The Maccabaean

require only the Judean plateau, and not the whole of Palestine. But, as the author well points out, it is not a question of extending the Anglo-Jewish frontier to the Samarian hills or even to Esdraelon. If the war has shown anything it is that lines of fortifications in themselves are meaningless. It must be a real state and not a bastion of masked 42's, that is to be established here. And a real state deprived of Galilee,—deprived, that is, of the only soil capable of supporting a considerable population, is a contradiction in terms. Indeed, Mr. Sidebotham argues strongly,—and Zionists will scarcely disagree with him,—that the Hauran and Gilead and Moab, are equally essential to a Palestinian state. Much water has run under the mill in the short year since these pages were written. The question of the East-Jordan territory is one that Zionists will readily defer for later settlement, but it would be difficult to present more strongly than Mr. Sidebotham has done, the reasons for making it a part of an integral Palestine.

In the last chapter, the author answers the stock-objections that are urged, some by honest doubters, and more by prejudiced foes, against Zionism. There is no reason to repeat them here, except to say that Mr. Sidebotham's refutation is complete and sweeping and is to be recommended to any Zionist who has to meet the current commonplaces still indefatigably advanced by anti-Zionists.

Be Ne a ie TB ra er A A ne > BE De a ee I have stressed in this review the point that the author has stressed,—and that is the British interest in a Jewish Palestine. But it would be in the highest degree unfair to hold that Britain has no other interest in a restored Zion. That, bound with the considerations of imperial protection, there is an honest and sincere desire to re-establish a Jewish commonwealth as a duty to the Jews and to the world, is patent to anyone who has given the least attention to British history or the British mind. The Hebraism that Matthew Arnold found so prominent a part of British culture is no accidental thing. There is no Western nation that has so thoroughly absorbed the finest cultural product of the ancient Jewish polity and looked with a livelier admiration on its ancient glories. It is true, as Sir Walter Besant whimsically remarked, that some contrived to “combine an admiration of the ancient Jew with an unreasoning hatred of the modern Jew.” But these were never very many. It is a source of pardonable pride to any Jew that a Christian writer can, at the conclusion of a chapter on British interests in Palestine, state with unmistakeable earnestness (p. 201):

“Before the magnitude of this war, most ideals seem “to shrink in size. But one ideal is the peer even of this “war in magnitude and grandeur. It is the ideal of the “restoration of the Jews to a country which, small and “poor as it is, they made as famous as Greece and as “great as Rome.” Max Rapın.

MAX RADIN.

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The Birth of the Russian Democracy

THE situation of our fellow Jews in Russia—a situation only too frequently tragic and never without the most profound significance—lends additional interest to A. J. Sack’s “The Birth of the Russian Democracy” (The Russian Information Bureau, $3.50), a new edition of which has just appeared. Mr. Sack is a well-informed Russian, who apparently officially represents that branch of Russian opinion that seeks an economic and social rehabilitation of Russia on the model of the great Western nations. He is

director of the Russian Information Bureau in United States. Within the last year or two he has been the medium of certain important communications to the American public, many of them emanating from or inspired by the Russian embassy at Washington. In these communications it has been noteworthy that Mr. Sack has constantly sounded the note of optimism as to Russia's future; and it is therefore not surprising that the same note is to be heard everywhere in "The Birth of Russian Democracy."

To Mr. Sack Russian democracy does not begin with that revolution that has culminated in the ascendancy of the Bolsheviki. He goes further back for its origins—to the Decembrist rising of 1825. A full account of this earliest attempt to free Russia from the bonds of the czar is succeeded by a recital of later endeavors to win freedom for Russia up to about 1910. Then Mr. Sack turns aside for a very full and very valuable group of sketches of "the spiritual leaders of the Russian Revolution"—Bakunin, Lavrov, Kropotkin, Breshkovskaya, Plekhanov. Following this is a detailed narrative of the course of the revolution of 1917 and the events since that date up to the rule of the Bolsheviki.

The book is not, however, just narrative. There are almost 200 illustrations, some of them of unique interest. Documents are liberally reproduced—declarations and acts of the Provincial Government, proceedings of the sessions of the Councils of Workmen's, Soldiers', and Peasants' delegates, speeches by Kerensky, Miliukov, Alexeiev, Kornilov, Tscheidze, and others. Some of these documents are in facsimile; for example, the telegram announcing the abdication of the czar and the formation of the Provisional Government.

As to the Jews, Mr. Sack has not very much to say. He notes that after the dissolution of the Second Duma, Stolypin, rioting in persecutions of nationalities and religions, baited the Jews worse than ever, and anti-Semitism was openly encouraged by the Government. At this time occurred the famous Beilis case, but one of many attempts of the Russian Government to excite religious hatred by reviving the accusation of ritual murder. He classes the Jews, who demanded autonomy or equal rights, with the other groups in Russia who made it inevitable that a second Revolution would follow the unsuccessful attempt of 1905, the others being, he says, the workers, the peasants, the Poles and Finns, and the capitalistic or bourgeois class.

How completely the revolution succeeded (at least temporarily), so far as the Jews were concerned is shown by a reproduction in full of the momentous decree issued soon after the Provisional Government came into power in March, 1917. By this decree "all existing legal restrictions upon the rights of Russian citizens, based upon faith, religious teaching or nationality, are revoked." In accordance with this, all limitations on selection and change of place of residence, upon ownership of property, upon choice of trades and profession, upon business enterprise, upon Government employment, upon admission to educational institutions, and upon the use of languages other than Russian were completely removed.

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The Desert Campaign

Splendid military movements are chronicled by W. T. Massey in "The Desert Campaigns" (Putnam, $1.50), and to the etchings of the lands near Egypt which an excellent artist, James McBey, has provided. Mr. Massey