The Maccabaean

The Committee regards it as axiomatic that the Jews of the United States have here established a permanent home for themselves and their children, have acquired the rights and assumed the correlative duties of American citizenship, and recognize their unqualified allegiance to this country, which they love and cherish and of whose people they constitute an integral part.

an integral part. This Committee, however, is not unmindful that there are Jews everywhere who, moved by traditional sentiment, yearn for a home in the Holy Land for the Jewish people. This hope, nurtured for centuries, especially in lands of oppression, has our whole-hearted sympathy.

sympathy.We cannot, however, ignore the fact that but a part of the Jewish people would take up their domicile in Palestine. The greater number will continue to live in the lands of whose citizenship they now form a component part, where they enjoy full civil and religious liberty, and where as loyal and patriotic citizens, they will maintain and develop the principles and institutions of Judaism.

When, therefore, the British Government recently made the declaration, now supported by the French Government, that “they view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object,” the announcement was received by this Committee with profound appreciation. The conditions annexed to this declaration are regarded as of essential importance, stipulating as they do that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” These conditions correspond fully with the general purposes for which this Committee has striven and with the ideals of the Jews of America.

The opportunity will be welcomed by this Committee to aid in the realization of the British Declaration, under such protectorate or suzerainty as the Great Powers may determine, and, to that end, to co-operate with

Books—New and Old

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New York), is replete with sympathy for the wrongs which the Jews have suffered in the dispersion, and with enthusiastic anticipation of the spiritual benefit which they will confer upon mankind when once more rehabilitated as a nation. According to Dr. Berle the Jews are to be the leaders in sociological experimentation, and all the other people will look to them for guidance. “A nationalized Hebrew state,” he declares, “founded on Hebrew fundamental laws, ethical, social, sdni- tary, dietary and all the rest, would be a working laboratory of social regeneration which would excite breathless attention.”

We cannot persuade ourselves, however, that Dr. Berle's high expectations of us will be realized so speedily as he would have the world believe. Perhaps Dr. Berle minimizes the difficulty of establishing a national center with such heterogeneous human material as we have at our disposal. In good time, we hope, our nation will approach the ideal of social righteousness, to which it has adhered since ancient times. But we know, too, that the settling down process will be fraught with difficulties.

Dr. Berle speaks of the rôle of international importance which the Jewish state will assume as mediator between east and west. “What may we not reasonably expect of the nation which produced that world figure (Jesus), restored to the land of its dreams, fired again with its ancient traditions, . . . bringing idealism again into the realm of world politics? A Jewish state would be a “Hague” which could, and would, command the attention and govern the thought of the world.

Like other Gentile Zionists—and what Gentile of broad human sympathies is not a Zionist?—Dr. Berle is surprised and perplexed by the indifference of many Jews “who do not feel the wonderful inspiration of the theme.” The salutary effects of a reëstablished Jewish state upon the Jews of the Diaspora are so patent: “It would result in the transformation of Jewish life throughout the entire world!”

It is interesting to note that the book which contains so eloquent and inspiring an exposition of the Gentile attitude to our movement is dedicated “to Louis D. Brandies, associate Justice United States Supreme Court, exemplar and leader of the liberating influence of the Jew in American life, with memories of our struggles in the public service.”

those who, attracted by religious or historic associations, shall seek to establish in Palestine a center for Judaism, for the stimulation of our faith, and for the pursuit and development of literature, science and art in a Jewish environment and for the rehabilitation of the land

There were present: Dr. Cyrus Adler, Philadelphia, Pa.; Dr. E. N. Kalish, Richmond, Va.; Colonel Harry Cutler, Providence, R. I.; Louis E. Levy, Philadelphia, Pa.; Judge Julian W. Mack, Chicago, Ill.; M. Rosenbaum, Philadelphia, Pa.; Sigmund B. Sonnenborn, Baltimore, Md.; Col. Isaac M. Ullman, New Haven, Conn.; Dr. Jacob Billikoff, Samuel Dorf, Julius J. Dukas, Abram I. Elkus, Dr. Israel Friedlaender, David Kornblee, Samuel S. Lamport, Judge Irving Lehman, Leo Lerner, William Lieberman, Rev. H. Masliansky, Rabbi H. Preira Mendes, Leon S. Moisseyoff, Leon Sanders, Jacob H. Schiff, Bernard Semel, Rabbi Joseph Silverman, I. W. Statenheim, Cyrus L. Sulsberger, and Israel Unterberg, of New York. Louis Marshall presided.

Mrs. Pierce’s letters from Russia, first printed in The Atlantic Monthly, and now published in book form, “Trapped in Black Russia,” Ruth Pierce (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1918), record her adventures in South Russia while under arrest by the Russian authorities for writing about the Jewish Detention Camp.

She witnessed nothing not open to the gaze of the ordinary observer, but her book is one of the most piquant and colorful of the season. She has an eye for the varied and picturesque details of life in the holy city of Kiev. She has the ability to put down in effective phrases what she has observed.

Perhaps of most interest to our readers will be her accounts of the terrible condition of the Galician refugees who were driven in shackles from city to city, from detention camp to detention camp often only to be sent back to the places whence they had started. These frank and indignant pictures, the cause of embarrassing moments to her later, make one wonder, as anybody who knows anything at all about Russian conditions wonders, how anybody can deplore the Russian Revolution in the face of conditions under the old regime. One or two horrible incidents are supported only on hearsay, but what Mrs. Pierce has seen with her own eyes testifies sufficiently to the stupidity and brutality of the Imperial Russian officials. At no time does the author betray any particular liking for the starved, bewildered and abject Jews of the detention camps. Her testimony is, therefore, entirely unbiased and impartial and is dictated by her feeling for humanity in its lowest common denominator.

She writes of cruelty as unnecessary as it appears to have been deliberate, of indignities and injustice. Not only men and women of the lower bourgeoisie came within her notice but professors and doctors, members of learned societies, who received her with almost the same grave dignity as they would have extended her if she had visited them in the halls of their own universities.

The publication of the book is sufficient assurance that Mrs. Pierce was finally freed from the anxieties and embarrassment of her arrest. N. W.

THE WAR AND THE BAGDAD RAILWAY

Professor Jastrow’s book, The War and the Bagdad Railway, by Morris Jastrow, Jr., J. B. Lipincott Co., Publishers. Price $1.50, has now appeared in a second impression with a new preface. It is a brief book (160 pp) with fourteen illustrations and a map of the railways in the Near East. Half of it is devoted to the story of Asia Minor in the desire to show how the possession of the highways of that country meant the mastery of the East. At this moment when the armies of the world have locked horns on the Western Front we are likely to forget how the Drang nach Osten has impelled the monarchs of the earth from Alexander to Wilhelm. It is well that we should remember that possibly the chief immediate cause of the War was the construction of the railway from Constantinople to Bagdad as a political engine of German designs. The line from Berlin to Constantinople passes through Belgrade and Nish, and the control of Serbia was in 1914 essential to make the line complete. There would seem to be a relation between the railroad and the Austrian ultimatum.

Dr. Jastrow has performed a service in turning attention to the East. Our readers, noting his emphasis on the importance of the land bridge of Asia Minor, will do well to read also the articles of Herbert Sidebotham, the military critic of the Manchester Guardian, who in the January number of the Atlantic Monthly, shows the importance of the land bridge of Palestine. N. W.