wore broad workingman's trousers and a workingman's blouse. The attractive features of his face, the fine large beard, the beautiful eyes, told one at once that this was not an ordinary worknigman.
"Who is this man?" I asked of the lady.
"A lunatic," was her answer.
"Still, what is his name?"
"Halperin"
.."Oh, why is he a lunatic?"
“He has brought with him 60,000 rubles and he has lost it here. Have you read ‘Nes Zion’? That was Halperin’s. He threw his money away without regard, became a comrade of the workingmen— and, of course, he was ruined. Then he suddenly established a creamery in partnership with another man, and he suddenly took a notion to agitate for better conditions for the workingmen and to urge them to strike, and the workingmen struck and broke up his business, and now he lives here in a garret, on the third floor, with three other workingmen. They have a sort of community between themselves. The others go out to work, while he acts as a watchman, and is at the same time their housekeeper. He goes to the market, buys the provisions and does the cooking. If he were not a lunatic, he would now be one of the wealthiest Jews in Russia,” concluded the lady.
“I had a strong desire to talk to this lunatic. A short time afterward he heartily shook my hand at a workingmen’s hotel. When I saw him for the third time, we were already good friends. Halperin does not like to be called Herr Halperin; does not want any prefixes to his name. He likes to be called just Halperin. He addresses you with the familiar thous and ‚wishes to be spoken to in the same manner. Soon afterward I learned something of his life and of his ideas. His father was a man of the great yichus, and there was an heirloom in the family, in the form of a letter showing that they were direct descendants from King David. His mother’s father was the celebrated Malbin. The family was reared in luxury, and Halperin himself subsequently attained great wealth and prominence, but he decided to give up all and come and help build up the future Jewish centre.
"Last winter a circus came to Jaffa, One fine morning the manager made an
announcement that he would like to see how many men in the city would be brave enough to go up to the platform to drink a glass of beer with him and smoke a cigar in the presence of the lions. Two men, one a German and the other an Arab, accepted the challenge. 'We must not show that Jews are cowardly,' says Halperin, vehemently. The night of the performance comes and the old man Halperin, this wonderful aged youth, is also on the platform with the lions. And it is not enough that a Jew should be seen with the lions, he wishes also that he be heard, and he delivers a speech in a Jewish German. 'The people of Israel,' he says in substance, 'are like the lion in an iron cage. But the day will come when the Jew will break the iron bars.'
“It is through incidents like this, and there have been many of them, that one can get a real conception of Halperin’s character ”
MR. HILAIRE BELLOC ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
The Jewish Chronicle, London, published on August ız2th, a striking interview with Mr. Hiliare Belloc, the noted English Journalist and politician, whose previous utterances on matters Jewish had made the impression that he was “decidedly unfriendly toward our people” Mr. Belloc disclaims being hostile to the Jews, but the solution he offers for the Jewish Question is that the Jewish people be once more be made wards of the State, as was the case in the middle ages.
Mr. Belloc frankly believes that the efforts of the centuries towards assimiliation and emancipation have failed. "The attempt to amalgamate the Jewish race and the alien races in whose midst it dwells has been given every chance, at any rate since the French Revolution, even if the long period which preceded that event be left out of consideration. The result is that the whole policy of assimilation is bankrupt," he declares.
"Of course," he continued, "there are those who say that if only it is given enough time it will succeed. But it has plenty of opportunities of success before the nineteenth century, and still of its failure as yet there can be no question