The Maccabaean

away with our minds, and unless we think out carefully a practical policy of immigration and settlement, we shall simply add unknown sufferings to those we already know too well.

The reports that have recently reached here from the Ukraine tell a tale of grisly horror, in comparison with which the pogroms in Poland were trifling occurrences. Even the most moderate-estimate of the losses sustained by the Jewish communities in the Ukrainian massacres amounts to over 30,000, whilst other estimates, also made by careful investigators, are as high as 50,000. These mere numbers may perhaps fail to convey a vivid idea of the ruin and devastation that have overtaken thousands of Jewish communities in Central and Southern Russia, for it should be remembered that wherever tens were slaughtered, hundreds were seriously wounded, houses and shops were plundered, and synagogues were desecrated. When the first reports of the pogroms in the Ukraine reached London, they were generally regarded as considerably exaggerated, but so many confirmations have now arrived from different sources, that there can no longer be any doubt about their accuracy. Two Jewish representatives from the Ukraine have now come to London for the purpose of making the public better acquainted with the gravity of the situation and of raising relief for the distress. They are Dr. A. Coralnik, an old worker in the Zionist cause, although still a young man, who should be known in America too, as he was for some time in New York during the war; and Mr. Meyer Grossman, who is a member of the Jewish National Council of the Ukraine and of the Central Relief Committee in Kieff. They have already addressed a gathering of British press representatives at the Zionist Central Office, and they hope to be able shortly to transfer their activity to the United States, where they naturally expect to raise larger funds than they could do on this side of the Atlantic. The question of preventing the recurrence of pogroms in the Ukraine has engaged the attention of many Jewish leaders, who have also made representations on the subject to the British Government. Unfortunately the result has been anything but satisfactory, as the situation in the Ukraine is one of unmitigated chaos and confusion. Had the Peace Conference already recognized a Ukrainian Republic it would be possible to make earnest representations to that State and thus hope for betterment, but as. the Ukrainian Republic is still in the making, and various rival leaders with their armies are spreading terror under the guise of order, the task of the British Government or of the Peace Conference is excep- tionallv diffcult.

The latest complication is the war between General Denikin and General Petlura, a war that seems not only unnecessary but absolutely criminal, considering that both Generals have declared that they are fighting only against the Bolsheviks so as to restore order within their own domains. The proposal had seriously been made that some Jewish military officer, either of the British or other Allied army, should be attached to General Denikin's Headquarters and that a Jewish officer should also be attached to Petlura's Headquarters so as to prevent further outbreaks of pogroms; but this suggestion was made at the time when each of these Generals was fighting against the Bolsheviks alone and not against one another. Now that Denikin and Petlura are at loggerheads with one another, it would be more difficult than ever for any Jewish officer attached to either army to

exercise any salutary influence. If we were to seek any hidden cause for the continuance of carnage in Russia, we should probably find it in the unfortunately protracted deliberations of the Peace Conference, and if we asked why the Peace Conference is so protracted, we should find one of the main reasons in the proceedings of the American Senate.

. Although we are now so deeply concerned about the fate of our fellow Jews in the Ukraine, we are none the less anxious concerning that of our fellow-Jews in Poland. The movements of Mr. Morgenthau’s Commission have been reported pretty fully in the Jewish newspapers of Poland, copies of which have regularly arrived here, but it would be rather premature to frame a considered judgment upon the results of .Mr. Morgenthau’s investigations until his written report appears. Opinion, so far, has been anything but in favour of the various utterances he has made from time to time in the course of his tour. Having once occupied the position of Ambassador, Mr. Morgenthau seems to have thought that the only right policy for him to pursue in Poland, in investigating the persecution of the Jews by the Poles, was to assume at least an equal measure of guilt on either side, if not a little more virtue on the side of the Poles. Had he adopted from the very outset a more courageous attitude towards the Polish authorities, the outrages that occurred during his own sojourn in the country would probably have been not so frequent or so serious. Those who are in the best position to judge of the effects of the Morgenthau enquiry are the Jews in Poland themselves, and so far as their views are known the result has been anything but satisfactory. Sir Stuart Samuel, who heads the British Mission, began his investigation only a fortnight ago, and it is therefore too soon to express any comment upon his labours. ISRAEL COHEN.

ISRAEL COHEN.

Zionist Strength in Russia

IT would hardly be an exaggeration to assert that none of the numerous nationalities inhabiting the territories of the late Russian Empire supplied more changes in their life during the years of war and Revolution than the Jews. The structure of Jewish life was partly destoyed, and partly turned over, economic relations were deeply upset, entire communities were wiped out, other communities or rather the remnants of these other Communities were transplanted into new ground amidst new environment and placed into entirely new conditions. On the other hand the brightest prospect of complete liberty and equality, equality in fact, not in word, were opened to them. Being, as they were thus placed in the very heat point of the gigantic melting pot where the new Russia was being born in such ghastly pains, the Jews, themselves undergoing a most painful change in their economic and social life, the Jews en masse have wonderfully enough kept their minds and hearts clear and disentagled from all the utopias of both assimilation and bolshevism.

It was not an easy thing for the individual Jewish intellectual, who before the Revolution was filling the ranks of the best that was in Russian progressive society, to keep aloof from the work which in the dreams of all the oppressed nationalities and classes of Russia was supposed to bring