Dangers of the Hour
IT WOULD not be easy to point out any recent period in Jewish history when the sky has seemed so deeply overcast, when there was so much of Jewish suffering and Jewish horror to depress the spirits, one disappointment after another, one outrage after another, to wring one's Jewish sympathies.
These five years of world-war and of peace-throes have been crowded with Jewish wrongs of every conceivable variety. In Western countries anti-Semitic prejudices and anti-Jewish libels have sprung up continuously in the wake of all our patriotic sacrifices, whether at home or on the battlefield, furnishing a story of misunderstandings and injustices that varied with every environment; in the European East the Jew has been the victim of every clash, always suspected on both sides, plundered by both parties, starved, maltreated and driven about, whether victory tended in one direction or another. When the Russian soldiery plundered and outraged our people whose young men were dying for Russia in the trenches, we felt that the acme of the evil had been reached; we could not imagine that indescribable starvation would be further accentuated by Polish pogroms and that, when Poland had begun to relent, the Ukraine, which had started out so promisingly, would succeed in bettering her example.
If these outbursts had amounted to no more than the natural accompaniments of an undisciplined chaos, with a brutalized soldiery let loose upon a defenseless population, we could regard them as mere volcanic eruptions of momentary anarchy, void of all menace for the future. But one cannot escape the feeling that beneath all this there are deep-rooted and abiding antagonisms, suspicions, hatreds, jealousies which it will take generations to overcome.
As against all these disheartening manifestations, partly of ancient grudges, partly of unchained bestiality, there seem to be three distinct factors which promise better things for the future: for the first time a great congress of nations has accepted the guiding principle of minority rights which is to be embodied in treaties and surrounded with safeguards; for the first time have the Jews of the world succeeded in getting together through representative delegations and in uniting upon definitely formulated demands; for the first time, at a great Jewish crisis, there is held out the prospect of a national homeland, officially endorsed by the great powers of civilization, openly favored and sped by the mandatory who is to take charge of the Holy Land.
It would be foolish to seek, for one moment, to detract from the intrinsic value of these achievements. The recognition of minority rights comes with the greater assurance of permanence, inasmuch as it appears in its logical place as the outcome of war which had its inception in the assault upon a submissive Servia and the invasion of neutral Belgium; that recognition is more than a mere moral advance of public opinion; for it is accepted as a universal principle and to be guaranteed by the League of Nations; it forms a stupendous forward stride of democratic policy by lifting the European East into more than only political self-government, by applying the only possible cure to those frictions of race, language and faith which kept not only the Balkans, but all of half-Asia in a perpetual state of turmoil. To the Jew it is more valuable in its shape of a
general principle of justice, accepted as a criterion of civilization, than if it had come to him (as it did, at the Berlin Congress, with regard to Roumania) as an act of special protection; in the present form it cannot be said to have been imposed from without by the coercive act of influential friends; it comes as the inevitable issue of a great triumph of justice. Our Polish and Roumanian friends may gnash their teeth at the unwelcome interference; but they cannot help recognizing it as more than a fiat of dictation, as a warning notice from the civilized world.
Nor must we overlook the important novelty of a world-Jewry, acting as a unit before a gathering of nations, among causes for mutual gratulation. Attempt after attempt had been made to bring about systematic co-operation between the different branches of our people. The Alliance Israelite Universelle failed in its sincere endeavor to become a universal bond, across political divisions and religious complexions; the B’nai B’rith found themselves unable to gain foothold in all continents, as they would have liked to do. More than one carefully considered plan, fathered by important leaders, to bring about full co-operation between the great representative Jewish bodies of various countries came to naught, for one reason or another; with the best of intentions it seemed impossible to overcome the diversity of political interests and the differences of method and aim.
The Zionist World-Congresses which first demonstrated the feasibility of Jewish world-gatherings under the impetus of a great cause, which proved that a Jewish assembly, recruited from the most distant corners, could arrive at united action out of seemingly hopeless divisions and dissensions, have, beyond all doubt, contributed incalculably towards that definition of controverted questions and problems, towards that confidence in the practicability of unanimous action which were needed to prove to the peacemakers of the modern world that the Jewish people, despite the great variety of environments amid which it lived, was clear as to its rights and needs and could unite upon a definite, practical formulation which accorded completely with the principles of enlightened policy.
Yet the merest glance beneath these inviting surfaces discloses the many dangers with which the situation is fraught. Irresistibly the question forces itself upon one's attention: just how stable will prove all this artificial equilibrium, once the world settles down to the reconstructive tasks of a definitive peace? Will the new delimitation of boundaries give rise to a state of contentment? or will it only furnish fuel for more bitter resentments and for a multiplication of revanches? Will it be a short or a long time before agriculture, industry and commerce in the new or remodeled countries will adjust themselves to radically different proportions, opportunities and tasks? Will capital and labor, will radicalism and conservatism arrive, before long, at some understanding by which society will be spared the uneasy sense of standing, perpetually, upon the verge of a volcano? And if the atmosphere should continue as heavily charged with the electricity of discontent as it is in these days of restless apprehension, how will it all react upon the Jew who has so often found himself the hapless lightning rod for discontents and disorders of every kind?
What effect is the recrudescence of so many callow na-