The Maccabaean

Sır: There are two predominating problems before the Jewish people today. These problems are, the reconstruction of Palestine and the condition of the Jews in Eastern Europe. For the solution of the first problem we have the Zionist organization, an organization that has been strengthened a hundredfold under the stimulus of the promising developments during the war and is now gathering all its forces with a grim determination to accomplish its purpose, come what may. Whatever difficulties are in the way, and difficulties of vast proportions are not absent, it may yet be said with confidence that the Zionist organization, cemented as ithas become into a powerful instrument for practical achievement and inspired by the zeal and optimism of its members, will triumph sooner or later and its work will be crowned with success. For it has efliciency and co-ordination; it has directing force, and also, in general outline, a definite programme.

But what are we doing about the second problem? What efforts are we putting forth to realize for our fellow-Jews in Poland, Rumania, and the other anti-Semitic countries in Eastern Europe, their human rights and safety from physical outrage? What plans have we to ameliorate their suffering? What is our programme? Where is our organization? Painful as it is, one's conscience demands that the truth, the naked truth, should be acknowledged to ourselves and to the world. We have no programme, we have no organization, we are doing nothing! Why? Surely no one will contend that we need do nothing, and no intelligent Zionist today will declare that our problem in Eastern Europe can be solved through Zionism alone. It is precisely the Zionists, who constitute the most vital and the most Jewish element in Jewry, who should realize that while the Zionist work is being pursued an organized movement must be established to bring amelioration to the East-European Jews; and though the Zionist organization strive at least to help in the organization of a separate body whose one concern should be the solution of our dreadful problem in the countries where the Jews are denied political and civil rights.

I know that relief work is being done. In the first place, however, the relief work as now conducted is not so co-ordinated and organized as to bring the maximum results possible. And secondly, relief work even if conducted in the best manner cannot be and is not sufficient. There is something else that must go side by side with food and financial relief. That is political relief, so to say. We must fight for the rights of our persecuted brothers as well as for their lives; for if anything can be worse than hunger it is degradation at the hands of others; if anything can be more painful than physical hurt it is the sense of helplessness and forlorn hope that comes from the knowledge that one must stand every abuse without being able to seek refuge before the law. Our brothers want more than clothing and victuals, they want recognition of their rights as Jews and as men. And what we are doing at present is to secure for them that recognition is so negligible that it is hardly worth considering.

The relief we are giving them now will save many of them from starvation, and that is much indeed. But it will not do more. It will not make free men of them, it will not lift from their shoulders the stigma of pariahs, outcasts. And is it not manifestly the bounden duty of the Jews who are more fortunately situated not only to sustain the bodies of their fellow-Jews but also to strive with the utmost powers that lie in them, and nothing less, to end once for all the conditions which make possible the degradations, the pogroms, the persecutions and the abuses to which their brothers and sisters are subiected?

Surely no one will deny that that is our duty. But many will ask, "Well, what shall we do? how can we carry out our duty, how shall we begin?" That is certainly a difficult question. But I believe it can be answered.

It is but necessary to recall the work of the United Jewish Committees in Paris during the sessions of the Peace Conference and the efforts made at various times since then by Jewish Committees in America and England in behalf of the East-European Jews, to draw without much difficulty from these experiences some very evident implications regarding the nature of the problem before us and the course of action we should pursue. The briefest analysis must show that the little we have achieved for our oppressed fellow-Jews came at a moment when we acted unitedly, more or less, and made our appeal simultaneously to all the Powers gathered at the Peace table. The incorporation of the articles on Jewish rights in the special treaties drawn up between the Allied Powers on the one hand, and the countries of Eastern Europe on the other, was the result of the efforts of the United Jewish Committees in Paris; and it may be said, too, that had these Committees, excepting the one from the United States, been chosen in a more representative and democratic manner there would have prevailed among them more real unity and the results might have been vastly more gratifying. At any rate, the fact remains that the United Jewish Committees accomplished something which is not altogether without significance, for if their work brought no actual relief to the Jews of Eastern Europe still it proved that we are capable of acting unitedly when necessary and it also showed the Poles and Rumanians that the Powers reckon with us to some extent.

Since that time we have been making separate appeals to individual governments, ihat is, the Jews of England appealed to the Byitish government, the Jews of America to the American government, and so on. And what is the result? What have we for our pains? Nothing! Nor could it have been otherwise. For the issue is not a clear-cut one between us and those countries in Eastern Europe where the Jews are persecuted. Other factors and interests are involved in the situation, and we must consider them. The Allied Powers have a mutual policy which they are trying to carry out in Eastern Europe; and it matters not that the policy has undergone some changes in the past and will, most likely, undergo more changes in the future. It has been until now, and all signs lead one to believe that it will continue to be, a matter of mutual understanding among the Powers; no one Power has done anything of importance that was not in accord with the accepted policy. What that policy is is of no consequence just now, but its presence is one reason, probably the most important one, why no Power would consent individually to do aught in behalf of our oppressed fellow-Jews.. We should bear in mind, too, that the action of a single government would have been ineffectual anyhow, since the impudence of the newly risen nations in East Europe is so unbounded that they are ready to defy any Power so long as they have the support they need from another source. Rumania has given us a perfect example of such impudence; the combined threat of all the Powers was necessary to bring her to even partial submission. Of course, some will say, there was the possibility of pursuading one of the Powers to plead our cause before her allies. But why should we have expected some one else to be our spokesman when there was a tribunal before which we could have done the pleading ourselves? It was this foolish hope which was to blame in part for our failure to organize and which left us after the dissolution of the United Jewish Committees without even the inadequate representation which we had at the Peace Conference. In short, from whatever angle we regard the matter it will be seen that our haphazard fragmentary efforts in behalf of our fellow-Jews have been futile, and furthermore, it must be clear that it was but natural that it should .:have been: so.