has been dealt out to thousands of Jews from Warsaw to Odessa, and what bullet and bomb could not accomplish the torch has finished. Horrors unspeakable are undescribed: we hear the rumble of the carts filled with the maimed and wounded and we can see the Jewish quarters in flames. So much freed Russia has given to those who did most to make her free.
A thousand voices will be raised in that sad tone of resignation: I told you so. And it is true, for we, too, were amongst the number. But it is no time to set up claims for prescience or foresight. It is an hour in which to collect funds for immediate relief, for thousands of families will be starving; thousands will be beggared and ruined. And it is an hour in which to gird up our loins, to pull ourselves together and accept the lesson of history.
It is no partisan feeling, but with salt running from our eyes, that we say first, give, then speak each unto his neighbor so that we come together and we begin that exodus which shall forever release the Jew from the cruel fangs of the Slav. The Jewish question now is the mangling of our sisters and brothers: the Russian mob is solving the question by the torch and the tomb. We want another solution; we want human salvation for the remnant that will be left us to our people. Put out each one a hand to save!
After 250 Years.
At the end of this month the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the Jews in the United States will be celebrated. The passage of time, and that when it is non-personal, means nothing to the individual. And it is to this that we ascribe the general indifference to the actual exercises which are being organized. Yet there is sufficient cause for congratulation. There is no other such record of uninterrupted freedom enjoyed by Jews in any country or under any government in the world, except Holland, and there po-
litical emancipation only dates from the Napoleonic period.
ee ee The importance of liberty and rights. countenanced during two and a half centuries with the prospect of the continuance- for an untold period is emphasized by the long and bitter struggles in other countries for freedom; and by the contrast that the majority of our people are just emerging from the dark ages. It is indeed that which makes the occasion for reforcing, for freedom here is so normal, so much part of the current affairs of life that the spirit is not moved to select and date and rejoice thereon. To the majority of us it it not given to look back upon a long tradition of personal association with American conditions; we or our fathers came here and became part and parcel of the land and its life. Our anniversary dates from the beginning of our own pilgrimage to liberty. But it is just that which constitutes these United States, a land of free opportunities, for each succeeding generation making its voyage in new “Mayflowers” from oppression and darkness to liberty and light. If few can feel the length of time all of us can seize the occasion to be thankful that the clear sky of heaven is above us and an open world around us. Neither of these common rights existed for any of our ancestors im Europe a century and a half ago.
A Jewish Revolution.
THE revolution in Russia is a Jewish revolution, a crisis in Jewish history. It is that, because Russia is the home of about half the Jews in the world, and an overturning of its despotic government must have a very important influence on the destinies of the millions living there and on the many thousands who have recently emigrated to other countries. But the revolution in Russia is a Jewish revolution, also because Jews are among the most active revolutionists in the Czar's empire. The Czar's government, in fact, puts upon them the blame of being the chief agents in spreading revolutionary ideas and leading the people