Italy went to war in the belief that this was the best way of serving her higher aspirations. Bulgaria cast in her lot with the other side for the same reason. Each side solicits the aid of more national units by holding out tangible inducements, not by sermons on what is good and right for humanity at large. Let the reader pass in review all the incidents of the war so far and he will readily see how national interests interpret general justice, nay, even established rules of international conduct.
If anyone needed badly this great and practical lesson so strikingly given by the war, it was the Jew. We have sinned grievously against our own people. We lost the sense of true measure and right proportion. So many of us cast aside light-heartedly the demands of Israel and went chasing rainbows! Our early socialists in their quest of universal brotherhood overlooked the millions of their own brethren. They were too busy hunting after the mirage of a millenium. The Jew was not considered a human being sufficient unto himself. He was to be a mere incident. He was to merge completely in the general mass and take whatever would fall to his lot. After the horrible massacres some dared declare that our blood served as oil for the wheels of the Russian progress. So little did the Jew count as an entity in the eyes of his own brethren! On the other hand, we had those apostles of a Jewish mission who saw in us a people of priests ordained to educate and elevate humanity. They would have us do anything and everything for others but nothing for ourselves as a nation. They even denied that there is a Jewish people. An easy way of appeasing one’s conscience. We were to be willing instruments in the hands of moral progress, not the
providers for our own national future. And then, again, those assimilationists pure and simple who renounced allegiance to Judaism and denounced the Jews as a pest to be fled from with all possible speed. Could these classes have been expected to have applied the national standard of justice to their own people, to themselves?
One cannot be certain even now whether a cry of indignation will not be heard on many hands when the demand is made that the same ethical standard be accepted by the Jewish people. It will be a cry in the wilderness, though. It will fall on deaf ears. The Jews have at last been aroused to action and self-assertion,—the only normal and moral line of procedure. We must judge the world at its worth to us as a people entitled to equal rights. Let our relations be based on the principle of mutual convenience and help, and not, as heretofore, on self-humiliation and self-effacement. If our condition in the world does not warrant such a policy, let us normalize our life.
If universal justice means anything at all, it stands for equal rights and equal duties. Should one rely for the fulfilment of his desires on the morality of his neighbors, he would be branded as a nuisance and as an immoral person. His attitude would impose upon society additional burdens, no matter how excellent his intentions. Equally destructive is the individual who recklessly sacrifices all of his own for the sake of another, or others, able to take care of themselves. He breeds irresponsibility and wastes social energy. Everyone must do his share. Every nation must work out its own salvation, and that means the salvation of all.