nations of Europe and the barbarous despotism of the Russian Czar. It is a significant fact, however, that the unsophist- ıcated mass of Russian Jews in this country disbelieve the fairy tales about the Czar’s sudden change of heart toward “his beloved Jews.” There is in the United States but a small minority of theorists among the Russian Jewish intellectuals whose sympathies are with the Allies in the present war.
According to newspaper reports, the sentiment among the Jews in Russia is “patriotic” in a high degree. Mr. Friedmann, the Jewish Member of the Duma, gave expression, on the floor of the Duma, to the patriotic feeling of his constituents toward the country of their birth. Such professions of loyalty, however, are among the “conventional lies’ of modern civilization (in the language of Max Nordau.) Yet the organization of a Zionist legion in Paris, as well as many reported cases of Jewish young men volunteering for the Russian army, may be accepted as evidence of a genuine enthusiasm for the cause of Russia among the cultured Jewish youth with radical leanings.
That the Jews of the other belligerent nations share in the sentiments of their Gentile fellow-citizens, is but natural. Mr. Israel Zangwill is first an Englishman and next a Jew. He enjoys all the rights of a British citizen and he has in consequence an inbred sense of duty toward his native country. Russia now being an ally of Great Britain, he is pro-Russian. The native American Jews, like the rest of the native Americans who but three years ago forced the United States government to a rupture of commercial treaty relations with Russia, suddenly too have turned pro-Russian. They believe that now, since Russia is so intimately tied up with Great Britain and France, the influence of her allies will force her to liberalize her laws in relation to the Jews. The wish is here the father to the thought. What real foundation is there for this assumption.
In international relations, like in private business, nothing is done without a consideration. What is the consideration which France could offer to or withhold from Russia, in order to induce her to remove the disabilities of the Russian
Jews? Could France terminate her alliance with Russia in case the latter refused to accede to the solicitations of France in behalf of the Russian Jews? Or would the French bankers retaliate by refusing to handle Russian securities, or the French small investors by refusing to buy them?
For a quarter of a century France has been the ally of Russia. During this period the Russian government has pursued an unrelenting policy of proscription against the Jews. New restrictive statutes were enacted denying to the Jews the rights which they had enjoyed for a generation. Old laws were given a new interpretation restrictive of the privileges of the Jews. Scores of thousands of families were driven from their homes and deprived of their property under the color of law. Did France remonstrate with the Russian government? At the outbreak of the Russian revolution the thugs and rowdies of the cities were organized by government officials into “patriotic” gangs which proceeded to massacre Jewish women and children. Dia the French government, did the French people raise a voice of protest against these atrocities? On the contrary, the day before the opening of the FirstDuma the French people loaned their savings to the Czar for the support of his throne shattered by revolution. The pogroms of Bialystok and Siedlec followed in rapid succession the same summer.
The Russian government has refused to honor the passports of French citizens of the Jewish race, —has the French government interceded in their behalf? There is not the slightest reason to expect that the French government would “interfere with the internal affairs” of her ally in case of Russian victory. Moreover, were such an interference on the part of France thinkable, Russia would most likely decline to listen to representatives from outsiders, as she did after the Kishinev pogrom, when President Roosevelt inquired whether the Czar would receive a petition of American citizens in behalf of his Jewish subjects.
Nor does the history of the relations between Great Britain and Russia offer any warrant for the belief that Great Britain would seek to influence the policy