[Footnote B: In the last number of THE MENORAH JOURNAL, Mr. Jacob H.
Schiff ventured to suggest the reverse influence, and to intimate that
the association of England with Russia was having an adverse effect
upon the Jews in England. While Mr. Schiff does not tell us upon what
evidence he bases his views, I venture to guess that it consists
largely of the mistrust and ill-will caused in England by a small
coterie of German-born bankers and their following. But Mr. Schiff
must know that this ill-will is in no way connected with the fact that
the men referred to are members of the Jewish race. Most of them have
never taken the least interest in Jewish affairs, some even have
ostentatiously kept themselves quite apart from any connection with
them. And what is more, the feeling against them is shared by Jews as
well as by non-Jews in England.
Perhaps more serious still is Mr. Schiff's presentment concerning
German anti-Semitism. To speak simply of "a certain anti-Semitic
tendency in Germany" is to coat the truth with so much honey as almost
to reverse its meaning. Anti-Semitism in Germany, and especially in
Prussia, has kept the Jews far from any positions of importance in
university life, on the bench, and in all state and military affairs.
And to add that the war "will crush out most of this anti-Semitic
tendency" is to fly in the very face of well-ascertained and
authenticated facts of very recent occurrence. In _Harper's Weekly_
for February 6th of this year (p. 122), a series of such facts is
adduced. Nor can Mr. Schiff forget that forced conversion away from
the Jewish faith and communion has nowhere taken on the dangerous
proportions it has in the Fatherland. Russia, it is true, has martyred
many Jewish bodies; German "Kultur" has quenched too many Jewish
souls. History will have to decide which has done the greater hurt to
the Jewish cause.]