing, taking for his hero a Jew, made thereby the amende honorable in the name of humanity."

"It is impossible to acquit Shakespeare of the prejudice of his age. He has morally sinned; artistically erred. Contrast Lessing; and he wrote in an age of equal intolerance. His 'Nathan the Wise' is an embodiment of morality and sublime virtues; his figures are apostles of true humanity. Nathan is an evangelist of true worth; and Lessing, taking for his hero a Jew, made thereby the amende honorable in the name of humanity."

As a veritable anti-climax to these utterances of poet and critic, we may here consider the views of the representative proletary of America, who deals with the Shylock theme from an entirely different standpoint. This dissertation is by Mr. TERRENCE V. POWDERLY, long the leader of the organization of wage-earners known as the Knights of Labor, and as such will command the attention of the reader. Under the caption of "The Real Shylock," he writes in theJournal of the Knights of Laboras follows:

"Flings at the Jews are flying about promiscuously on every hand, and it seems to me that this practice is neither just nor manly. Turn the pages of history backward to the dawn of Christianity and notice how the Jew has been persecuted by those who professed to be actuated by Christian charity. Notice how he has been driven from country and home, how he has been driven ahead of the advanced guard of Christianity, and then pause for a moment to ask if the Christian is not in some small measure to blame for the money-lending characteristics of the Jew of this day and generation. Driven from all other branches of trade, with a price on his head, and his home at the mercy of others, how could the Jew protect himself? It is well enough to single out Rothschild and to point to him as a fit representative of an usury-taking class, but when he is pointed to as 'Rothschild the Jew,' the bounds of propriety are overstepped and common justice is violated."What right has a Christian to drive a man from every walk in life but that of money-lending and then insult his race and religion because of that fact, in sneeringly calling him a Jew. It is proper to call a money-lender a 'Shylock,' for that is a term that is applicable to men of all races and religions if they practice usury, but to single the Jew out as the only one who should wear that appellation is an outrage. I know Christians, and the reader knows them, who on everySunday morning will walk slowly down the middle aisle in the Christian church, and with sanctimonious mien bend the knee before the altar of God with no more of Christianity in their hearts than may be found in the stone steps leading up to the church door. If a living representative of 'Shylock' is to be singled out, one whose talon-like fingers itch for usury and stretch out toward your pocket for the principal as well, let us be honest enough to admit that we can throw a stone into any of our temples of Christianity and hit such a sinner. Do not lay it all to the Jew. I admit that he knows how to deal in money, but, who gave him points in the game of usury? Look over the United States to-day. Contrast the acts of pretended Christians with the principles of Christ, and then dare to lay the blame of all the wrong that usury has wrought, to the door of the Jew. Look at our American Congress and tell us if those who obey the voice of greed in that body are all Jews.... Are all who have cornered lands, railroads and homes Jews? Let the reader whose home is mortgaged inquire who it is holds the mortgage, and if he happens to be a Christian, as in nine cases out of ten he will be, ask him to be lenient with you, and you will learn that he wants his 'pound of flesh,' and will be anxious to go old Shylock one better, by sucking the blood along with it."

"What right has a Christian to drive a man from every walk in life but that of money-lending and then insult his race and religion because of that fact, in sneeringly calling him a Jew. It is proper to call a money-lender a 'Shylock,' for that is a term that is applicable to men of all races and religions if they practice usury, but to single the Jew out as the only one who should wear that appellation is an outrage. I know Christians, and the reader knows them, who on everySunday morning will walk slowly down the middle aisle in the Christian church, and with sanctimonious mien bend the knee before the altar of God with no more of Christianity in their hearts than may be found in the stone steps leading up to the church door. If a living representative of 'Shylock' is to be singled out, one whose talon-like fingers itch for usury and stretch out toward your pocket for the principal as well, let us be honest enough to admit that we can throw a stone into any of our temples of Christianity and hit such a sinner. Do not lay it all to the Jew. I admit that he knows how to deal in money, but, who gave him points in the game of usury? Look over the United States to-day. Contrast the acts of pretended Christians with the principles of Christ, and then dare to lay the blame of all the wrong that usury has wrought, to the door of the Jew. Look at our American Congress and tell us if those who obey the voice of greed in that body are all Jews.... Are all who have cornered lands, railroads and homes Jews? Let the reader whose home is mortgaged inquire who it is holds the mortgage, and if he happens to be a Christian, as in nine cases out of ten he will be, ask him to be lenient with you, and you will learn that he wants his 'pound of flesh,' and will be anxious to go old Shylock one better, by sucking the blood along with it."

The Jewish Question and the Mission of the Jews, published by Harper and Brothers, New York, 1894, contributes a valuable addition to historical literature. The work ably elucidates its comprehensive subject matter and deserves the careful perusal of every student of whatever creed. A few characteristic extracts are collated in the following:—

"If we turn to Europe, in which we are chiefly interested, we find that the Jews were settled there as early as Roman times, and lived on terms of perfect equality with all their neighbors, until religious intolerance set itself to repress them or directed and intensified the jealousy which their success elicited. When the west of Europe was raised out of its barbarism by Charlemagne, this great leader of modern civilization also took account of the valuable civilizing influence of the Jews, especially as regarded commerce and learning. He granted them privileges, and even made use of them for diplomatic services; and as he transplanted learned men from Italy into France and Germany in order that their wisdom might be diffused among those people, so he also desired to engraft the learning of the Jews in these districts. He encouraged them to found Talmudic Schools and transplanted from Lucca the learned family Kalonymos to Narbonne about the year 787, gave them a large tract of land, where the chief of the family and his successors were called princes, while the part of the town where they lived was called 'The Court of the King of theJew.' The position which the Jew, Isaac, held in the embassy of Charlemange to Haroun al Rashid is a matter of history."

"As to the pluck and courage of the Jews it certainly did not die out with the Maccabees and the Zealots. I will not mention the spiritual courage it required for the whole race to survive at all during the persecutions which might have been avoided by the simple act of conversion, or of the thousands that burned at the stake singing. I should say, even numerically, more than the whole Christian martyrology has to show. The numbers who heroically during the Spanish Inquisition, and at other times and places, preferred burning at the stake to baptism, the perfidy which often met their heroic resistance, would fill volumes. In the history of the Spanish Jews more than in that of any other of their numerous communities do we meet with heroism, courage and chivalry. They fought, in the Spanish battles as the bravest knights. Alfonso X of Castile, rewarded them en masse for their war-like assistance against Seville and gave them, when the enemies' land was divided, a village which was called "Aldea de los Judeos." They fought desperately for Dom Pedro, even after the Black Prince had forsaken him, defended Burgos to the last man, so that even their opponent, Dom Enrico, recognized publicly their valor."

"Even in Germany during the Black Death and the butchery of Jews, and in Poland, the spirit of the Maccabees and the Zealots had not forsaken them. It very often met with the basest treachery on the part of their enemies and allies. One instance is a striking, if not a typical one. During the onslaught of the Cossacks into Poland in the Thirty Years' War the Jews were brave defenders of the Polish territory. When a horde of Hadamaks attacked the town of Tulczyn, six thousand Christians and about two thousand Jews retreated to the fortress. Nobles and Jews pledged themselves by oath to defend the fortress to the last man. The Cossacks resorted to a stratagem, and assured the Nobles that they were only fighting against their real enemies, the Jews. If they were handed over to them they would withdraw. The nobles asked the Jews to give up their arms; and when they complied, they opened the gates to the Cossacks. When the Cossacks had plundered the Jews, they proposed to them the alternative of death or baptism. Not one of them accepted the latter, and they were put to the sword. But the nobles suffered the same fate, as the Cossacks held that there was no cause to hold faith by the faithless."

"The late James Russell Lowell was wont to say that a large proportion of the great families of the English aristocracy had someadmixture of Jewish blood, while some of the great names were in a direct line to be traced back to Jewish ancestors. So, for instance, he believed, and he must have had good grounds for his belief, that the families of the Cecils and the Russells were originally Jewish. Of course such conversational statements must not be taken literally. Many years ago I met a Russian scholar, deeply read in literature and science—the pure Russian, without any associations with Jews—who told me he was engaged upon a work which set itself the task of tracing the origin of most of the great men in letters and science that were then living in Germany, and that he was coming to the conclusion that, not only were a great many of them actually Jews, but that a large proportion of the best known among the Christian dignitaries had also some admixture of Jewish blood."

Our symposium could not be more effectively and fitly rounded out than by a quotation of the Preface to M. Anatole Leroy Beaulieu's celebrated work, "Israel chez les nations," and of the Preface written by the author for the English translation by Mrs. Theodore Hellman, which has just been announced as soon to be published by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Son's, New York. M. Leroy Beaulieu, whose mastery of the philosophy of history has commanded universal recognition, makes clear his standpoint in the preface to the original work, and in the preface to the English translation he evinces his thorough insight, not only into his general subject, but furthermore into its American phases especially.

We copy these extracts from the columns of theAmerican Hebrew, New York, September 13, 1895, and from its editorial reference to the subject we gladly quote the concluding paragraph, as follows:

"The publication of M. Leroy Beaulieu's work in its English dress will be timely for two reasons: Its Jewish readers will find it an eloquent appeal for renewed devotion to the noble cause of Israel's mission; its Christian readers, recognizing the important part Judaism has played in the production of our present-day civilization, will recognize how baseless is the prejudice that reigns against the Jew. May the book find many readers."

FOOTNOTES:[118]See note, next page.[119]These citations are gleaned from the notable lecture by Hon. Simon Wolf, on "The Influence of the Jews on the Progress of the World," delivered before the Schiller Bund in Washington, April 1st, 1888.

[118]See note, next page.

[119]These citations are gleaned from the notable lecture by Hon. Simon Wolf, on "The Influence of the Jews on the Progress of the World," delivered before the Schiller Bund in Washington, April 1st, 1888.

The Prefaces to M. Leroy-Beaulieu's"Israel chez les nations."[Copyrighted, 1895, byG. P. Putnam's Sons.]

The author of this book is a Christian and a Frenchman. As a Christian, he is one of those who believe that a spirit of intolerance is repugnant to Christianity, and nothing appears to him less consistent with the Gospel than race-hatred. Be it a war of races or a war of classes, popular jealousy can never screen itself behind the robe of Christ. Be it Aryan or Semitic, a nation should never purchase its salvation at the cost of another's rights.As a Frenchman, the author is one of those who are convinced that France ought to remain true to her traditions of justice and liberty. They are the only glory and the only wealth which the fortunes of war cannot wrest from her. The more severe the trials that she has undergone, the more menacing the dangers that await her, the more essential is it to her honor that she should remain herself and not belie, in the eyes of the nations, those great ideas which she was the first to proclaim. To abjure them would be not only an act of apostasy, but a forfeiture of her place in history. A France that should stoop, more than a century after 1789, to abridge religious and civil liberty and to establish among her inhabitants distinctions based upon name or birth, would no longer be the France that the world has thus far known.The inheritance of the Revolution, which we have come to regard with so much reverence, may possibly include rash postulates and exaggerated inferences that tend to intoxicate, almost to madness, a people infatuated with its title of sovereign; but surely neither religious liberty nor civil equality is likely to produce such effects; neither the one nor the other can have any tendency to turn the people's heads; and, after having been the first to preach these principles to Europe, France will not disavow them now, when, thanks to our propaganda or our example, they have conquered almost all the countries of both hemispheres. On others be the shame of such a recantation!Anti-Semitism is consistent with neither the principles nor the genius of our nation. It came to us from the outside, from countries which have neither our spirit nor our traditions. It came to us from across the Rhine, from old Germany, always ready for religious quarrels, and always imbued with the spirit of caste; from new Germany, all inflated with race-pride and scornful of whatever is not Teutonic.Anti-Semitism may be traced also to Russia, to that huge and shapeless Russia, which, with its steppes and forests, has remained isolated from the great currents of modern life; to holy, OrthodoxRussia, half Oriental, half Asiatic, which endeavors to find its national unity in its religious unity, and which regards the Catholic and the Lutheran with little more favor than the Israelite; to that autocratic Russia, which differs from us in all its institutions, as well as in all its conditions, be they economic, political, religious or social. Whatever sympathy we may feel with the Slavonic mind or the Russian spirit, the Russians, who so often emulated us, would be greatly surprised to see us copying them; as well might one propose to the Czar to model the government of his moujiks and cossacks on that of the French Republic.Men of my age, who have grown up under the Second Empire and in the worship of liberty—it was fashionable then among the young—have witnessed many distressing sights. How often was the lie given to our youthful faith in right and justice! How many truths which we thought established forever were again called into question by the selfish passions or the ignorant claims of new generations! How many of the conquests won by reason and liberty were we unable to maintain against the encroachments of power or the delusions of political sophistry! Popular rights trodden under foot in the name of the principle of nationality, everywhere heralded as a principle of emancipation; European states transformed, for half a century, into entrenched camps and separated once more from each other by custom-house barriers and ramparts of prejudice almost as high as the Wall of China; freedom of thought and religious toleration cynically overridden or hypercritically evaded by those very political parties that professed to be their champions; laws passed to the detriment of special persons; decrees of exile or confiscation promulgated in the name of liberty, within so-called free countries and by self-styled liberals; appeals to secular power, demands for legal restriction, for paternalism, addressed to the government by all manner of clashing interests and passions. And all this, not only in Eastern Russia, buried neck-deep in the Middle Ages or rather in the ancien régime, but in the West, in France, in Germany, among nations said to be the most advanced of ancient Europe. Oh, how old she is, this ancient Europe, and how difficult it is for her to slough her skin and regain her youth! What an effort it is for her to strip off her old prejudices and practices and clothe herself in the spirit of a new age!And this new age, the age that we have so ardently invoked, what will it bring us and how will it fulfil its boasted promises? To judge by the methods and the teachings extolled by those who proclaim themselves its representatives, this new age is in great danger of reviving the worst practices of the past. Men who boast of being the pioneers of the future openly praise deeds of absolutism, and smile sanctimoniously at legal brutalities borrowed from theancien régimeby the jurists of the Revolution. Visions of the future and mediæval prejudices; Utopias conceived by dreamers deluded with misty ideals and belated memories of a superannuated past; unceasing race-competitionand ever-recurring class jealousies, all these have become confused and entangled in the minds of the learned as well as in those of the masses. And something of all this is contained in anti-Semitism; something of the old and of the new, of the far-off Middle Ages and of visionary socialism, of reactionary instincts and of revolutionary passions; and it is because of this that anti-Semitism finds an echo in such different quarters, from the drawing-rooms of society to the grog-shop of the working-man.Let us confess it once again: we have presumed too much on reason, and relied too confidently on civilization. This brilliant civilization, which inspires our idlers with such ludicrous pride, is often shallow and unsound, even in the most advanced countries of the continent. In our proudest capitals it is barely thicker than a light veneer, underneath whose surface, if we scratch it ever so little, we shall find all the ignorance and savagery of the ages that we deem barbarous. Thus, in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, the close of our century suffers the disgrace of seeing measures of proscription and confiscation advocated by people who are really good-natured and ordinarily harmless.It must not be inferred from what has been said that the complaints of the anti-Semites are wholly imaginary. By no means. Whether they attack our private or our public morals and customs, many of their complaints are but too well founded. Abroad, as well as at home, and most especially, perhaps, in our republic France, they are right, these noisy anti-Semites, in loudly denouncing certain governmental methods, certain practices which seem about to take root in the life of modern nations. Anti-Semitism may have been, in its time, a protest, on the part of public conscience, against culpable concessions of men in office, against the venality of politicians, and the domination, at once mysterious and contemptuous, of stock-jobbing interlopers. Despite its excesses and outrages, anti-Semitism is within its rightful province when it assails the worship of money, the scandalous barter of political influences, and the shameless exploitation of the people by the men whom they have elected; or, again, when it unmasks the hypocritical intolerance of inconsistent free-thinkers, who have erected irreligion and corruption into a method of government.Modern society is ailing indeed, more ailing that the most honest anti-Semite imagines. The error of anti-Semitism lies in its misapprehension of the origin and the seat of the evil. It sees, or is willing to see, but one of the symptoms, and it calls this symptom the cause of the disease. Anti-Semitism is essentially "simple-minded," in the literal sense of the word. It fails to grasp the complexity of social phenomena. But this failure, which should prove its ruin, is largely the cause of its success with the masses, who in their simplicity are always carried away by that which they deem simple.Even if the Jews had all the vices and all the power which thehatred of their enemies sees fit to ascribe to them, it were none the less childish to discover in a handful of Semites the source of the evils that afflict modern society.It is not true that, in order to restore it to health, we need but to eliminate the Semite, as the surgeon's knife eradicates a cyst or a malignant excrescence. The extent and gravity of the evil are of a different nature. The evil is in ourselves, in our blood, in the very marrow of our bones. To cure us, it will not be enough to remove a foreign body from our flesh. Though every Jew be banished from French soil, though Israel be swept from the face of Europe, France would be not one whit more healthy, nor Europe in any better state. The first condition of a cure is a knowledge of the nature of one's malady. Now, anti-Semitism deceives us; it blinds us to our condition by trying to make us believe that the cause of the evil is external, instead of internal. There is no more dangerous error. We are afflicted with an internal trouble, due to our constitution and our entire mode of living; and the anti-Semites insist upon telling us, over and over again, that it is but a superficial ailment, brought on by chance, and foreign to our race and blood. Even when they boast of exposing our secret wounds, they misconstrue their nature; consequently, instead of furnishing a cure for them, they are in great danger of inflaming them still more.Such will be, I doubt not, the feeling of every reader who is sufficiently thoughtful and independent to base his opinions upon reflection, and not upon the antipathies of the mob. Anti-Semitism, even when most justified in its complaints, is mistaken as to the source of our evils. It would be easy for me to prove this conclusively, could I, in this volume, have treated of finance, capital, and the ascendancy of the stock-exchange. Unfortunately, I have been obliged, for the present, to omit a part of my subject—that which in these days of subserviency to material interests so completely engrosses the public mind—the money question. I had intended at first to devote one or two chapters to it. But this money-question has assumed so prominent a place in our democratic society; it so easily takes the lead everywhere, it is so complex, and so liable to give rise to confusion, that it seemed to me worthy of separate treatment. Therefore this volume will be followed by another, in which I shall attempt to define the role played by money among the nations of to-day. On that occasion I shall take up again some of the views set forth in my book onPapacy, Socialism, and Democracy. There may, perhaps, seem to be no connection between these two subjects. That is a mistake, for anti-Semitism, too, is a social question. And as for myself, in studying the influence of the Jew and of modern Israel, as well as in examining the teachings of the Pope on socialism and democracy, I have always the same object in view: religious liberty and social peace.Caritas et Pax, such is ever my motto; and, if I mistake not, it is a Christian motto, not unbecoming a Frenchman.

As a Frenchman, the author is one of those who are convinced that France ought to remain true to her traditions of justice and liberty. They are the only glory and the only wealth which the fortunes of war cannot wrest from her. The more severe the trials that she has undergone, the more menacing the dangers that await her, the more essential is it to her honor that she should remain herself and not belie, in the eyes of the nations, those great ideas which she was the first to proclaim. To abjure them would be not only an act of apostasy, but a forfeiture of her place in history. A France that should stoop, more than a century after 1789, to abridge religious and civil liberty and to establish among her inhabitants distinctions based upon name or birth, would no longer be the France that the world has thus far known.

The inheritance of the Revolution, which we have come to regard with so much reverence, may possibly include rash postulates and exaggerated inferences that tend to intoxicate, almost to madness, a people infatuated with its title of sovereign; but surely neither religious liberty nor civil equality is likely to produce such effects; neither the one nor the other can have any tendency to turn the people's heads; and, after having been the first to preach these principles to Europe, France will not disavow them now, when, thanks to our propaganda or our example, they have conquered almost all the countries of both hemispheres. On others be the shame of such a recantation!

Anti-Semitism is consistent with neither the principles nor the genius of our nation. It came to us from the outside, from countries which have neither our spirit nor our traditions. It came to us from across the Rhine, from old Germany, always ready for religious quarrels, and always imbued with the spirit of caste; from new Germany, all inflated with race-pride and scornful of whatever is not Teutonic.

Anti-Semitism may be traced also to Russia, to that huge and shapeless Russia, which, with its steppes and forests, has remained isolated from the great currents of modern life; to holy, OrthodoxRussia, half Oriental, half Asiatic, which endeavors to find its national unity in its religious unity, and which regards the Catholic and the Lutheran with little more favor than the Israelite; to that autocratic Russia, which differs from us in all its institutions, as well as in all its conditions, be they economic, political, religious or social. Whatever sympathy we may feel with the Slavonic mind or the Russian spirit, the Russians, who so often emulated us, would be greatly surprised to see us copying them; as well might one propose to the Czar to model the government of his moujiks and cossacks on that of the French Republic.

Men of my age, who have grown up under the Second Empire and in the worship of liberty—it was fashionable then among the young—have witnessed many distressing sights. How often was the lie given to our youthful faith in right and justice! How many truths which we thought established forever were again called into question by the selfish passions or the ignorant claims of new generations! How many of the conquests won by reason and liberty were we unable to maintain against the encroachments of power or the delusions of political sophistry! Popular rights trodden under foot in the name of the principle of nationality, everywhere heralded as a principle of emancipation; European states transformed, for half a century, into entrenched camps and separated once more from each other by custom-house barriers and ramparts of prejudice almost as high as the Wall of China; freedom of thought and religious toleration cynically overridden or hypercritically evaded by those very political parties that professed to be their champions; laws passed to the detriment of special persons; decrees of exile or confiscation promulgated in the name of liberty, within so-called free countries and by self-styled liberals; appeals to secular power, demands for legal restriction, for paternalism, addressed to the government by all manner of clashing interests and passions. And all this, not only in Eastern Russia, buried neck-deep in the Middle Ages or rather in the ancien régime, but in the West, in France, in Germany, among nations said to be the most advanced of ancient Europe. Oh, how old she is, this ancient Europe, and how difficult it is for her to slough her skin and regain her youth! What an effort it is for her to strip off her old prejudices and practices and clothe herself in the spirit of a new age!

And this new age, the age that we have so ardently invoked, what will it bring us and how will it fulfil its boasted promises? To judge by the methods and the teachings extolled by those who proclaim themselves its representatives, this new age is in great danger of reviving the worst practices of the past. Men who boast of being the pioneers of the future openly praise deeds of absolutism, and smile sanctimoniously at legal brutalities borrowed from theancien régimeby the jurists of the Revolution. Visions of the future and mediæval prejudices; Utopias conceived by dreamers deluded with misty ideals and belated memories of a superannuated past; unceasing race-competitionand ever-recurring class jealousies, all these have become confused and entangled in the minds of the learned as well as in those of the masses. And something of all this is contained in anti-Semitism; something of the old and of the new, of the far-off Middle Ages and of visionary socialism, of reactionary instincts and of revolutionary passions; and it is because of this that anti-Semitism finds an echo in such different quarters, from the drawing-rooms of society to the grog-shop of the working-man.

Let us confess it once again: we have presumed too much on reason, and relied too confidently on civilization. This brilliant civilization, which inspires our idlers with such ludicrous pride, is often shallow and unsound, even in the most advanced countries of the continent. In our proudest capitals it is barely thicker than a light veneer, underneath whose surface, if we scratch it ever so little, we shall find all the ignorance and savagery of the ages that we deem barbarous. Thus, in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, the close of our century suffers the disgrace of seeing measures of proscription and confiscation advocated by people who are really good-natured and ordinarily harmless.

It must not be inferred from what has been said that the complaints of the anti-Semites are wholly imaginary. By no means. Whether they attack our private or our public morals and customs, many of their complaints are but too well founded. Abroad, as well as at home, and most especially, perhaps, in our republic France, they are right, these noisy anti-Semites, in loudly denouncing certain governmental methods, certain practices which seem about to take root in the life of modern nations. Anti-Semitism may have been, in its time, a protest, on the part of public conscience, against culpable concessions of men in office, against the venality of politicians, and the domination, at once mysterious and contemptuous, of stock-jobbing interlopers. Despite its excesses and outrages, anti-Semitism is within its rightful province when it assails the worship of money, the scandalous barter of political influences, and the shameless exploitation of the people by the men whom they have elected; or, again, when it unmasks the hypocritical intolerance of inconsistent free-thinkers, who have erected irreligion and corruption into a method of government.

Modern society is ailing indeed, more ailing that the most honest anti-Semite imagines. The error of anti-Semitism lies in its misapprehension of the origin and the seat of the evil. It sees, or is willing to see, but one of the symptoms, and it calls this symptom the cause of the disease. Anti-Semitism is essentially "simple-minded," in the literal sense of the word. It fails to grasp the complexity of social phenomena. But this failure, which should prove its ruin, is largely the cause of its success with the masses, who in their simplicity are always carried away by that which they deem simple.

Even if the Jews had all the vices and all the power which thehatred of their enemies sees fit to ascribe to them, it were none the less childish to discover in a handful of Semites the source of the evils that afflict modern society.

It is not true that, in order to restore it to health, we need but to eliminate the Semite, as the surgeon's knife eradicates a cyst or a malignant excrescence. The extent and gravity of the evil are of a different nature. The evil is in ourselves, in our blood, in the very marrow of our bones. To cure us, it will not be enough to remove a foreign body from our flesh. Though every Jew be banished from French soil, though Israel be swept from the face of Europe, France would be not one whit more healthy, nor Europe in any better state. The first condition of a cure is a knowledge of the nature of one's malady. Now, anti-Semitism deceives us; it blinds us to our condition by trying to make us believe that the cause of the evil is external, instead of internal. There is no more dangerous error. We are afflicted with an internal trouble, due to our constitution and our entire mode of living; and the anti-Semites insist upon telling us, over and over again, that it is but a superficial ailment, brought on by chance, and foreign to our race and blood. Even when they boast of exposing our secret wounds, they misconstrue their nature; consequently, instead of furnishing a cure for them, they are in great danger of inflaming them still more.

Such will be, I doubt not, the feeling of every reader who is sufficiently thoughtful and independent to base his opinions upon reflection, and not upon the antipathies of the mob. Anti-Semitism, even when most justified in its complaints, is mistaken as to the source of our evils. It would be easy for me to prove this conclusively, could I, in this volume, have treated of finance, capital, and the ascendancy of the stock-exchange. Unfortunately, I have been obliged, for the present, to omit a part of my subject—that which in these days of subserviency to material interests so completely engrosses the public mind—the money question. I had intended at first to devote one or two chapters to it. But this money-question has assumed so prominent a place in our democratic society; it so easily takes the lead everywhere, it is so complex, and so liable to give rise to confusion, that it seemed to me worthy of separate treatment. Therefore this volume will be followed by another, in which I shall attempt to define the role played by money among the nations of to-day. On that occasion I shall take up again some of the views set forth in my book onPapacy, Socialism, and Democracy. There may, perhaps, seem to be no connection between these two subjects. That is a mistake, for anti-Semitism, too, is a social question. And as for myself, in studying the influence of the Jew and of modern Israel, as well as in examining the teachings of the Pope on socialism and democracy, I have always the same object in view: religious liberty and social peace.Caritas et Pax, such is ever my motto; and, if I mistake not, it is a Christian motto, not unbecoming a Frenchman.

Our age will constitute a critical, a supreme epoch in the long history of Israel. To-day the prophecies of the seers are at last approaching fulfilment, and Israel is really being scattered to the ends of the earth. We are witnessing a newdiaspora, the great and final dispersal.The tree of Israel, the ancient vine of Judah, transplanted to the Sarmatian plains, has again been rudely shaken by the blast of persecution; its branches have fallen and its seeds have blown afar, over the hills and across the deserts and oceans.As in earlier times, the wrath of their persecutors is forcing Jews and Judaism into countries where the Sabbath-lamp has never yet been lighted. The spectacle witnessed during the Renaissance and at the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the edicts of Isabella of Castile—the exodus of a people driven forth, without means of existence, from the land of its ancestors because it clung to the faith of its fathers—this spectacle disgraces the closing years of our nineteenth century, in consequence of the ukases of a Russian czar.What will be the verdict of history as to the effects upon Judaism of the harsh policy of Alexander III? Possibly in years to come, when the tears of her exiles and their present sufferings shall be forgotten, the historians of Israel may affirm that the Russian autocrat contributed, more than any other man, to the expansion and renovation of Judaism.The Jews who are driven from Slavic soil by the law or by their own poverty, are forced to begin a new life under kindlier skies and in freer lands. They are torn from the old Jewries where, closely herded together, they had barely air enough to breathe; and this painful expatriation may well prove of equal benefit to their souls and their bodies.The majority of these exiles have gone to America, and especially to the United States. To their brethren already established between the Atlantic and the Pacific this sudden influx of a whole people, in the main poor and ignorant, who demand from them shelter and support, must indeed prove a very heavy burden. The Jews of the United States have been confronted here with an enormous task, to which, however, they have shown themselves equal. Fortunately, the most trying years seem to be over. The accession of the young emperor, Nicholas II, to the throne of Russia gives rise to the hope of some mitigation of those antiquated laws which, under Alexander III, had furnished official intolerance with the means of hypocritical persecution. The stream of emigration, whose volume is already lessening, will probably slacken. It will not wholly cease, for free America will long continue to attract the victims of persecution.I, for one, do not believe that the United States ought to view this Jewish immigration with any disquietude; I cannot see what there is to fear from it. Among all the races and nations that have furnished the United States with colonists and have thus helped to advance its marvelous growth, I can find none more intelligent or more industrious; nor can I find any that is more capable of assimilating American civilization and of introducing into it a useful competition.I am told that one of the charges brought against the Jews of America is that they frequently manifest leanings toward socialism; or rather toward anarchism. This may be the case with many Russian and Roumanian Jews—we have some in Paris who show such tendencies—but the fact is due less to the racial character of the Jews than to the conditions under which they have long been forced to live in Europe, and to which they are still subjected in Russia and Roumania. If Lassalle and Karl Marx were the prophets of German socialism, one of the causes of their revolt against the old social order lay in the sort of life which that order imposed upon the sons of Israel, even in Germany. This is still more evident in the case of the Jews who have been infected in Russia by the germs of nihilism and anarchy. The Jew of the old secluded Jewry is—as I have shown in this book—essentially conservative. If, in the past twenty or twenty-five years, a certain number of young Jews and Jewesses have joined the ranks of the nihilists, if some of them have been concerned in the conspiracies against the person or the authority of Alexander II and of Alexander III, this is due to the social conditions imposed on the Jews by the Russian laws. This I think I have conclusively proved, both in my present volume and in my larger work: "The Empire of the Tsars."Only the most systematic vexations and humiliations could have aroused the children of Abraham to this spirit of revolt, to these political conspiracies, so opposed to Jewish ideas and traditions. A further proof of this, which ought to appeal to the most furious anti-Semites, is that in Russia conspiracy can lead to nothing, as yet, but transportation or the gallows.Moreover, I have often noticed that all the Israelites implicated in political trials were what I call "de-Judaized" Jews—that is to say, Jews who have renounced the beliefs and practices of Judaism. It was Christian contagion that gave the Jews their revolutionary ideas. Some of the Jewish emigrants from Russia and other parts of Europe have been obviously degraded and corrupted by centuries of oppression. Many years—perhaps one or two generations—will be needed to raise their moral plane, to imbue them with a sense of honor, and dignity. It is a great mistake to believe that this moral uplifting can be facilitated by detaching them from their religion. On the contrary, the least praise-worthy Jews that I have met have generally been "de-Judaized" Jews, those who had ceased to observethe Mosaic law. The Jew—such, at least, is my opinion—stands in even greater need of religious support than the Christian; and, as a rule, he can find that support only in the faith of his fathers. There are indeed, Israelites who become converts to Christianity. But, in order to be morally efficacious, such conversion should be genuine and disinterested. Its object should be to find favor, not in the eyes of society or of man, but of God. Now, it is well known that such true conversions are rare, and this accounts for the fact that the baptized Jews are often the least commendable.I must confess that, in many cases, the Christian missionaries are to blame. They are too often satisfied with purely external, nominal conversions, and, for the winning of souls, they too often employ means that are neither holy nor honest. I have been told that there are missionaries—mainly of the Protestant faith—in London, New York, and the East, who angle for Jewish souls with the coarse bait of worldly benefits, taking unfair advantage of the poverty, abandonment, and loneliness of immigrants driven out of their country by want or persecution, to lead them to the Christian font. These conversions by seduction, if I may venture so to call them, are not a whit less odious than conversions by force. Such proselytizing is unworthy of the Christian ministry and is a disgrace to the churches that encourage it. It can result only in making bad Christians and in educating bad citizens.I need say little, in addressing my English-speaking readers, of the fear entertained by some persons, that the Jewish newcomers are likely to monopolize the national wealth. Although these apprehensions are quite common among the simple souls of the old world, I do not imagine that they have crossed the Channel or the Atlantic. Englishmen and Americans have too much faith in themselves to share such visionary fears. However great may be the commercial talents of the Jews, the Anglo-Saxons feel themselves by no means inferior to them; and when it comes to "making money," the Yankee does not fear the competition of the Semite.Nor do I believe that, in extending hospitality to the sons of Israel, the United States, or Australia, or even old England herself, has reason to apprehend what German anti-Semites call the "judaizing" of modern society.This expression is often used in Europe to indicate the growing ascendancy of material interests and the encroachment of the mercantile spirit. I do not think that the Jew can be held responsible for this tendency, and I shall attempt to show this in my forthcoming work:"Le Règne de l'Argent."What the anti-Semites call the "judaizing" of society might, as I have taken the liberty of asserting, be more correctly called the "Americanizing" of morals. I trust that this remark will not bring down the resentment of my American readers. That would be unfair, for I am, in many respects, a sincere admirer of their great Republic. If I have ventured to speak of the"Americanizing" of modern society, it is simply because the typical characteristics of democratic industrial society were first revealed in the United States, and have there been developed on a larger scale than in any other country. This form of social organization, new to history, is gradually becoming dominant in all parts of the old world, as well as the new. If it has its advantages, it has also its faults, which we are all in duty bound to correct. The ascendancy of material interests, the greed for money, the frantic race for wealth, are the most deplorable characteristics of our modern industrial and democratic society. These are not social characteristics; they are peculiar neither to the Yankee nor to the Jew, although they sometimes seem to be most pronounced in the Jew and the Yankee. They are the result of our social conditions, and it is not by proscribing any particular race or any faith, but only by appealing to moral forces and by bringing all such forces to their highest development that our modern democracies can escape from the practical materialism that threatens to engulf them.Paris, April, 1893.

The tree of Israel, the ancient vine of Judah, transplanted to the Sarmatian plains, has again been rudely shaken by the blast of persecution; its branches have fallen and its seeds have blown afar, over the hills and across the deserts and oceans.

As in earlier times, the wrath of their persecutors is forcing Jews and Judaism into countries where the Sabbath-lamp has never yet been lighted. The spectacle witnessed during the Renaissance and at the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the edicts of Isabella of Castile—the exodus of a people driven forth, without means of existence, from the land of its ancestors because it clung to the faith of its fathers—this spectacle disgraces the closing years of our nineteenth century, in consequence of the ukases of a Russian czar.

What will be the verdict of history as to the effects upon Judaism of the harsh policy of Alexander III? Possibly in years to come, when the tears of her exiles and their present sufferings shall be forgotten, the historians of Israel may affirm that the Russian autocrat contributed, more than any other man, to the expansion and renovation of Judaism.

The Jews who are driven from Slavic soil by the law or by their own poverty, are forced to begin a new life under kindlier skies and in freer lands. They are torn from the old Jewries where, closely herded together, they had barely air enough to breathe; and this painful expatriation may well prove of equal benefit to their souls and their bodies.

The majority of these exiles have gone to America, and especially to the United States. To their brethren already established between the Atlantic and the Pacific this sudden influx of a whole people, in the main poor and ignorant, who demand from them shelter and support, must indeed prove a very heavy burden. The Jews of the United States have been confronted here with an enormous task, to which, however, they have shown themselves equal. Fortunately, the most trying years seem to be over. The accession of the young emperor, Nicholas II, to the throne of Russia gives rise to the hope of some mitigation of those antiquated laws which, under Alexander III, had furnished official intolerance with the means of hypocritical persecution. The stream of emigration, whose volume is already lessening, will probably slacken. It will not wholly cease, for free America will long continue to attract the victims of persecution.

I, for one, do not believe that the United States ought to view this Jewish immigration with any disquietude; I cannot see what there is to fear from it. Among all the races and nations that have furnished the United States with colonists and have thus helped to advance its marvelous growth, I can find none more intelligent or more industrious; nor can I find any that is more capable of assimilating American civilization and of introducing into it a useful competition.

I am told that one of the charges brought against the Jews of America is that they frequently manifest leanings toward socialism; or rather toward anarchism. This may be the case with many Russian and Roumanian Jews—we have some in Paris who show such tendencies—but the fact is due less to the racial character of the Jews than to the conditions under which they have long been forced to live in Europe, and to which they are still subjected in Russia and Roumania. If Lassalle and Karl Marx were the prophets of German socialism, one of the causes of their revolt against the old social order lay in the sort of life which that order imposed upon the sons of Israel, even in Germany. This is still more evident in the case of the Jews who have been infected in Russia by the germs of nihilism and anarchy. The Jew of the old secluded Jewry is—as I have shown in this book—essentially conservative. If, in the past twenty or twenty-five years, a certain number of young Jews and Jewesses have joined the ranks of the nihilists, if some of them have been concerned in the conspiracies against the person or the authority of Alexander II and of Alexander III, this is due to the social conditions imposed on the Jews by the Russian laws. This I think I have conclusively proved, both in my present volume and in my larger work: "The Empire of the Tsars."

Only the most systematic vexations and humiliations could have aroused the children of Abraham to this spirit of revolt, to these political conspiracies, so opposed to Jewish ideas and traditions. A further proof of this, which ought to appeal to the most furious anti-Semites, is that in Russia conspiracy can lead to nothing, as yet, but transportation or the gallows.

Moreover, I have often noticed that all the Israelites implicated in political trials were what I call "de-Judaized" Jews—that is to say, Jews who have renounced the beliefs and practices of Judaism. It was Christian contagion that gave the Jews their revolutionary ideas. Some of the Jewish emigrants from Russia and other parts of Europe have been obviously degraded and corrupted by centuries of oppression. Many years—perhaps one or two generations—will be needed to raise their moral plane, to imbue them with a sense of honor, and dignity. It is a great mistake to believe that this moral uplifting can be facilitated by detaching them from their religion. On the contrary, the least praise-worthy Jews that I have met have generally been "de-Judaized" Jews, those who had ceased to observethe Mosaic law. The Jew—such, at least, is my opinion—stands in even greater need of religious support than the Christian; and, as a rule, he can find that support only in the faith of his fathers. There are indeed, Israelites who become converts to Christianity. But, in order to be morally efficacious, such conversion should be genuine and disinterested. Its object should be to find favor, not in the eyes of society or of man, but of God. Now, it is well known that such true conversions are rare, and this accounts for the fact that the baptized Jews are often the least commendable.

I must confess that, in many cases, the Christian missionaries are to blame. They are too often satisfied with purely external, nominal conversions, and, for the winning of souls, they too often employ means that are neither holy nor honest. I have been told that there are missionaries—mainly of the Protestant faith—in London, New York, and the East, who angle for Jewish souls with the coarse bait of worldly benefits, taking unfair advantage of the poverty, abandonment, and loneliness of immigrants driven out of their country by want or persecution, to lead them to the Christian font. These conversions by seduction, if I may venture so to call them, are not a whit less odious than conversions by force. Such proselytizing is unworthy of the Christian ministry and is a disgrace to the churches that encourage it. It can result only in making bad Christians and in educating bad citizens.

I need say little, in addressing my English-speaking readers, of the fear entertained by some persons, that the Jewish newcomers are likely to monopolize the national wealth. Although these apprehensions are quite common among the simple souls of the old world, I do not imagine that they have crossed the Channel or the Atlantic. Englishmen and Americans have too much faith in themselves to share such visionary fears. However great may be the commercial talents of the Jews, the Anglo-Saxons feel themselves by no means inferior to them; and when it comes to "making money," the Yankee does not fear the competition of the Semite.

Nor do I believe that, in extending hospitality to the sons of Israel, the United States, or Australia, or even old England herself, has reason to apprehend what German anti-Semites call the "judaizing" of modern society.

This expression is often used in Europe to indicate the growing ascendancy of material interests and the encroachment of the mercantile spirit. I do not think that the Jew can be held responsible for this tendency, and I shall attempt to show this in my forthcoming work:"Le Règne de l'Argent."What the anti-Semites call the "judaizing" of society might, as I have taken the liberty of asserting, be more correctly called the "Americanizing" of morals. I trust that this remark will not bring down the resentment of my American readers. That would be unfair, for I am, in many respects, a sincere admirer of their great Republic. If I have ventured to speak of the"Americanizing" of modern society, it is simply because the typical characteristics of democratic industrial society were first revealed in the United States, and have there been developed on a larger scale than in any other country. This form of social organization, new to history, is gradually becoming dominant in all parts of the old world, as well as the new. If it has its advantages, it has also its faults, which we are all in duty bound to correct. The ascendancy of material interests, the greed for money, the frantic race for wealth, are the most deplorable characteristics of our modern industrial and democratic society. These are not social characteristics; they are peculiar neither to the Yankee nor to the Jew, although they sometimes seem to be most pronounced in the Jew and the Yankee. They are the result of our social conditions, and it is not by proscribing any particular race or any faith, but only by appealing to moral forces and by bringing all such forces to their highest development that our modern democracies can escape from the practical materialism that threatens to engulf them.

Paris, April, 1893.

The closing citation in the symposium of general opinion which we have presented under our preceding rubric, the preface to the English translation of Leroy Beaulieu's work on "Israel among the Nations," may serve almost without further comment as an effective introduction to our present subject. It deals directly with the great wrong committed by the government of Russia against Israel and Humanity, and it deals with it from the vantage ground of an impartial authority.

The proscriptive policy adopted by Russia against the Jewish people, a policy whose animus appears to be a mixture of political and religious fanaticism, has erected the provinces along the Western frontier of the Empire, on the German and Austrian borders, into a "Pale of Jewish Settlement" and thus created a Ghetto-country, into which the Jews of the interior provinces have been driven, to live as best they may. Even in these confines they are forbidden to apply themselves to agriculture and forced into various towns and cities, there to huddle and if need be to starve.

It has been held that this seemingly inexplicable policy has been deliberately directed to the end and with the purpose of crowding a mass of helpless and impoverished population on the Western borders of the Empire, to be utilized as an abattis against a foreign foe or as a cushion against foreign invasion, but it seems incredible that Russian fanaticism, shortsighted and ruthless as it is, should reach such a degree of turpitude and folly. It would seem, on the contrary, to be persisted in notwithstanding the manifest political and military dangers which the unreasonable procedure harbors and which, since its inception in 1879-80 has not ceased to bring about widespreadeconomic and social disorganization, not to speak of the political disturbance of the Empire. The "russification" of the Empire, the retaining of "Russia for the Russians" (as though the Jews who are conscripted in disproportionate numbers into the army, who fought valiantly for their native land in the Crimea and on the Balkans, were not to be regarded as Russians), is the ostensible purpose of the proscription. With this purpose the ruling power of Russia continues to drive out its Jewish subjects; the historic tragedy wrought out by Spanish bigotry and fatuousness 400 years ago is being re-enacted by Russia at the present day, and the political and economic lessons taught by that example, not to mention the admonitions of humanity and the protests of an outraged civilization remain unheeded. The end of this wicked folly is apparently still afar, and seems likely to be brought nearer in point of time only by a political explosion. It were difficult to arrive at a conclusion as to which prospect is the worst.

The facts concerning the persecution of the Russian Jews have constantly been belied by the Russian authorities, in conformity with the historic methods of Russian diplomacy, but have for some years past been placed beyond question through the efforts of our own government. In view of the positive contradictions between the Russian official statements and the constantly reported and seemingly well-established facts, it was deemed expedient by the administration of President Harrison, in 1891, to send an official American Commission to investigate the condition of affairs in Russia, and the report of this Commission, referred to below by Ambassador White, gave official confirmation to the previously published details of the relentless and heartrending cruelties practiced by the Russian officials in the name of the Czar. Into these details we will not here enter. The Commissioners' Report has been widely published and has become historic.[120]

A statement of the general subject has, however, been formulated in another official report, made subsequently to that noted above, by our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Hon. Andrew D. White, in a despatch to the Secretary of State, the late Walter Q. Gresham. In this document Mr. White summarizes the conditions relating to the persecution of the Russian Jews in a manner so concise and lucid, and in a spirit so entirely dispassionate, that it may properly be cited here as a statement whose authority is entirely beyond question.[121]

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