Henry Wickham Steed, The Hapsburg Monarchy (London: Constable and Company, Ltd., 1919)

THE JEWS

Among the peoples of Austria-Hungary the Jewish people stands first in importance. It is not usually enumerated among the Hapsburg "nationalities," though the Zionist movement has brought into being a Jewish National Organization which was represented in the Parliament of 1907 by two Zionist deputies and by a politician who was described as a "Moderate Israelite." In Statistical Year Books the Jews figure only as a "denomination." Numerically they appear to be less considerable than the Germans, the Magyars, the Czechs, the Poles, the Ruthenes, the Serbo-Croatians, the Rumanes, and only surpass, with their official religious total Of 2,300,000, the Slovenes and the Italians. Economically, politically and in point of general influence they are, however, the most significant element in the Monarchy. No foreign observer of Austro-Hungarian affairs can close his eyes to the Jewish question, however much he may seek to ignore it or to "beg" it by adopting an unreasoning philo-semitic or anti-semitic attitude. The greatest obstacle to a comprehension of the terms of the problem is the difficulty of obtaining precise and reliable information. It is far easier to get at the truth of the Czech-German question in Bohemia, of the Slav-Italian question in Dalmatia and Istria, and even of the complicated struggle between Magyars and non-Magyars in Hungary, than to ascertain the merits of the Jewish question. Other ethnico-religious issues are local and special. They can usually be expressed in terms of language, creed, or of avowed political aspiration. The Jewish question is universal and elusive. It cannot be truly expressed either in terms of religion, nationality, or race. The Jews themselves seem destined so to arouse the passions of those with whom they come into contact that impartiality in regard to them is rare. Some Jews, indeed, regard the very recognition of the existence of a Jewish question as a confession of anti-

semitism. These are the "Assimilationists." Others devote their lives and energies to a solution of the question in the Zionist sense and denounce as renegades all fellow-Jews who seek to hide their race and religion. Between the conflicting statements and standpoints of the Jews themselves, unbiased enquirers are often bewildered and relinquish in despair the attempts to "get at the bottom of" the Jewish question either in its general significance or in its bearing upon individual States and countries.

Yet it may safely be said that no question deserves more earnest study. It assumes a hundred forms, reaches into unsuspected regions of national and international life, and influences, for good or evil, the march of civilization. The main difficulty is to find a starting-point from which to approach it, a coign of vantage high enough to command a view of its innumerable ramifications. Is it a question of race or of religion? It is both and more. Is it a question of economics, finance and of international trade? It is these and something besides. Are the peculiar characteristics that form at once the strength and weakness of the Jews a result of religious persecution, or have the Jews been persecuted because these characteristics have rendered them odious to the peoples that have harboured them? This is the old question whether the hen or the egg should take genealogical precedence. Approached from the historico-religious standpoint the Jewish question is inextricably complicated and, despite its thrilling interest, is apt to prove insoluble. It needs to be approached practically, in the light of direct experience of Jews both as individuals and in the mass. When such experience has been acquired, the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures are seen to glow with new light; the language of the Prophets becomes intelligible; the fiery denunciations of John the Baptist, the delicate irony and revolutionary force of the parables of Christ are appreciated as never before; the conception of Jehovah is seen to be a faithful reflection of the Jewish mind, and the High Priests, Scribes, Pharisees, and Sad

proved them to exist potentially or actually in the Jewry of to-day. No country in the world save, perhaps, the United States, is better adapted than Austria-Hungary to a study of the Jewish question. Though there are fewer Jews in the Monarchy than in Russia and though it does not offer, on the one hand, spectacles like those to be seen within the Russian Jewish Zone nor, on the other, such possibilities of advancement to the very highest positions in the State as have been filled by Jews in England and Italy where the Jews are comparatively few in number, the Hapsburg Monarchy presents the student with unequalled opportunities of observing the Jews as they are, in various environments and in all save the extremest stages of degradation and emancipation. In the Spanish Jews, or Sephardim, of Bosnia-Herzegovina and of Trieste, and in the German-Polish, or Ashkenazim Jews of Galicia, Hungary and Bohemia the two main branches of the Jewish faith, if not of the Jewish race, are to be met with. The question whether the Sephardim belong to a different and more aristocratic branch of the Semitic family than the Ashkenazim is still undecided by ethnologists, though experience suggests that the superiority claimed by the Sephardim over the Ashkenazim may well have a historico-social if not an ethnical basis. Physically, there is no doubt as to the superiority of the Sephardim type; and if it be objected that the degraded, bow-legged, repulsive type often to be found among the Ashkenazim is to be regarded as a product of persecution during the Christian era, it may be answered that the same type is to be found on Egyptian and Babylonian monuments, and that the Etruscan Museum of the Vatican contains vases and other terre cotte bearing caricatures of the identical type which anti-semitic caricaturists are wont to portray as that of the old-clothes dealer or of the German Jewish stock-jobber. Such evidence as is available goes to show that the various Jewish types are pre-historical if not aboriginal, and to furnish further proof, if proof were needed, of the

strength of the Jewish stock and of the concentrated intensity of its race-character.

This intensity which the Law of Moses, in its Talmudic wrappings, has helped to maintain, is the main feature and foundation of the Jewish question - a question at once qualitative and quantitative. Whoever said, "The Jews are the salt of the earth-but you can't dine off salt," put the problem in a nutshell, in so far, at least, as it regards non-Jewish peoples. Anti-Jewish feeling can almost invariably be expressed in terms of the percentage of Jews to non-Jews intermingled with the other elements of a community. When the percentage rises above a certain point - a point determined in each case by the character of the non-Jewish population - anti-Semitism makes its appearance and finds expression in ways varying from social ostracism to massacre. In Austria-Hungary, anti-Semitism is both political and endemic. In the Slovak villages of Moravia and NorthWestern Hungary, it rises and falls, with the number of Jewish usurers pedlars, and liquor dealers in the region. During a recent electoral campaign in Hungary, a candidate of Jewish origin but, no longer of Jewish faith, who was standing for Parliament in a Slovak constituency, enquired of his fellow-Jews how they fared and whether life were easy. "When we are two or three in a village," was the answer things go well and there is a living for everybody, But when others come, things go badly. Then there is competition and the peasants hate us." The same, mutatis mutandis may be said of large cities. The Jews of Vienna would long since have ceased to be exposed to anti-semitic agitation were their ranks not swelled every year by thousands of new-comers from Galicia and Hungary who invade the field of exploitation conquered by their predecessors and make economic war upon Jew and non-Jew alike. The desirability of creating in Vienna, Lower Austria, and the German provinces of Bohemia a " preserve " against the influx from Galicia has often been discussed by well-to-do Viennese Jews, and as often abandoned

as impracticable. The existence of the idea tends, however, to show that the Jews themselves recognize the nature of the problem with which their race confronts the rest of civilized mankind. Apart from the freedom of movement constitutionally guaranteed in Austria, the overcrowding of the great Jewish reservoir in Galicia would make the imposition of restrictions a matter of difficulty even were such restrictions otherwise justifiable. The Jew may be an exploiter of others' labour but it is false to suppose that he exploits only non Jews. The sweating dens of East London prove the contrary. In Galicia, as in several parts of Hungary, Jew exploits Jew with a remorselessness not surpassed by any Jewish exploitation of Christians. The exploited are gradually reduced to a "standard of life " pitifully near starvation-point; and when even such a standard is not obtainable, the reservoir overflows in the form of migration and emigration. Without incurring odium, a modern State cannot check the overflow within its own borders; but one of the grave, if not the gravest, aspects of the Jewish problem to-day is the manner in which the overflow by emigration is being checked, and necessarily being checked, by countries like the United States and England that formerly allowed pauper aliens to enter free.

It is estimated that between 1881 and 1908 some 2,000,000 Jews emigrated from Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Rumania to the United States and England. Of this total Austria-Hungary furnished more than 300,000. America received 1,750,000, and England most of the remainder. The American immigration statistics show that the poorest of the emigrants entering the United States are Jews. The regulation that immigrants must prove themselves to possess on arrival a minimum sum Of 25 dollars excludes thousands of Jews annually - in 1911, 14,500 were sent back to Europe from New York alone. In 1901 when the regulations were less severe, the average amount possessed by Jewish immigrants was only 8.7 dollars as compared with 41.5 dollars possessed by Scottish, 38.7

dollars by English, and 37.6 by Japanese immigrants. The British Immigration Laws also prevent the emigration of large numbers of Jewish paupers who would otherwise leave the Ghettos of Russia and the Jewish districts of Austria-Hungary. The poverty of the mass of Russian Jews is often attributed to political persecution and to the confinement of the Russian Jews within a Jewish zone. In Galicia there is no such confinement, yet the mass of the Jews remains poverty-stricken. Whereas in Galicia they form only ii percent of the population, they make up more than one-half of the inhabitants without regular employment. Jewish workmen who earn as much as 14s. a week are considered fortunate; the more wealthy Jews are dealers in spirits, pedlars, usurers, and horse-brokers. Their life is still in most respects the life of the Ghetto.

The tendency of the Jews to congregate in and overcrowd one quarter of a city or town - they seem to feel invincible repugnance to life in the open country - is the most striking characteristic of the race taken in the mass. This explanation of the tendency currently given by Jewish and pro-Jewish writers is that it is a consequence of Ghetto life, the Ghetto having been invented by oppressors in order to facilitate control over an alien and too active race. The view that the Ghetto is a necessary and inevitable consequence of the Mosaic Law as developed, or perverted, by the Mishna and the Talmud is, however, more logical and historically sounder. It was recognized by implication in a memorandum presented some years ago to the Ottoman Government by a German-Jewish Society for Jewish Colonization in which it was pointed out that "the sending of immigrants to various points (in Turkey) must not entail the entire separation of individuals and families from each other; for, in order to be able to fulfil his religious duties, a Jew is forced to live among his co-religionists." If it be true that, in one form or another, the Ghetto is an internal Jewish necessity in so far as the Jews remain faithful to their creed-a necessity proceeding from the

command that the Jewish people keep itself pure and undefiled by contact with the Gentiles - it would follow that the tendency to congregate in Ghettos must have facilitated the control and segregation of the Jews by police arrangements imposed from outside, There are no external police arrangements of the kind in London, Vienna, or New York, yet in each of those cities there are Jewish quarters where overcrowding is almost as noticeable as in the Ghettos of Odessa or Lodz. Among the more recent and sincere literature on the Jewish question that has grown up under the influence of the Zionist movement, striking admissions are to be found of the truth of the view that the Ghetto is a Talmudic necessity. Dr. Jacob Fromer, a native of the Ghetto of Lodz in Russian Poland and sometime librarian of the Jewish community at Berlin, has, as an authority on the Talmud and as a critic of Professor Werner Sombart's important work Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben helped to define the question in its veritable terms. In endeavouring to reconstruct his well-known work on Modern Capitalism, Werner Sombart was led to investigate the origin of the "Capitalist Spirit," and in course of analysing Max Weber's theory of the relationship between Puritanism and the development of Capitalism, came to the conclusion that all the elements of Puritanism which really contributed to the growth of the capitalist spirit were drawn from the Jewish religion. Going a step further in his investigation, Sombart, after patient study of Judaism and Jewish history, established a causal connexion between the Jews and the development of economic life in its capitalistic form; that is to say, he ascribes to the Jews the chief influence in the passage of the civilized world from the "pre-economic" into the economic stage. Those whom the question interests as a problem in economics must be referred to the original work;[1] but for present purposes a brief summary of his thesis may be given.

With the realism of the modern German savant, Sombart lays down the principle that the man of business can have no other object than the making of profit. System, expediency, and calculation are his three guides. These fundamental postulates of Capitalism are to be found in the Jewish religion. The relationship of the Jew to Jehovah is not a filial nor a loving relationship. Judaism, in its essence, contains no trace of belief in Divine grace and no mysticism properly so called. The intercourse of Jews with their Deity is sober, mechanical, and businesslike; all their acts are believed to be registered in a celestial ledger, the good deeds on the credit, the bad deeds on the debit side. Even interest is reckoned. The Old Testament scarcely mentions other reward for righteousness or punishment for unrighteousness than the gain or loss of temporal goods. Post-Biblical Judaism transferred the profit and loss into the other world but retained the acquisition of wealth as the most laudable object in life alongside of the observance of Divine commands. The Talmud, which is a codification of commentaries upon the Mishna which was in its turn a codification of commentaries upon the Torah, or Mosaic Law, is filled with acute business precepts. The application of these precepts has been facilitated by the distinction between Jews and Gentiles, a distinction that made non-Jews a legitimate object of exploitation by Jewish usurers and money-lenders. Sombart, who claims that there is hardly a people in the world so closely bound up with its religion as the Jews, finds, therefore, a prima facie case for the belief that Capitalism is essentially a product of the Jewish mind.

Nevertheless religion is not the only nor, perhaps, even the primary element in the life of a people. It is subject to development and change. If, in all phases of the evolution of a race, permanent features can be detected, they must be attributed to some deeper cause, and religious precepts themselves must be assumed to have found acceptance because they corresponded on the whole to the aboriginal temperament of the race. Following some modern Jewish

writers and, indirectly, Spanish writers of the seventeenth century, Sombart finds the explanation of these permanent Jewish qualities in the nomadic character of the tribes that formed the Jewish people. During the period of their wanderings in the desert - a period estimated to have lasted many thousands of years - the Jews acquired an ineradicably nomadic character. On the hot sandy wastes, wander-ing from oasis to oasis, the race characteristics of the Jews became fixed, their blood acquired its peculiar quality. Without a present, ever looking forward to a brilliant future, carrying with them their treasures, they passed from region to region, from country to country, from people to people, nowhere taking firm root, not even in Canaan, the Promised Land. Sombart believes that if the Jews had remained in the East or among quick-witted, "hot-blooded" peoples, modern capitalism would never have been created. But the migration of the Jews from Spain. and Portugal to the North of Europe and their settlement among "cold-blooded," slow-minded Northern peoples, led, after the discovery of America, to the development of capitalized trade and industry in its modern form, a development facilitated by the dispersion of the nomadically constituted Jews throughout the Old and New Worlds.

Like many a German scientific system, Sombart's thesis would have gained in plausibility had it been less completely worked out. In some respects it is probable that Oriental quick-wittedness, long familiarity with financial transactions in theory and practice, dispersion in various countries and an exceptional position among the peoples of the earth, enabled the Jews to take the greatest advantage of "epochmaking" events like the invention of the compass, of printing, and of the steam engine, just as they subsequently exploited the electric telegraph and other forms of scientific enterprise. The Medieval guild system, the limitation of commercial and industrial activity, the principle that an honest merchant must give good value for money and should disdain to seduce his neighbour's customers, were bound to give way before Jewish impatience of artificial restrictions and the

Jewish practice of hawking wares, cutting prices, advertising and selling on credit. Bills of exchange, stocks, shares, bank-notes and debentures, the creation of Stock and Produce Exchanges, the financing of Princes, Governments, and commercial undertakings are doubtless in large measure Jewish inventions, all or most of which appear to be contained in germ in the Talmud and its doctrines. But it seems as serious an error to attribute to the Jews the creation of the capitalist system as it would be to make them responsible for the present bureaucratization of finance and industry, a process which, as Sombart himself observes, is tending to decrease the number and possibly even the influence of Jews in the management of big financial concerns in Germany and other countries. Sombart writes, "To all appearances the influence of the Jewish people (in economic life) has begun quite recently to diminish. It is indubitable and can be ascertained by simple enumeration, that among the managers and directors of the big banks, Jewish names are becoming rarer. The Jewish element seems really to be losing ground. It is interesting to inquire into the causes of this significant phenomenon. They may be of several kinds. On the one hand, non-Jews have adapted themselves more completely to the requirements of the capitalist system, they have become 'skilled' whereas the Jews have partly lost their former special aptitude for capitalism in consequence of the improvement of their social position and of a decrease in the intensity of their religious feeling. On the other hand, we must probably look for the causes of the diminution of Jewish economic influence in the change that has taken place in the conditions of economic life itself. Capitalist undertakings are transforming themselves more and more into bureaucratic administrations that do not require special trading capacity in the same degree as formerly. Bureaucratism is taking the place of commercialism."[1]

There are other reasons than those mentioned by Sombart for a diminution of Jewish influence in and over big

capitalist undertakings. Though the gregarious instinct is strong in the Jew, he remains psychologically an individualist, refractory to external discipline, and a speculator in the widest sense of the term. A circumscribed, bureaucratic career has few attractions for him. His mental sensitiveness leads him to prefer other walks of life and to transfer to them his trading proclivities in proportion as finance and industry become bureaucratized. Art, the stage, the law, music, journalism, and politics appeal to him as offering a freer field for his activities. Confidence in his own superior mental agility has always made him an advocate of "liberty" and rendered him impatient of restrictions. Hence his political Radicalism. The body of economico-political doctrine known as "Liberalism" was largely built up by Jewish, crypto-Jewish or pro-Jewish writers; and, in German-speaking countries especially, the "Progressive" parties have been recruited largely from Jewish politicians and supported by Jewish organs. The German advocates of the "Manchester School" in economics were principally Jews, whose object seemed to be the establishment of freedom of the kind defined by Kurnberger, in another connexion, as "the free fox in the free hen-roost." The State Socialism, opposed by Bismarck to German Radical and Social Democratic tendencies, bore a strongly anti-Jewish character, just as the Christian Socialism of Lueger was anti-semitic and aimed at protecting the economically unfit against the most glaring evils of unrestricted capitalistic enterprise. In Germany and Austria- Hungary at least, "Revolutionary" Socialism and Social Democracy have been guided by Jewish leaders and inspired by Jewish doctrine. Karl Marx, a Jew, wrote Das Kapital, the socialist economic bible; Lassalle, his rival and co-founder of the German Social Democratic Party, was also a Jew; Jewish names like Singer, Bernstein, Arons, Fischer and Stadthagen are prominent in the more recent history of German Socialism; and, to-day, half the Socialist party in the German Reichstag is composed of Jews. In Austria-Hungary the spread of Socialism has been largely

the result of Jewish propaganda. Dr. Victor Adler, the founder and leader of the Austrian party, is a Jew, as are many of his followers. In Hungary the party was also founded and inspired by Jews. These phenomena are doubtless attributable in part to the quickness of Jewish intelligence and to the ingrained Jewish proclivity to discount the future or, so to speak, to deal in "futures," political as well as commercial. Recognition of the fact that the capitalistic system tends to develop in the direction foreseen by Marx, and that the casting vote in the great struggle between the State and wealthy capitalistic corporations is likely to be given by the organized masses of the people, has undoubtedly influenced the more wide-awake of the Jews and induced them to strive in time to control the masses through Socialist organizations, in the hope of securing a potent influence upon legislation and upon the future construction of society. Socialism possesses to boot the virtue of being an antidote to economic anti-Semitism. The stock reply of German Socialist leaders to the attacks of anti-Semites and to the grumblings of their own followers against the deleterious effects of Jewish economic activity, is that the evils complained of are inherent in the capitalist system of which the Jews are, it is true, the most prominent representatives but which are not specifically Jewish; and that the only means of removing these evils is to be found in the struggle of classes, the organization of a class-conscious proletariate, and in the conquest and reformation of society by International Revolutionary Social Democracy.

Whatever its cause or causes, the prominence of Jews, in contemporary Socialist movements, as in the Liberal and Radical movements of older generations, is a fact too well established to need demonstration. The sayings that the Jews are as yeast working in the lump of human society, or that they are as foreign matter in the blood-social, causing fever by their presence, go but a little way to explain the phenomenon. Neither is the euphemistic thesis which attributes the revolutionary activity of Jews to a strong sense of

abstract justice that impels them to revolt against social and political inequalities, much more adequate an explanation than the more cynical argument that the Jews invariably favour the removal of disabilities and external restrictions, because they are conscious of their ability to outwit competitors in an open field. If any explanation is to be found, it must probably be sought in the mental characteristic which most distinguishes the Jew from the Indo-German or "Aryan." This characteristic is superabundant intellectualism or power of abstract ratiocination. Were the world governed by logic and organized on rational principles deduced from established premises, the Jew might excel in constructive statecraft. His faculty of concentration, his intense inner life, his freedom from the trammels of place and country, his practical rationalism and workaday purposefulness would fit him in a peculiar degree to rule a world organized on some symmetrical, intellectual plan. In such a world every act would have its reasonable object, every political privilege its well-defined constitutional sanction. Socialist movements, particularly those of the Marxist type, are directed towards the rationalization of the social structure and the substitution of "wits" for force in national and international life. Sombart maintains, in the course of an acute analysis of Jewish psychology,' that "the whole Jewish question is contained in the words "Mojech versus Kojech" (brain against force); and cites the characteristic Yiddish proverb, "Gott soll behuten var judischen Mojech und var gojischen Kojech" (May God preserve from Jewish wits and Gentile force). The belief that "Force rules the world still, has ruled it, shall rule it" is antithetical to the Jewish ideal which is expressed in the modern Jewish-Radical thesis that the internationalization of business and financial interests must in the long run prevent the outbreak of wars, because wars will not be "worth while." "Worth while" and "not worth while" are essentially Jewish conceptions, just as the feeling defined by an Irish-American wag in the phrase "Not all

the 'worth whiles' of life can be expressed in terms of the United States currency" is fundamentally non-Jewish. Jewish activity has always some rational purpose in view - usually an immediate purpose. If there be a chance of ulterior advantage, religious, intellectual, financial, or political, so much the better. But acquiescence in an apparently purposeless universe, joy in valueless things, a sense of forming part of a world that is rolling on throughout the ages with no discoverable aim or object, a desire for mystic communion with the Spirit of the Cosmos, are rarely to be found in Jewish minds. As Sombart truly observes, the semi-sentimental pessimism of modern Jewish writers like Schnitzler and George Hirschfeld proceeds from a conviction of the purposelessness and, therefore, of the sadness of the world. Childlike delight in the mere fact of existence, and the old Greek joy in effort without care for result, are profoundly non-Jewish. Goethe's enquiry in "Gott und Welt,"

Was war' ein Gott, der nur von Aussen stiesse?
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse

seems to be directed against the conception of a Jehovah-like deity who, standing outside the universe, controls everything according to his own pleasure. The true Jewish thinker has "no use" for an illogical universe and little admiration for irrational Genius. One such, in dealing with the problem of races and the purpose of civilization, says,[1] "In civilized man, the consciously creative intellect replaces blind instinct. The task of the intellect is to extinguish instinct, to replace impulses by purposeful will, to reflect instead of merely perceiving. The individual only becomes a complete man when the activity of his reason dissolves and replaces all existing predispositions and quenches his instincts. When the detachment from instinct is complete, we have before us absolute Genius with its entire inner freedom from natural law. It is the task of civilized life to

emancipate itself from all mysticism, from everything obscure and impulsive in the life of instinct, and to develop the purely rational form of the intellect." Judged by this standard, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, and Goethe, who have some claim to rank as geniuses, would cut a poor figure, even if they were admitted to be embryonically civilized. Such a civilization would leave little place for unreasoned perception, for spontaneous delight in beauty, - natural, artistic, or moral. Yet this delight has usually been considered an index of civilization, nay, the level of a civilization has been judged by the fineness of the taste that characterized it. Were it practicable, this Jewish conception of civilization would produce a world of intolerable rational beings similar to those abstract individuals conceived by orthodox political economists; a brainy, brain-glorious, uninhabitable world, a universe of pharisaical, hairsplitting ergotists from whom the breath of life would have departed.

It is nevertheless clear that the penetrating intelligence of Jewish minds and their power of rapid reasoning and combination, have rendered and are likely to render valuable service to civilization within certain limits, especially in those branches of human activity that are susceptible of logical treatment. The danger to civilization involved in the Jewish Question is that failure, on the part of Jews and non-Jews alike, to perceive the profound differences between the Jewish and the non-Jewish mentality, together with the concentration of financial and political power in Jewish hands, may lead once again to those instinctive revolts of non-Jewish majorities against Jewish minorities that figure so largely in the troubled history of the Jewish people. Jewish immoderation and non-Jewish resentment have, again and again, impeded what might have been fruitful co-operation for the common good. The Jews themselves scarcely seem to know how strongly the tide of anti-Jewish feeling is already running in many highly civilized countries. Even in Germany, the country for which Ashkenazim Jews feel, or

profess to feel, special devotion, recent publications of a pronouncedly anti-Jewish character have met with singular success. One such [1] roundly proposes the expulsion from Germany of all Jews not possessing German citizenship; the degradation to the position of tolerated aliens of all Jews and descendants of Jews, whether of pure or mixed blood, who possessed citizenship and were registered as Jews in 1871, the exclusion of Jews, baptized and unbaptized, from all public offices, from service in the army and navy, from the bar, from the franchise and from eligibility to Parliament, from the directorships of banking companies and theatres, from the proprietorship and editorship of newspapers and from journalism in general. The Jews should also, urges this writer, be deprived of the right to own land or to lend money on landed mortgages, and should be required, as aliens, to pay double taxation. It is a question, he adds, of "saving the German soul." That a book, not a mere pamphlet, containing such proposals should run through a dozen editions in a few weeks is assuredly a sign of the times. Its success brings into stronger relief the importance of the service rendered by Sombart to students of the Jewish question, and indeed to the Jews themselves. This service has been recognized competent Jewish writers and by none more warmly than by Dr. Jacob Fromer, the Talmudist above referred to, whose striking review of Sombart's work in the Zukunft of October 28, 1911, is in itself an illuminating contribution to the literature of the Jewish question. Despite over-systematization of its thesis and the questionable value of some of the evidence adduced, Sombart's book, writes Dr. Fromer, is of extraordinary significance for the study of Jewry. In virtue, of its intuitive recognition of historical connexions, its author's deep knowledge of the well-nigh inaccessible literature of his subject, his honest effort to avoid special pleading and to view questions impartially, the book surpasses anything of the kind hitherto written. It is the first serious attempt to approach the Jewish problem in a scientific spirit,

and to employ methods that ought to have been adopted from the beginning - the method of seeking for knowledge. "If any kind of solution for the Jewish problem is to be found, three points must be settled; first, whether the forces working in Jewry are not so valuable as to merit preservation, despite the disturbances they cause in the life of the peoples among whom the Jews live; secondly, whether, in any case, these forces are not indestructible, and therefore to be made the best of; and thirdly, by what means these forces can successfully be combated if they prove to be destructible and of inferior quality. If the need for knowledge is once recognized, it will easily be understood how much damage has been done by modern Jewish historians. Nobody who has accustomed himself to regard things from their standpoint can acquire, without difficulty, a clear and accurate idea of Jewry." The modern Jews, whose prototype was Moses Mendelssohn, continues Dr. Fromer, have broken with the tradition of their fathers and have plainly declared that they wish to remain permanently among the Gentiles and to be absorbed by Gentile civilization. On the strength of this declaration they have demanded and received equality of rights. But instead of stating plainly that certain ancient characteristics, usages and views were bound to stick to the Jews for generations, modern Jewish writers have systematically striven to obscure the truth and to render yet darker and more difficult the arduous approaches to knowledge of Jewry. They have declared Talmudism - the central organ into which the sap of Jewry has flowed since Biblical times, the organ that has nourished all Jewry, the Modern not less than the Orthodox, and has worked the unprecedented miracle of keeping a landless people mentally and physically healthy throughout the centuries - to be an excrescence raised on the body of Jewry by stress of untoward circumstances. They have minutely demonstrated that the Jews who have remained true to Tradition - the overwhelming majority of the nation - are degenerates from type, and that the Ghetto, the segregation necessary for the preservation of the type,

the Ghetto in which the Jews have always lived since their entrance into History, in the Land of Goshen and in Canaan, in Alexandria, Rome, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere, is an invention of the peoples in whose midst they have dwelt; and that the Jewish martyrdom, the inevitable consequence of voluntary segregation, has in all times and places been due to Gentile brutality. Finally, these modern Jewish historians have removed the name of Jewry from the list of nations and have represented it to be a group of human beings bound together merely by the bond of a religious denomination. This has been proclaimed in the name of Science, Truth, and strict "objectivity"!

Professor Sombart, claims Dr. Fromer, deserves recognition as the first non-Jewish student to fight his way through the insulating Talmudic crust into clear comprehension of Jewry and to take the first step towards agreement between two worlds hitherto strangers to each other. But the question arises, What is Talmudic Jewry, and whet-ice the power of the Talmud? The Talmud, answers Fromer, is largely a product of the Pharisee reaction against Hellenism with which Jewry came into contact after the conquest of the East by Alexander the Great. The Jews have ever been influenced by two tendencies - on the one hand the nomadic, Mosaic, Pharisee, Talmudic tendency, and, on the other, the tendency to adapt themselves to their environment, to become assimilated by the Gentiles and to forget the Law. Their yearnings for the flesh-pots of Egypt, their worship of the golden calf, their propensity to intermarry with the heathen despite the warnings of the Law and the Prophets, show how strong was the assimilationist tendency from the beginning of their recorded or symbolic history. The formidable list of names given by Ezra [1] proves how many even among the sons of the priests had married strange women; just as the defiant reply of the Jewish women to Jeremiah in Egypt [2] showed the extreme reluctance of the Jews to cease "to burn incense unto the

Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem." The reason for this reluctance was characteristic of the profit and loss relationship of the Jews to Jehovah, as indeed to the "Queen of Heaven." "But since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and indeed by the famine." The history of the Jews in Canaan is largely the history of a struggle between the nomadic, Mosaic tendency, and the assimilationist agricultural instinct. But, in the long run, the nomadic, Mosaic tendency always proved the stronger; and the popularity of the Pharisees who, with their strict literal observance of the Law, incorporated it, is a sign that it lay deep in the temperament of the people. Whether it would have succeeded in preserving the Jews from absorption by other peoples and races had not the impact of Greek culture driven Judaism back upon itself is an interesting but now largely academic question. Against the Greek teachings and reasonings that threatened to seduce the Jewish intelligence, and did, in fact, make headway, among the more cultured classes, the Assidean party waged desperate war, and the Pharisees, the spiritual children of the Assideans, completed their work. "The preservation of Judaism in its ancient exclusiveness was their programme," writes Mr. G. E. Abbot (Israel in Europe; Hebraism and Hellenism, p. 6). "All public undertakings, all national acts as well as all private transactions, were to be measured by the rigid standard of religion. The Law in the hands of the Pharisees became a procrustean bed upon which the mind of the nation was to be stretched or maimed according to the requirements of nationalism and the interpretations of the Scribes. This inflexible orthodoxy, with its concomitants of discipline and sacrifice of individuality, was in perfect accord with the Hebrew temperament, and the Pharisees must be regarded as the interpreters of the views dear to the

great mass of their compatriots." To the ,i>Sophia of the Greeks the Pharisee opposed the "Law," the Torah, which he meditated and commented upon with the subtlety of a casuist and the gratitude of a shipwrecked mariner who has found a plank of safety. The study of the Torah day and night and the observance of its innumerable ceremonial precepts, became the ideal of Jewish piety. "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly . . . nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night. . . . Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."[1] Here again the profit and loss relationship to the Deity is clearly indicated. As Dr. Fromer observes, nothing in the Jewish religion is done for nothing, everything has its reason and object. "This original trait of cool-headed piety runs from the Patriarchs by way of Mosaism and Talmudism uninterruptedly down to the present day. There are no essential differences between the service of Abraham to Jehovah and the religiosity of the pious men who predominate in the Ghetto. Both are based on a do ut des system and are diametrically opposed to the Christian doctrine of unearned grace." [2]

The Sadducees struggled for centuries against the Pharisee tendency to wrap Judaism in an insulating mantle of precepts and commentaries, but the fall of Jerusalem decided the struggle definitely in favour of the Pharisees, who so multiplied commentaries upon the Law that codification became indispensable. A code named Mishna (Doctrine) was elaborated. It consisted of six parts dealing with agriculture, feasts, marriage law, the civil and penal law, the law of the Temple and cleanliness. The Mishna became in its turn an object of veneration, study, comment, and casuistical interpretation. Every letter and syllable was examined and stretched to its utmost capacity, From generation to generation the Mishna commentaries grew until their volume became unmanageable. Once more codification proved

necessary. Towards the middle of the fifth century A.D. a Mishna Code was formed in Palestine and, at the end of the same century, a second code at Babylon. Both codes were called "Talmud" (Research or Investigation). While the Palestine Talmud played an insignificant part in the subsequent life of Jewry, the Babylonian Talmud was regarded as a national possession. It has remained "The Book" for Orthodox Jewry, It replaced the Torah as the fountain of all wisdom and as the guide in every detail of daily life. The Talmud, despite its character as a commentary upon a commentary upon a Law of uncertain origin, has not only preserved the Jewish Nation but has imbued it with a Pharisee spirit and separated it, perhaps for ever, from the main stream of human culture. The teachings of Christ were a running protest against the mummifying influence of Phariseeism, but a protest addressed, in the first place, to Jews and based on the approaching fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. Pauline Christianity went further, took the offensive against Hellenism and vanquished it, but its victory was bought at the expense of Jewry and of the distinction between Jew and Gentile. Pharisee Jewry, on the other hand, continued to "kill the prophets," remained on the defensive behind its phylacteries and commentaries, and ultimately took refuge in the Ark of the Talmud, in which it has lived to this day.

An enlightening picture of the bearing of the Talmud upon the Jewish question is given in Dr. Jakob Fromer's autobiographical book, Ghetto-Daemmerung.[1] The intensity of the respect that surrounds the learned Talmudist in the Ghetto even though he be poverty-stricken and accustomed to rely for his sustenance upon the meagre earnings of his wife; the economic value of children versed in the Talmud and in commentaries like the Schulchan Aruch Code can hardly be conceived by the Gentile who finds no counterpart for such phenomena in the range of his experience. Boys able smartly to solve questions on the interpretation

of the Law arc much sought after as husbands for marriageable "heiresses." Such questions are often of the most pettifogging kind. Dr. Fromer gives an example of the "problems" that formed part of his "discursive training" in the study of the Talmud. Discursive study, he writes,[1] consists of collecting, examining, and comparing everything that the Talmud and its commentators say on a given subject. Some questions are juridical as, for instance, "May a judge be called as a witness?" Others are psychological, e.g. "A man has admitted half of a total liability that is not susceptible of proof. Some Talmudists consider him credible since he might have denied the whole liability. Others think that to deny the whole liability would require more impudence than everybody possesses, and conclude that lie only admitted half of his liability out of weakness." On this point the youthful Talmudist is expected to give a reasoned opinion. Further, "An egg laid on the Sabbath day may not be eaten. But what if half of it be laid before sundown on Friday and half after sundown, that is to say on the Sabbath?" The legendary curate would reply, "Parts of it are excellent," but the Talmudist cannot escape from his problems by joking. He must conscientiously work through the countless ritual, business, social and legal problems, and the smarter or the more casuistical his answers the greater his renown. Dr. Fromer gives a striking account of his experience when on his way to visit his uncle, the miracle-working Rabbi of Szochlin. Among the pilgrims to the Rabbi were a number of Jews on the look-out for profitable husbands for their daughters. One such met an acquaintance who was accompanied by his son, a weedy youth of fifteen years, whom the acquaintance sought to embarrass by questions on Talmudic problems. The boy "lay low," answered warily, and presently turned the tables on his questioner, who, struck by the boy's knowledge, asked the father whether a wife had already been found for him. The father replied scornfully that the Schadchonim (marriage-

brokers) were always bidding for the boy, but that there was no hurry because his learning grew from day to day, and with it his value. Bargaining then began. It ended with the conclusion of a contract under which the boy was bound to marry the questioner's daughter, three years his senior, in return for a payment of L40 and ten years' keep for the boyhusband, including meat every day.

Similar scenes are often represented in the Jewish jargon plays - plays usually full of wit and pathos, full, especially, of the characteristic "Jewish jokes" which the Jews love to crack even at their own expense, though rarely without pride in the smartness of Jewish intelligence. Those who have never lived amongst or come into regular contact with Jews in the mass can hardly realize how completely the Jewish differs in its essence from the Gentile world, and how acute are the issues with which the Jewish problem confronts modern civilization. The Jews themselves are now divided into two main schools of thought upon the problem, the one more or less assimilationist, the other more or less Zionist. The standpoint of the assimilationists is roughly that the entire removal of restrictions and disabilities is all that is needed for the problem to be solved automatically by the gradual absorption of the Jews. Where no disabilities exist, the Jewish question, they contend, rapidly assumes an inoffensive denominational character and ceases to have ethnical or political significance; even the religious practices that tend to preserve the children of Israel as a "peculiar people" lose intensity under the benign influence of Gentile culture and society. To some extent the assimilationists take up the old Sadducee standpoint; and it would be easy to prove their claim that, when granted complete equality, numbers of Jews have become, to all outward appearances, good Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, or Americans. The debatable point is whether the thesis that appears to hold good in regard to some individuals would hold good for the mass, always supposing the mass to be anxious for assimilation. On this point it is impossible to speak with

confidence, especially in the affirmative. The intensity of the Jewish race character is such that the Jewish strain will persist for generations in non-Jewish families into which Jewish blood has once entered. The strain may be productive of beauty or genius, or it may, on the other hand, bring the mental derangement so common in the better-class Jewish families. In his pamphlet, Die Zukunft der Juden, Werner Sombart gives on the authority of Dr. Wieth-Knudsen some striking, though incomplete, statistical data tending to show marriages between Jews and non-Jews to be less fruitful than the average of purely Jewish or purely non-Jewish unions in analogous circumstances, and asserts that the children of mixed marriages are apt to lack mental unity and equilibrium. It is indeed a question whether the children of mixed marriages escape, in the first generation at least, the dualism of character noticeable in half-breeds the world over. When they escape it the characteristics of one race usually dominate those of the other. The present writer has in his possession a remarkable letter from the son of an Austrian-Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, born and educated in Western Europe, and, to all intents and purposes, completely assimilated as regards taste, habits, and general views of life. The letter was written in the autumn Of 1905 from the Hungarian capital-a city commonly nick-named "Judapest." It runs: -

"...I have for years past realized to a partial extent (for wholly to understand its endless bifurcations and ramifications must ever be beyond my grasp) the vital importance to nationalities and the political and economic significance of the Jewish question. But I was not prepared, nor do I believe that one well-informed person in a hundred would have been prepared, for what I have met with here. Having heard of the Budapest 'night life,' prepared therefore to hear the sound of revelry and to return exhausted from the customary tour des Grands Ducs, I found, to my amazement, that the streets were lifeless, the theatres, cafes, music halls, and even less reputable places deserted.

The Day of Atonement was at hand! In this populous centre of a nation, on the fast-day of an alien race, such life (miserable excuse as it may be for setting at nought the reality of Death) as involves the spending of money and its possession is, for the period of the fast, entirely suspended, and the city, famous throughout Europe as the Mecca of the feteur and of those hungry for licence and debauch, is dead. flow many reflections this brings in its train you can imagine better than I can describe even had I time!

"Is it indeed true that this race battens so upon the land it has fastened its tentacles on that, whether the race be comparable with orchid or spider, nothing remains but the dead trunk or the bloodless corpse ? Is it true that all the banking, all the distributing trades, nearly all the retail trades and most of the land are in Jewish hands; that the Hungarian noble leaves his land to Jews who own the peasants, body and soul; that by usury they extract from the smaller freeholders what they possess, and that, having exploited the nation which harbours them from the sowing to the reaping, they then minister to their physical weaknesses and their moral by the ultimate exploitation of the tavern and the brothel?

"If this, or nearly this, be true, there is no Hungarian question in the true sense. There is a Jewish question, and this terrible race means not only to master one of the grandest warrior nations in the world, but it means, and is consciously striving, to enter the lists against the other great race of the north (the Russians), the only one that has hitherto stood between it and its goal of world power.

"Am I wrong? Tell me. For already England and France are, if not actually dominated by Jews, very nearly so, while the United States, by the hands of those whose grip they are ignorant of, are slowly but surely yielding to that international and insidious hegemony. Remember that I am half a Jew by blood, but that in all that I have power to be I am not. I admire their strength, their constancy,

their intelligence, but I hate the Jew because of his nature he is evil, while the Aryan of his nature is good."

No full-blooded "Aryan" could write more incisively, however meagre his sympathies for the Jews, and none could write so bitterly because none can have experienced the struggle between the two race-natures that goes on in the minds of half-breeds when they are conscious of their dual mentality. Some full-blooded Jews have, however, written with almost equal bitterness; Heine, for instance, who wrote of his own people: "This race of Original Evil (Urubelvolk) has long been damned, and drags from Age to Age its tortures of the damned. Oh! this Egypt! Her products defy time; her pyramids still stand unshaken; her mummies are as imperishable as that mummy people which wanders across the Earth bound up in its old wrappings of the Letter, a case-hardened fragment of world-history, a ghost that sustains itself by trading in I.O.U.'s and old trousers." But rhapsody cannot elucidate the Jewish problem. Knowledge and the understanding born of knowledge are needful. Though the problem in itself may be found insoluble, knowledge will at least permit outsiders to assume in regard to it some attitude less barren than one of mere antisemitism, and will, on the other hand, prevent them from being misled by "semi-official assimilationist" statements of the Jewish case. Such statements are usually based upon the unproved assumption that the Jews are perfectly assimilable. That Jews nave a remarkable faculty for external adaptation to environment is incontestable, but it remains to be seen whether, with all their pliancy and pertinacious direction of will toward their immediate object, they are capable of adapting themselves internally. Experience and observation now extending over more than twenty-one years, in Germany, France, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, incline me to answer this question in the negative. Of the two main branches of Jewry in Europe - the Sephardim or Spanish-Portuguese, and the Ashkenazim or German-Polish-Russian Jews - the Sephardim are undoubtedly the better stock. In their case adaptation and

assimilation seem to be easier than in the case of the Ashkenazim, though, among the Sephardim also, the intensity of the race-type and of its mental characteristics seems almost invincible. Quantitatively, the question is, in their case, less urgent than in that of the Ashkenazim, because they are fewer in number and less prone to congregate voluntarily in Ghettos. Even where they are most numerous, as at Salonica and other Balkan centres, the Sephardim do not present a "problem" in the same sense as do the Ashkenazim Jews of Galicia, Russian Poland, Posen, the East-End of London, and New York. It is besides an interesting historical fact that the Sephardim have repeatedly made a stand against or assumed the control of the Ashkenazim. In the seventeenth century at Hamburg, for instance, the Portuguese Jewish community made itself responsible towards the authorities for the Tedescos, or German Jews, and obliged these Tedescos to bind themselves not to trade in stolen goods nor to engage in other kinds of dishonest business. But within a few months the elders of the Tedescos were summoned before the presidency of the Sephardim and taxed with violation of their engagements. Similar and even more drastic instances could be cited from the history of the Sephardim in France. Though Sephardim and Ashkenazim often present a united front to the non-Jewish world, the distinction between them is well marked in Jewry itself, where the Sephardim enjoy the greater prestige. From the assimilationist standpoint, however, the only serious problem is that of the Ashkenazim. These may broadly be described as "German Jews," whether their country of immediate origin be Russia, Austria-Hungary, or Germany. As to the origin of their Jewish name, theories and legends differ even among their own learned men. Some claim descent from Ashkenaz, son of Gomer and grandson of Japheth; others put forward a theory to the effect that, after the fall of Jerusalem, in which the flower of the nation in Palestine perished, a part of the plebs was carried into slavery by the Romans and

settled in a district, corresponding to the present Bavarian Palatinate, called Ascania, after its first governor, Ascanius. The speech of these Ascanian or Ashkenazim Jews became corrupted by the German dialects of their neighbours, and acquired the semi-German basis noticeable in the Yiddish (judisch) jargon, When persecution ultimately drove the bulk of them to accept the protection offered by the Kings of Poland, they migrated in large numbers to Poland and settled in the present provinces of Galicia, Russian Poland, and Posen. Here their jargon became further corrupted by the addition of Polish and Russian elements. Many Jewish families retained, however, their German names, a circumstance which, together with the subsequent imposition of German names by Maria Theresa, is held to explain the frequency of German patronymics among the Polish and Russian Jews.

This theory, in which fact and fancy seem to be inextricably mingled, was advanced to the writer by a learned Austrian Hebrew in explanation of the pro-German tendencies displayed by Ashkenazim Jews the world over. "German," said this pundit, "is the basis of our jargon, and, next to Palestine, Germany is the country which we regard as our home. Hence our sentimental leaning towards Germany." Though other and less sentimental explanations of the undoubted pro-German leanings of the Ashkenazim have been put forward - explanations often summarized in the assertion that, since 1870, the Jews have believed Germany to be the rising Power and have consequently striven to "back the winner " - no observer who has had dealings with the Jews of Austria will doubt that some impulse more subtle than the expectation of immediate advantage drives them to pose as Germans and to associate themselves with Germanism rather than with any non-German tendency. The Jews who have deliberately associated themselves with and sought to become assimilated by Slav races like the Czechs, the Serbo-Croatians, the Slovenes, the Slovaks, or by the Rumanes of Hungary, are exceedingly few in number. The

case of the Hungarian Jews - who appear to have accepted Magyarization - is peculiar, and the sincerity of their attachment to Magyarism has yet to be proved. The bulk of the Galician and Hungarian Jews who migrate to Vienna and other parts of Austria claim German "nationality." When authentic Germans disown them, these Jews reply that they "feel like Germans," an assertion which authentic Germans passionately deny. Controversy upon the question whether a Jew can "feel like" a German has given rise to tautological designations such as that of "Germanic Germans," used not long since by Dr. Sylvester, the President of the Austrian Chamber - a designation comprehensible only as establishing a distinction between Germanic and Semitic Germans. So large a part does this distinction play in Austrian-German politics that a leading Jewish journalist has declared, bitterly but truthfully, that antisemitism forms the only bond between the various sections of the Austrian-German "National" party. Pan-Germanism, in Austria at least, has always had an anti-Jewish tendency. It is related of Herr Schoenerer, the founder and former leader of the Austrian Pan-German party, that after the original party programme had been drafted for endorsement by a congress at Linz, a clause was added to it excluding from membership all Germans of non-Aryan descent. The historian, Dr. Friedjung, who had drawn up the programme, and whose Pan-German leanings were strong, was thus, as a full-blooded Jew, excluded from the party he had helped to form. It is an irony of fate that while these exclusive tendencies prevail among the "Germanic" German "Liberals," the whole "Liberal," ie. non-Clerical, press of Austria should be in Jewish hands; and that the home policy of the German "National" parties in Austria should be largely determined by the influence of the Germans of Prague, most of whom are Jews. The political interests of the veritable Germans in other parts of Austria - those of Styria, Carinthia, Upper and Lower Austria, the Salzkammergut, Tyrol, and Vorarlberg have long been subordinated to the exigencies of the struggle

between Czechs and Germans of Bohemia, in which the Jewish-German press of Prague and its ally, the Jewish-German Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, have been important if not determining factors. It sounded therefore like black ingratitude when a Viennese Jewish review recently warned the Jews of Prague that the time had come to "neutralize" themselves in the view of the then prevailing tendency of Czechs and Germans in Bohemia to come to an understanding. "As long as the Czech-German quarrel lasted," wrote this review,[1] "the Jews were often protected by the circumstance that the decision lay in their hands. Therefore neither side ventured to do them much harm. But when the two Bohemian races have defined their spheres of influence, they will have no regard for the Jews and will pay them out for the way they have behaved in 'national' questions (ie. in the Czech-German race struggle). Hitherto the Jews of Bohemia have pursued a purely idealist policy corresponding to their German culture, and have followed the Germans unconditionally - the worst possible tactics, judging by results. The Czechs, originally tolerant, propagated antisemitism, while the conceited Germans did not give tip their antisemitism although the Jews were often more Pan-German than Schoenerer and followed a flag that was often a battle-standard against the Jews themselves. Henceforth the Jews must pursue none but a Jewish policy, and must so determine their conduct as to inflict damage upon economic and moral antisemitism."

Whether ungrateful or not, this frank declaration must be regarded as a healthy sign. The Jewish "danger," if danger it be, does not lie in the proclamation and defence of a specifically Jewish standpoint but in the dissimulation of Jewish ideas and interests under a non-Jewish cloak. The Jews qua Jews are as entitled as any other people in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy or in the world, to full consideration of their rights and interests, but they cannot

enjoy esteem as long as they attempt to out-German the Germans in Pan-Germanism or to out-Magyar the Magyars in oppression of the non-Magyar races of Hungary. There is something peculiarly repugnant in Jewish chauvinism on behalf of a dominant race. The writer will never forget the disagreeable impression made upon him some years ago by a Jewish professor of Social Science in Hungary, who claimed that the Slovaks of North-West Hungary ought to be oppressed, and if necessary exterminated, because they were refractory to Magyarization. Healthier ideas are beginning to prevail among the younger generation of Jews in Austria-Hungary, thanks largely to the influence of Zionist propaganda. Into the question of territorial Zionism it is not necessary now to enter,[1] though the overcrowding of Galicia, of the Jewish zone in Russia and of parts of Rumania, render it, in view of the restriction of emigration, [2] a question of no little importance; but moral Zionism, or, rather, the ethical and psychological effect of the Zionist ideal, demand attention. When Theodor Herzl, the literary editor of the Neue Freie Presse, started the Zionist movement, the younger intellectual Jews of Austria-Hungary were veritably at the parting of the ways. Contact with the outer world had deprived many of them of the faith of their fathers, and had divested their minds of the grosser Talmudic wrappings without providing other substitute than a scepticism which tended constantly to become more cynical. Many cultured Jewish youths sought to discard their very nature and to identify themselves completely with Germanism, accepting German political and ethical ideals and trying honestly to "feel like" Germans. One such committed suicide on discovering, after years of endeavour, that a Jew can no more become a Teuton than an Ethiopian can change his skin or a leopard its spots. To minds like these Zionism came with the force of an evangel. To be a Jew and to be proud of

it; to glory in the power and pertinacity of the race, its traditions, its triumphs, its sufferings, its resistance to persecution; to look the world frankly in the face, and to enjoy the luxury of moral and intellectual honesty; to feel pride in belonging to the people that gave Christendom its Divinities, that taught half the world monotheism, whose ideas have permeated civilization as never the ideas of a race before it, whose genius fashioned the whole mechanism of modern commerce and whose artists, actors, singers, and writers have filled a larger place in the cultured universe than those of any other people: this, or something like this, was the train of thought fired in youthful Jewish minds by the Zionist spark. Its effect upon the Jewish students of Austrian Universities was immediate and striking. Until then they had been despised and often ill-treated. They had wormed their way into appointments and into the free professions by dint of pliancy, mock humility, mental acuteness and clandestine protection. If struck or spat upon by "Aryan" students, they rarely ventured to return the blow or the insult. But Zionism gave them courage. They formed associations and learned athletic drill and fencing. Insult was requited with insult, and presently the best fencers of the fighting German corps found that Zionist students could gash cheeks quite as effectually as any Teuton and that the Jews were in a fair way to become the best swordsmen of the University. To-day the purple cap of the Zionist is as respected as that of any academical association.

This moral influence of Zionism is not confined to University students. It is quite as noticeable among the mass of the younger Jews outside, who also find in it a reason to raise their heads and, taking their stand upon their past, to gaze straightforwardly into the future. To attend a Zionist gathering in the Leopoldstadt, the Jewish quarter of Vienna, is an enlightening experience to those who have seen the filth and misery of the Ghettos where Jew exploits Jew and where contempt for the Gentile does duty for self-respect. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of

well-washed youths and trim maidens, with a large sprinkling of Jewish working-men, may be seen listening enraptured to readings from the Scriptures. The territorial ideal, that is to say, the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine or elsewhere, doubtless appeals to the bulk of the Zionists, but the main effect of the ideal is to give them self-confidence and the courage of their convictions. It is too much to expect that Zionism will suddenly endow all Jews with courage, tact and uprightness; but it is much that it should already have provided an intellectual and moral elite among them with an ideal capable of arousing faith and enthusiasm.

Many orthodox and semi-orthodox Jews nevertheless regard Zionism with grave misgivings and scarcely disguised hostility. They seem to fear that, by coming out into the open, the Zionists may be playing into the enemy's hands. Quite recently (March 29, 1913) an influential German Jewish association, the "Central Society of German Citizens of Jewish Faith," adopted a strongly anti-Zionist resolution. "The Society," it ran, "demands of its members not only the fulfillment of their duties as citizens but German feelings and the exercise of those feelings in civil life"; and continued: "On the soil of the German Fatherland we wish, as Germans, to co-operate in German civilization and to remain true to a partnership that has been hallowed by religion and history. In so far as the Zionist endeavours to provide an assured home for the Jews of the East who are deprived of their rights, or to increase the pride of Jews in their history and religion, he is welcome to us as a member; but we must sever ourselves from the Zionist who denies German National (racial) sentiments, feels himself to be a guest among a strange people, and only feels nationally (racially) as a Jew." [1]

This resolution is a precise definition of the semi-assimilationist standpoint. It is directed principally against the "Young Jewish" movement in Germany, whose literary leaders have adopted the device "Truth for Truth's sake"

and have, like Dr. Fromer, frankly proclaimed facts which the Assimilationists and semi-Assimilationists have for generations striven to hide. It admits the potential uses of Zionism but condemns its guiding idea. Doubtless Zionism, like every great movement, has its questionable sides. Many German Jews, filled with the assimilationist spirit, perceive that if cunningly exploited, the movement can be turned to account both politically and financially. An account of the numerous schemes and memoranda presented to the Porte during the Young Turkish era and of the machinations carried on in the name of "Zionism" with the support of Jewish financial and pseudo-philanthropical organizations, would form an interesting chapter in any veracious history of modern Jewry. One such memorandum, emanating from a Society of German Jews, pointed out that, "if Turkey opens her doors to Jewish immigration, our coreligionists, who occupy high positions (in other countries) will, without running counter to the duties they owe to their own countries, use all their influence for the political and economic advancement of the Constitutional Ottoman Government. Important advantages will thus accrue to Turkey as she makes her way straight towards Progress and Advancement, and the way of sure and influential alliances will be opened to her. The Ottoman Statesmen who undertake the foundation of this lasting alliance (between the Jews and Turkey) may be certain of obtaining the thanks and gratitude of the nation. We can promise and assure the attachment and friendship of the Jews towards the new Jewish emigration centres (Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia), and towards the Government which protects them, for we have the means of bringing about these feelings. As we are a Society composed of representatives of the largest Jewish Societies, we are sure that our recommendations and requests will be well received by the persons and circles that direct the Jews."

The idea on which this memorandum was based is diametrically opposed to the fundamental idea of Zionism.

It aimed not at the Constitution of a Jewish State - an aim with which every impartial student of the Jewish question must sympathize - but at the Judaization of Turkey in return for political and financial advantages that would ostensibly accrue to the Ottoman Empire through the favour of Jews holding influential positions in all countries. Of all forms of "Zionism" this would be surely the least desirable, the least sincere, and the most productive of confusion. It would tend to perpetuate the equivocation characteristic of assimilationist apologetics. The only hope of reaching a tolerable solution of the Jewish question is in openness and honesty. It is because the true Zionist ideal tends in this direction that it is the most hopeful sign noticeable in Jewry for centuries. Against it the Assimilationists urge that, were a Jewish State ever to be constituted and recognized, Anti-Semites, the world over, would arise and say to the Jews, "Now you have a land of your own; go to it!

This argument is disingenuous, and reveals the ambiguity of the position hitherto taken up by assimilationist Jewry. While explaining and justifying their dispersion by their lack of any country of their own and while maintaining belief in the Messiah who shall restore the Kingdom of Israel, nothing is farther from their hearts than the fulfilment of the prayer "Next year in Jerusalem!" Hence the bitter dislike of genuine Zionism noticeable among prosperous Assimilationists and "Dispersionists," whose ideal seems to be the maintenance of Jewish international influence as a veritable imperium in imperiis. Dissimulation of their real objects has become to them a second nature, and they deplore and tenaciously combat every tendency to place the Jewish question frankly on its merits before the world. In reality there is no danger whatever that the eventual establishment of a Jewish State would lead to the expulsion of Jews from other countries, least of all to the expulsion of the well-to-do Jewish communities in Western Europe and America. The establishment of the Hellenic Kingdom has not led to the expulsion of Greek communities from France,

England, and the United States. It is nevertheless probable that the creation of a Jewish State would, sooner or later, affect the position of the Jews throughout the world. They would be obliged eventually to choose between acceptance of Jewish citizenship and absolute identification with the countries of their adoption. The bond between German, English, French, and American Jews would tend to be reduced to a bond merely religious or denominational. The issues would be clarified and simplified. Whether the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine or elsewhere will ever be feasible is a question of the future. But in the meantime, Zionists are working to create conditions that shall facilitate its realization ; Zionist colonies have been and are being established in Palestine, Hebrew is again being taught and spoken in place of the Yiddish jargon, and the Agrarian law of Moses with its healthy provision that a family has no right permanently to possess what it cannot use or cultivate, is being brought into application. The proud boast made some time ago by the German Zionist, Dr. Franz Oppenheimer, to a Zionist assembly in Vienna-that "after having taught the world monotheism, the Jews will, by the Light of the Mosaic Law, presently teach it a solution for the problems of property and misery" - may be a long way from realization; but it goes in a sense to the root of the Jewish question in its capitalistic and propertied form. The Jewish question can only be solved by Jews, and it may well be that Moses, who knew them and their tendencies, laid down the principles that will save them from themselves. Non-Jews can only watch the process with sympathy proportionate to their acquaintance with the conditions of the problem-active sympathy in welcoming healthy symptoms, negative sympathy in striving to resist tendencies that are unwholesome; but, above all, by seeking to acquire knowledge of Jewry, by having the courage to call things by their names, by refusing to be deluded-into a sentimentally uncritical "philosemitic" attitude, and by rejecting mere uncritical antisemitic clamour. The Jewish problem is one of the

great problems of the world, and no man, be he a writer, politician or diplomatist, can be considered mature until he has striven to face it squarely on its merits.