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 the
hatred 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 on
_Papacy, 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.
II. PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH VERSION.
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 new _diaspora_, 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 observe the 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.
RUSSIA'S CRIME AGAINST THE JEWS AND CIVILIZATION.
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 widespread economic
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]
FOOTNOTES:
[120] This Commission was appointed, under direction of the
President, by Secretary of the Treasury Charles Foster, by virtue of
authority of the act of Congress (Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill)
of March 3, 1891, and its Report was transmitted by the Secretary to
Congress, February 25, 1892. The Commission consisted of Hon. John B.
Weber, Commissioner of Immigration at the port of New York, Chairman,
and the following named special immigrant inspectors: Judson N. Cross,
of Minnesota; Walter Kempster, M. D., of Wisconsin; Joseph Powderly,
of Pennsylvania, and Herman J. Schultheis, of Washington, D. C. The
investigations with which the Commission was charged were made in the
various countries of Europe by the Commissioners in severalty, those
relating to Russia and the persecution of its Jewish subjects being
made by the Chairman, Col. Weber, with the assistance of Dr. Kempster.
Col. Weber's report on the condition of affairs in Russia affords the most
detailed and exhaustive statement of the subject that has been given
to the world. It followed closely upon the publication in the New York
_Times_, (Sept.-Dec., 1891,) of the masterly review of Russian affairs
generally, by Harold Frederic, in a series of articles entitled "An
Indictment of Russia," and these two publications finally disposed of
the glossing with which Russian diplomacy had attempted to hide the
facts.
[121] This subject had on frequent occasions previously
received the attention of our State Department. In a despatch under
date of July 29, 1881, Secretary of State Jas. G. Blaine directs
our minister at St. Petersburg, Mr. John W. Foster, to demand of
the Russian Government the due rights of American Jewish citizens
travelling or temporarily sojourning in Russia, in compliance with
treaty obligations. From this document we quote the following salient
paragraphs:
"From a careful examination of the causes of grievances heretofore
reported by your legation, it appears that the action of the
Russian authorities toward American citizens, alleged to be
Israelites, and visiting Russia, has been of two kinds:
"First. Absolute prohibition of residence in St. Petersburg and
in other cities of the Empire, on the ground that the Russian law
permits no native Jews to reside there, and that the treaty between
Russia and the United States gives to our citizens in Russian
jurisdiction no other rights or privileges than those accorded to
native Russians. The case of Henry Pinkos may be taken as a type of
this class.
"Second. Permission of residence and commerce, conditionally on
belonging to the first guild of Russian merchants and taking out a
license. The case of Rosenstrauss is in point.
"The apparent contradiction between these two classes of actions
becomes more and more evident as the question is traced backward.
The Department has rarely had presented to it any subject of
inquiry in which a connected understanding of the facts has proved
more difficult. For every allegation, on the one hand, that
native laws, in force at the time the treaty of 1832 was signed,
prohibited or limited the sojourn of foreign Jews in the cities of
Russia, I find, on the other hand, specific invitation to alien
Hebrews of good repute to domicile themselves in Russia, to pursue
their business calling under appropriate license, to establish
factories there, and to purchase or lease real estate. Moreover,
going back beyond 1832, the date of our treaty, I observe that the
imperial ukases concerning the admission of foreigners into Russia
are silent on all questions of faith; proper passports, duly viséd
being the essential requisite. And, further back still, in the time
of Empress Catharine, I discover explicit tolerance of all foreign
religions laid down as a fundamental policy of the empire.
"It would be, in the judgment of this government, absolutely
inadmissible that a domestic law restraining native Hebrews from
residence in certain parts of the empire might operate to hinder an
American citizen, whether alleged or known to profess the Hebrew
faith, from disposing of his property or taking possession thereof
for himself (subject only to the laws of alien inheritance) or
being heard in person by the courts which, under Russian law, may
be called upon to decide matters to which he is necessarily a
party. The case would clearly be one in which the obligation of
a treaty is supreme, and where the local law must yield. These
questions of the conflict of local law and international treaty
stipulations are among the most common which have engaged the
attention of publicists, and it is their concurrent judgment that
where a treaty creates a privilege for aliens in express terms,
it cannot be limited by the operation of domestic law without a
serious breach of the good faith which governs the intercourse of
nations. So long as such a conventional engagement in favor of the
citizens of another state exists, the law governing natives in like
cases is manifestly inapplicable.