[The curtain falls.]
Saturday, July 4, evening. The Roof-Garden of the Settlement House, showing a beautiful, far-stretching panorama of New York, with its irregular sky-buildings on the left, and the harbour with its Statue of Liberty on the right. Everything is wet and gleaming after rain. Parapet at the back. Elevator on the right. Entrance from the stairs on the left. In the sky hang heavy clouds through which thin, golden lines of sunset are just beginning to labour.Davidis discovered on a bench, hugging his violin-case to his breast, gazing moodily at the sky. A muffled sound of applause comes up from below and continues with varying intensity through the early part of the scene. Through it comes the noise of the elevator ascending.Mendelsteps out and hurries forward.
MENDEL
Come down, David! Don't you hear them shouting for you?
[He passes his hand over the wet bench.]
Good heavens! You will get rheumatic fever!
DAVID
Why have you followed me?
MENDEL
Get up—everything is still damp.
DAVID [Rising, gloomily]
Yes, there's a damper over everything.
MENDEL
Nonsense—the rain hasn't damped your triumph in the least. In fact, the more delicate effects wouldn't have gone so well in the open air. Listen!
DAVID
Let them shout. Who told you I was up here?
MENDEL
Miss Revendal, of course.
DAVID [Agitated]
Miss Revendal? How shouldsheknow?
MENDEL [Sullenly]
She seems to understand your crazy ways.
DAVID [Passing his hand over his eyes]
Ah,younever understood me, uncle.... How did she look? Was she pale?
MENDEL
Never mind about Miss Revendal. Pappelmeister wants you—the people insist on seeing you. Nobody can quiet them.
DAVID
They saw me all through the symphony in my place in the orchestra.
MENDEL
They didn't know you were the composer as wellas the first violin. Now Miss Revendal has told them.
[Louder applause.]
There! Eleven minutes it has gone on—like for an office-seeker. Youmustcome and show yourself.
DAVID
I won't—I'm not an office-seeker. Leave me to my misery.
MENDEL
Your misery? With all this glory and greatness opening before you? Wait till you'remyage——
[Shouts of "Quixano!"]
You hear! What is to be done with them?
DAVID
Send somebody on the platform to remind them this is the interval for refreshments!
MENDEL
Don't be cynical. You know your dearest wish was to melt these simple souls with your music. And now——
DAVID
Now I have only made my own stony.
MENDEL
You are right. You are stone all over—ever since you came back home to us. Turned into a pillar of salt, mother says—like Lot's wife.
DAVID
That was the punishment for looking backward. Ah, uncle, there's more sense in that old Bible than the Rabbis suspect. Perhaps that is the secret of our people's paralysis—we are always looking backward.
[He drops hopelessly into an iron garden-chair behind him.]
MENDEL [Stopping him before he touches the seat]
Take care—it's sopping wet. You don't look backward enough.
[He takes out his handkerchief and begins drying the chair.]
DAVID [Faintly smiling]
I thought you wanted the salt to melt.
MENDEL
Itismelting a little if you can smile. Do you know, David, I haven't seen you smile since thatPurimafternoon?
DAVID
You haven't worn a false nose since, uncle.
[He laughs bitterly.]
Ha! Ha! Ha! Fancy masquerading in America because twenty-five centuries ago the Jews escaped apogromin Persia. Two thousand five hundred years ago! Aren't we uncanny?
[He drops into the wiped chair.]
MENDEL [Angrily]
Better you should leave us altogether than mock at us. I thought it was your Jewish heart that drove you back home to us; but if you are still hankering after Miss Revendal——
DAVID [Pained]
Uncle!
MENDEL
I'd rather see you marry her than go about like this. You couldn't make the house any gloomier.
DAVID
Go back to the concert, please. They have quieted down.
MENDEL [Hesitating]
And you?
DAVID
Oh, I'm not playing in the popular after-pieces. Pappelmeister guessed I'd be broken up with the stress of my own symphony—he has violins enough.
MENDEL
Then you don't want to carry this about.
[Taking the violin fromDavid'sarms.]
DAVID [Clinging to it]
Don't rob me of my music—it's all I have.
MENDEL
You'll spoil it in the wet. I'll take it home.
DAVID
No——
[He suddenly catches sight of two figures entering from the left—Frau QuixanoandKathleenclad in their best, and wearing tiny American flags in honour of Independence Day.Kathleenescorts the old lady, with the air of a guardian angel, on her slow, tottering course towardDavid.Frau Quixanois puffing and panting after the many stairs.Davidjumps up in surprise, releases the violin-case toMendel.]
They at my symphony!
MENDEL
Motherwouldcome—even though, beingShabbos, she had to walk.
DAVID
But wasn't she shocked at my playing on the Sabbath?
MENDEL
No—that's the curious part of it. She said that even as a boy you played your fiddle onShabbos, and that if the Lord has stood it all these years, He must consider you an exception.
DAVID
You see! She's more sensible than you thought.I daresay whatever I were to do she'd consider me an exception.
MENDEL [In sullen acquiescence]
I suppose geniusesare.
KATHLEEN [Reaching them; panting with admiration and breathlessness]
Oh, Mr. David! it was like midnight mass! But the misthress was ashleep.
DAVID
Asleep!
[Laughs half-merrily, half-sadly.]
Ha! Ha! Ha!
FRAU QUIXANO [Panting and laughing in response]
He! He! He!Dovidel lacht widder.He! He! He!
[She touches his arm affectionately, but feeling his wet coat, utters a cry of horror.]
Du bist nass!
DAVID
Es ist gor nicht, Granny—my clothes are thick.
[She fusses over him, wiping him down with her gloved hand.]
MENDEL
But what brought you up here, Kathleen?
KATHLEEN
Sure, not the elevator. The misthress said 'twould be breaking theShabbosto ride up in it.
DAVID [Uneasily]
But did—-did Miss Revendal send you up?
KATHLEEN
And who else should be axin' the misthress if she wasn't proud of Mr. David? Faith, she's a sweet lady.
MENDEL [Impatiently]
Don't chatter, Kathleen.
KATHLEEN
But, Mr. Quixano——!
DAVID [Sweetly]
Please take your mistress down again—don't let her walk.
KATHLEEN
ButShabbosisn't out yet!
MENDEL
Chattering again!
DAVID [Gently]
There's no harm, Kathleen, in goingdownin the elevator.
KATHLEEN
Troth, I'll egshplain to her that droppin' down isn't ridin'.
DAVID [Smiling]
Yes, tell her dropping down is natural—notwork, like flying up.
[Kathleen begins to move toward the stairs, explaining toFrau Quixano.]
And, Kathleen! You'll get her some refreshments.
KATHLEEN [Turns, glaring]
Refrishments, is it? Give her refrishments where they mix the mate with the butther plates! Oh, Mr. David!
[She moves off toward the stairs in reproachful sorrow.]
MENDEL [Smiling]
I'll get her some coffee.
DAVID [Smiling]
Yes, that'll keep her awake. Besides, Pappelmeister was so sure the people wouldn't understand me, he's relaxing them on Gounod and Rossini.
MENDEL
Pappelmeister's idea of relaxation!Ishould have given them comic opera.
[With sudden call toKathleen, who with her mistress is at the wrong exit.]
Kathleen! The elevator'sthisside!
KATHLEEN [Turning]
What way can that be, when I came upthisside?
MENDEL
You chatter too much.
[Frau Quixano, not understanding, exit.]
Come this way. Can't you see the elevator?
KATHLEEN [PerceivesFrau Quixanohas gone, calls after her in Irish-sounding Yiddish]
Wu geht Ihr, bedad?...
[Impatiently]
Houly Moses,komm' zurick!
[Exit anxiously, re-enter withFrau Quixano.]
Begorra, we Jews never know our way.
[Mendel, carrying the violin, escorts his mother andKathleento the elevator. When they are near it, it stops with a thud, andPappelmeistersprings out, his umbrella up, meeting them face to face. He looks happy and beaming overDavid'striumph.]
PAPPELMEISTER [In loud, joyous voice]
Nun, Frau Quixano, was sagen Sie?Vat you tink of your David?
FRAU QUIXANO
Dovid? Er ist meshuggah.
[She taps her forehead.]
PAPPELMEISTER [Puzzled, toMendel]
Meshuggah!Vat meansmeshuggah? Crazy?
MENDEL [Half-smiling]
You've struck it. She says David doesn't know enough to go in out of the rain.
[General laughter.]
DAVID [Rising]
But it's stopped raining, Herr Pappelmeister. You don't want your umbrella.
[General laughter.]
PAPPELMEISTER
So.
[Shuts it down.]
MENDEL
Herein, Mutter.
[He pushesFrau Quixano'ssomewhat shrinking form into the elevator.Kathleenfollows, thenMendel.]
Herr Pappelmeister, we are all your grateful servants.
[Pappelmeisterbows; the gates close, the elevator descends.]
DAVID
And you won't thinkmeungrateful for running away—you know my thanks are too deep to be spoken.
PAPPELMEISTER
And zo are my congratulations!
DAVID
Then, don't speak them, please.
PAPPELMEISTER
But youmustcome and speak to all de people in America who undershtand music.
DAVID [Half-smiling]
To your four connoisseurs?
[Seriously]
Oh, please! I really could not meet strangers, especially musical vampires.
PAPPELMEISTER [Half-startled, half-angry]
Vampires? Oh, come!
DAVID
Voluptuaries, then—rich, idle æsthetes to whom art and life have no connection, parasites who suck our music——
PAPPELMEISTER [Laughs good-naturedly]
Ha! Ha! Ha! Vait till you hear vat dey say.
DAVID
I will wait as long as you like.
PAPPELMEISTER
Den I like to tell you now.
[He roars with mischievous laughter.]
Ha! Ha! Ha! De first vampire says it is a great vork, but poorly performed.
DAVID [Indignant]
Oh!
PAPPELMEISTER
De second vampire says it is a poor vork, but greatly performed.
DAVID [Disappointed]
Oh!
PAPPELMEISTER
De dird vampire says it is a great vork greatly performed.
DAVID [Complacently]
Ah!
PAPPELMEISTER
And de fourz vampire says it is a poor vork poorly performed.
DAVID [Angry and disappointed]
Oh!
[Then smiling]
You see youhaveto go by the people after all.
PAPPELMEISTER [Shakes head, smiling]
Nein.Ven critics disagree—I agree mit mineself. Ha! Ha! Ha!
[He slapsDavidon the back.]
A great vork dat vill be even better performed next time! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ten dousand congratulations.
[He seizesDavid'shand and grips it heartily.]
DAVID
Don't! You hurt me.
PAPPELMEISTER [DroppingDavid'shand,—misunderstanding]
Pardon! I forgot your vound.
DAVID
No—no—what does my wound matter? That never stung half so much as these clappings and congratulations.
PAPPELMEISTER [Puzzled but solicitous]
I knew your nerves vould be all shnapping like fiddle-shtrings. Oh, you cheniuses!
[Smiling.]
You like neider de clappings nor de criticisms,—was?
DAVID
They are equally—irrelevant. One has to wrestle with one's own art, one's own soul,alone!
PAPPELMEISTER [Patting him soothingly]
I am glad I did not let you blay in Part Two.
DAVID
Dear Herr Pappelmeister! Don't think I don't appreciate all your kindnesses—you are almost a father to me.
PAPPELMEISTER
And you disobey me like a son. Ha! Ha! Ha! Vell, I vill make your excuses to de—vampires. Ha! Ha!Also, David.
[He lays his hand again affectionately onDavid'sright shoulder.]
Lebe wohl!I must go down to my popular classics.
[Gloomily]
Truly a going down!Was?
DAVID [Smiling]
Oh, it isn't such a descent as all that. Uncle said you ought to have given them comic opera.
PAPPELMEISTER [Shuddering convulsively]
Comic opera.... Ouf!
[He goes toward the elevator and rings the bell. Then he turns toDavid.]
Vat vas dat vord, David?
DAVID
What word?
PAPPELMEISTER [Groping for it]
Mega—megasshu....
DAVID [Puzzled]
Megasshu?
[The elevator comes up; the gates open.]
PAPPELMEISTER
Megusshah!You know.
[He taps his forehead with his umbrella.]
DAVID
Ah,meshuggah!
PAPPELMEISTER [Joyously]
Ja, meshuggah!
[He gives a great roar of laughter.]
Ha! Ha! Ha!
[He waves umbrella atDavid.]
Well, don't be ...meshuggah.
[He steps into the elevator.]
Ha! Ha! Ha!
[The gates close, and it descends with his laughter.]
DAVID [After a pause]
Perhaps Iam...meshuggah.
[He walks up and down moodily, approaches the parapet at back.]
Dropping down is indeed natural.
[He looks over.]
How it tugs and drags at one!
[He moves back resolutely and shakes his head.]
That would be even a greater descent than Pappelmeister's to comic opera. Onemustfly upward—somehow.
[He drops on the chair thatMendeldried. A faint music steals up and makes an accompaniment to all the rest of the scene.]
Ah! the popular classics!
[His head sinks on a little table. The elevator comes up again, but he does not raise his head.Vera, pale and sad, steps out and walks gently over to him; stands looking at him with maternal pity; then decides not to disturb him and is stealing away when suddenly he looks up and perceives her and springs to his feet with a dazed glad cry.]
Vera!
VERA [Turns, speaks with grave dignity]
Miss Andrews has charged me to convey to you the heart-felt thanks and congratulations of the Settlement.
DAVID [Frozen]
Miss Andrews is very kind.... I trust you are well.
VERA
Thank you, Mr. Quixano. Very well and very busy. So you'll excuse me.
[She turns to go.]
DAVID
Certainly.... How are your folks?
VERA [Turns her head]
They are gone back to Russia. And yours?
DAVID
You just saw them all.
VERA [Confused]
Yes—yes—of course—I forgot! Good-bye, Mr. Quixano.
DAVID
Good-bye, Miss Revendal.
[He drops back on the chair.Verawalks to the elevator, then just before ringing turns again.]
VERA
I shouldn't advise you to sit here in the damp.
DAVID
My uncle dried the chair.
[Bitterly]
Curious how every one is concerned about my body and no one about my soul.
VERA
Because your soul is so much stronger than your body. Why, think! It has just lifted a thousand people far higher than this roof-garden.
DAVID
Please don't you congratulate me, too! That would be too ironical.
VERA [Agitated, coming nearer]
Irony, Mr. Quixano? Please, please, do not imagine there is any irony in my congratulations.
DAVID
The irony is in all the congratulations. How can I endure them when I know what a terrible failure I have made!
VERA
Failure! Because the critics are all divided? That is the surest proof of success. You have produced something real and new.
DAVID
I am not thinking of Pappelmeister's connoisseurs—Iam the only connoisseur, the only one who knows. And every bar of my music cried "Failure! Failure!" It shrieked from the violins, blared from the trombones, thundered from the drums. It was written on all the faces——
VERA [Vehemently, coming still nearer]
Oh, no! no! I watched the faces—those faces of toil and sorrow, those faces from many lands. They were fired by your vision of their coming brotherhood, lulled by your dream of their land of rest. And I could see that you were right in speaking to the people. In some strange, beautiful, way the inner meaning of your music stole into all those simple souls——
DAVID [Springing up]
Andmysoul? What ofmysoul? False to its own music, its own mission, its own dream. That is what I mean by failure, Vera. I preached of God's Crucible, this great new continent that could melt up all race-differences and vendettas, that could purge and re-create, and God tried me with his supremest test. He gave me a heritage from the Old World, hate and vengeance and blood, and said, "Cast it all into my Crucible." And I said, "Even thy Crucible cannot melt this hate, cannot drink up this blood." And so I sat crooning over the dead past, gloating over the old blood-stains—I, the apostle of America, the prophet of the God of our children. Oh—how my music mocked me! And you—so fearless, so high above fate—how you must despise me!
VERA
I? Ah no!
DAVID
You must. You do. Your words still sting. Wereit seven seas between us, you said, our love must cross them. And I—I who had prated of seven seas——
VERA
Not seas of blood—I spoke selfishly, thoughtlessly. I had not realised that crimson flood. Now I see it day and night. O God!
[She shudders and covers her eyes.]
DAVID
There lies my failure—to have brought it to your eyes, instead of blotting it from my own.
VERA
No man could have blotted it out.
DAVID
Yes—by faith in the Crucible. From the blood of battlefields spring daisies and buttercups. In the divine chemistry the very garbage turns to roses. But in the supreme moment my faith was found wanting. You came to me—and I thrust you away.
VERA
I ought not to have come to you.... I ought not to have come to you to-day. We must not meet again.
DAVID
Ah, you cannot forgive me!
VERA
Forgive? It is I that should go down on my knees for my father's sin.
[She is half-sinking to her knees. He stops her by a gesture and a cry.]
DAVID
No! The sins of the fathers shall not be visited on the children.
VERA
My brain follows you, but not my heart. It is heavy with the sense of unpaid debts—debts that can only cry for forgiveness.
DAVID
You owe me nothing——
VERA
But my father, my people, my country....
[She breaks down. Recovers herself.]
My only consolation is, you need nothing.
DAVID [Dazed]
I—need—nothing?
VERA
Nothing but your music ... your dreams.
DAVID
And your love? Do I not need that?
VERA [Shaking her head sadly]
No.
DAVID
You say that because I have forfeited it.
VERA
It is my only consolation, I tell you, that you do not need me. In our happiest moments a suspicion of this truth used to lacerate me. But now it is my one comfort in the doom that divides us. See how you stand up here above the world, alone and self-sufficient. No woman could ever have more than the second place in your life.
DAVID
But you have thefirstplace, Vera!
VERA [Shakes her head again]
No—I no longer even desire it. I have gotten over that womanly weakness.
DAVID
You torture me. What do you mean?
VERA
What can be simpler? I used to be jealous of your music, your prophetic visions. I wanted to come first—before them all! Now, dear David, I only pray that they may fill your life to the brim.
DAVID
But they cannot.
VERA
They will—have faith in yourself, in your mission—good-bye.
DAVID [Dazed]
You love me and you leave me?
VERA
What else can I do? Shall the shadow of Kishineff hang over all your years to come? Shall I kiss you and leave blood upon your lips, cling to you and be pushed away by all those cold, dead hands?
DAVID [Taking both her hands]
Yes, cling to me, despite them all, cling to me till all these ghosts are exorcised, cling to me till our love triumphs over death. Kiss me, kiss me now.
VERA [Resisting, drawing back]
I dare not! It will make you remember.
DAVID
It will make me forget. Kiss me.
[There is a pause of hesitation, filled up by the Cathedral music from "Faust" surging up softly from below.]
VERA [Slowly]
I will kiss you as we Russians kiss at Easter—the three kisses of peace.
[She kisses him three times on the mouth as in ritual solemnity.]
DAVID [Very calmly]
Easter was the date of the massacre—see! I am at peace.
VERA
God grant it endure!
[They stand quietly hand in hand.]
Look! How beautiful the sunset is after the storm!
[Davidturns. The sunset, which has begun to grow beautiful just afterVera'sentrance, has now reached its most magnificent moment; below there are narrow lines of saffron and pale gold, but above the whole sky is one glory of burning flame.]
DAVID [Prophetically exalted by the spectacle]
It is the fires of God round His Crucible.
[He drops her hand and points downward.]
There she lies, the great Melting Pot—listen! Can't you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth
[He points east]
—the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian,—black and yellow——
VERA [Softly, nestling to him]
Jew and Gentile——
DAVID
Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palmand the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross—how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!
[He raises his hands in benediction over the shining city.]
Peace, peace, to all ye unborn millions, fated to fill this giant continent—the God of ourchildrengive you Peace.
[An instant's solemn pause. The sunset is swiftly fading, and the vast panorama is suffused with a more restful twilight, to which the many-gleaming lights of the town add the tender poetry of the night. Far back, like a lonely, guiding star, twinkles over the darkening water the torch of the Statue of Liberty. From below comes up the softened sound of voices and instruments joining in "My Country,'tis of Thee." The curtain falls slowly.]
[FromThe Nation, November 15, 1913]
It is now over thirty years since the crew of the sinking ship of Russian absolutism first tried this unworthy weapon to save their failing cause. This was when Plehve organised an anti-Semitic agitation and Jewish pogroms in 1883 in South Russia, where the Jews formed almost the only merchant class in the villages, and where the ignorant peasants, together with some crafty Russian tradesmen, had a natural grudge against them. The result was that the prevailing discontent of the masses was diverted against the Jews. A large public meeting of protest was organised at that time in the London Mansion House, the Lord Mayor taking the chair. English public opinion rightly appreciated the value of this criminal method of using Jews as scapegoats for political purposes. Now we see merely a further, and let us hope a final, development of the same tactics. They have been used on many occasions since 1883. One of the largest Jewish pogroms of the latest series in Kishineff in 1903 has been clearly traced to the same experienced hand of Plehve, when the passive attitude of the local administration and the military was explained by the presence in the town of a mysterious colonel of the Imperial Gendarmerie who arrived with secret orders and a large supply of pogrom literature from St. Petersburg, and who organised the scum of the town population for the purpose of looting and killing Jews.
The repulsive stories of further pogroms all over the country immediately after the issue of the constitutional manifesto ofOctober 17, 1905, are fresh in the memory of the civilised world. At that time anti-Semitic doctrine was openly preached, not only against Jews, but against the whole constitutional and revolutionary upheaval. Pogroms against both were organised under the same pretext of saving the Tsar, the orthodoxy, and the Fatherland. Local police and military officials had secret orders to abstain from interference with the looting and murdering of Jews or "their hirelings." Processions of peaceful citizens and children were trampled down by the Cossack horses, and the Cossacks received formal thanks from high quarters for their excellent exploits....
N. W. Tchaykovsky.
[FromPublic Health, Nurses' Quarterly, Cleveland, Ohio, October 1913]
I was a Red Cross nurse on the battlefield.
The words of the chief doctor of the Jewish Hospital of Odessa still ring in my ears. When the telephone message came, he said, "Moldvanko is running in blood; send nurses and doctors." This meant that the Pogrom (massacre) was going on.
Dr. P—— came into the wards with these words: "Sisters, there is no time for weeping. Those who have no one dependent upon them, come. Put on your white surgical gowns, and the red cross. Make ready to go on the battlefield at once. God knows how many of our sisters and brothers are already killed." Tears were just running down his cheeks as he spoke. In a minute twelve nurses and eight doctors had volunteered. There was one Red Cross nurse who was in bed waiting to be operated on. She got up and made ready too. Nobody could keep her from going with us. "Where my sisters and brothers fall, there shall I fall," she said, and with these words, jumped into the ambulance and went on to the City Hospital with us. There they had better equipment, andthey sent out three times as many nurses as the Jewish Hospital. At the City Hospital they hung silver crosses about our necks. We wore the silver crosses so that we would not be recognised as Jewish by the Holiganes (Hooligans).
Then we went to Molorosiskia Street in the Moldvanko (slums). We could not see, for the feathers were flying like snow. The blood was already up to our ankles on the pavement and in the yards. The uproar was deafening but we could hear the Holiganes' fierce cries of "Hooray, kill the Jews," on all sides. It was enough to hear such words. They could turn your hair grey, but we went on. We had no time to think. All our thoughts were to pick up wounded ones, and to try to rescue some uninjured ones. We succeeded in rescuing some uninjured who were in hiding. We put bandages on them to make it appear that they were wounded. We put them in the ambulance and carried them to the hospital, too. So at the Jewish Hospital we had five thousand injured and seven thousand uninjured to feed and protect for two weeks. Some were left without homes, without clothes, and children were even without parents.
My dear reader, I want to tell you one thing before I describe the scenes of the massacre any further; do not think that you are reading a story which could not happen! No, I want you to know that everything you read is just exactly as it was. My hair is a little grey, but I am surprised it is not quite white after what I witnessed.
The procession of the Pogrom was led by about ten Catholic (Greek) Sisters with about forty or fifty of their school children. They carried ikons or pictures of Jesus and sang "God Save the Tsar." They were followed by a crowd containing hundreds of men and women murderers yelling "Bey Zhida," which means "Kill the Jews." With these words they ran into the yards where there were fifty or a hundred tenants. They rushed in like tigers. Soon they began to throw children out of the windows of the second, third, and fourth stories. They would take a poor, innocent six-months-old baby, who could not possibly have done any harm in this world andthrow it down on to the pavement. You can imagine it could not live after it struck the ground, but this did not satisfy the stony-hearted murderers. They then rushed up to the child, seized it and broke its little arm and leg bones into three or four pieces, then wrung its neck too. They laughed and yelled, so carried away with pleasure at their successful work.
I do wish a few Americans could have been there to see, and they would know what America is, and what it means to live in the United States. It was not enough for them to open up a woman's abdomen and take out the child which she carried, but they took time to stuff the abdomen with straw and fill it up. Can you imagine human beings able to do such things? I do not think anybody could, because I could not imagine it myself when a few years before I read the news of the massacre in Kishineff, but now I have seen it with my own eyes. It was not enough for them to cut out an old man's tongue and cut off his nose, but they drove nails into the eyes also. You wonder how they had enough time to carry away everything of value—money, gold, silver, jewels—and still be able to do so much fancy killing, but oh, my friends, all the time for three days and three nights was theirs.
The last day and night it poured down rain, and you would think that might stop them, but no, they worked just as hard as ever. We could wear shoes no longer. Our feet were swollen, so we wore rubbers over our stockings, and in this way worked until some power was able to stop these horrors. They not only killed, but they had time to abuse young girls of twelve and fourteen years of age, who died immediately after being operated upon.
I remember what happened to my own class-mates. They were two who came from a small town to Odessa to become midwives. These girls ran to the school to hide themselves as it was a government school, and they knew the Holiganes would not dare to come in there. But the dean of the school had ordered they should not be admitted, because they were Jewish, as if they had different blood running in their veins.So when they came, the watchman refused to open the doors, according to his instructions. The crowd of Holiganes found them outside the doors of the hospital. They abused them right there in the middle of the street. One was eighteen years old and the other was twenty. One died after the operation and the other went insane from shame.
Some people ask why the Jews did not leave everything and go away. But how could they go and where could they go? The murderers were scattered throughout the Jewish quarters. All they could do was hide where they were in the cellars and garrets. The Holiganes searched them out and killed them where they were hidden. Others may ask, why did they not resist the murderers with their knives and pistols? The grown men organised by the second day. They were helped by the Vigilantes, too, who brought them arms. The Vigilantes were composed of students at the University and high-school boys, and also the strongest man from each Jewish family. There were a good many Gentiles among the students who belonged to the Vigilantes because they wanted justice. So on the second day the Vigilantes stood before the doors and gave resistance to the murderers. Some will ask where were the soldiers and the police? They were sent to protect, but on arriving, joined in with the murderers. However, the police put disguises on over their uniforms. Later, when they were brought to the hospital with other wounded, we found their uniforms underneath their disguises.
When the Vigilantes took their stations, the scene was like a battlefield. Bullets were flying from both sides of the Red Cross carriages. We expected to be killed any minute, but notwithstanding, we rushed wherever there were shots heard in order to carry away the wounded. Whenever we arrived we shouted "Red Cross, Red Cross," in order to help make them realise we were not Vigilantes. Then they would stop and let us pick up the wounded. They did this on account of their own wounded.
The Vigilantes could not stop the butchery entirely because they were not strong enough in numbers. On the fourth day,the Jewish people of Odessa, through Dr. P——, succeeded in communicating to the Mayor of a different State. Soldiers from outside, strangers to the murderers, came in and took charge of the city. The city was put under martial law until order could be restored.
On the fifth day the doctors and nurses were called to the cemetery, where there were four hundred unidentified dead. Their friends and relatives who came to search for them were crazed and hysterical and needed our attention. Wives came to look for husbands, parents hunting children, a mother for her only son, and so on. It took eight days to identify the bodies and by that time four hundred of the wounded had died, and so we had eight hundred to bury. If you visit Odessa, you will be shown two long graves, about one hundred feet long, beside the Jewish Cemetery. There lie the victims of the massacre. Among them are Gentile Vigilantes whose parents asked that they be buried with the Jews....
Another case I knew was that of a married man. He left his wife, who was pregnant, and three children, to go on a business trip. When he got back the massacre had occurred. His home was in ruins, his family gone. He went to the hospital, then to the cemetery. There he found his wife with her abdomen stuffed with straw, and his three children dead. It simply broke his heart, and he lost his mind. But he was harmless, and was to be seen wandering about the hospital as though in search of some one, and daily he grew more thin and suffering.
This story is told in the hope that Americans will appreciate the safety and freedom in which they live and that they will help others to gain that freedom.
Another example of Nature aping Art is afforded by the romantic story of Daniel Melsa, a young Russo-Jewish violinist who has carried audiences by storm in Berlin, Paris and London, and who had arranged to go to America last November. The following extract from an interview in theJewish Chronicleof January 24, 1913, shows the curious coincidence between his beginnings and David Quixano's:
"Melsa is not yet twenty years of age, but he looks somewhat older. He is of slight build and has a sad expression, which increased to almost a painful degree when recounting some of his past experiences. He seems singularly devoid of any affectation, while modesty is obviously the keynote of his nature.
"After some persuasion, Melsa put aside his reticence, and, complying with the request, outlined briefly his career, the early part of which, he said, was overshadowed by a great tragedy. He was born in Warsaw, and, at the age of three, his parents moved to Lodz, where shortly after a private tutor was engaged for him.
"'Although I exhibited a passion for music quite early, I did not receive any lessons on the subject till my seventh birthday, but before that my father obtained a cheap violin for me upon which I was soon able to play simple melodies by ear.'
"By chance a well-known professor of the town heard him play, and so impressed was he with the talent exhibited by the boy that he advised the father to have him educated. Acting upon this advice, as far as limited means allowed, tutors were engaged, and so much progress did he make that at the age of nine he was admitted to the local Conservatorium ofProfessor Grudzinski, where he remained two years. It was at the age of eleven that a great calamity overtook the family, his father and sister falling victims to the pogroms.
"Melsa's story runs as follows:
"'It was in June of 1905, at the time of the pogroms, when one afternoon my father, accompanied by my little sister, ventured out into the street, from which they never returned. They were both killed,' he added sadly, 'by Cossacks. A week later I found my sister in a Christian churchyard riddled with bullets, but I have not been able to trace the remains of my father, who must have been buried in some out-of-the-way place. During this awful period my mother and myself lived in imminent danger of our lives, and it was only the recollection of my playing that saved us also falling a prey to the vodka-besodden Cossacks.'"