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Title: The Jew and American Ideals
Author: Spargo, John, 1876-1966
Language: English
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THE JEW AND AMERICAN IDEALS
BOOKS BY
JOHN SPARGO
THE JEW AND AMERICAN IDEALS
"THE GREATEST FAILURE IN ALL HISTORY"
RUSSIA AS AN AMERICAN PROBLEM
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BOLSHEVISM
BOLSHEVISM
AMERICANISM AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY EXPLAINED
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
[ESTABLISHED 1817]
THE JEW
AND
AMERICAN IDEALS
BY
JOHN SPARGO
_Author of_
"Bolshevism" "The Psychology of Bolshevism"
"Russia as an American Problem" "The
Greatest Failure in All History" "Social
Democracy Explained" Etc.
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE JEW AND AMERICAN IDEALS
Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
FOREWORD vii
I. A PACIFIST TURNED ANTI-SEMITE 1
II. THE ALLEGED "GREAT JEWISH CONSPIRACY" 10
III. THE MYSTERY OF THE PROTOCOLS 18
IV. IS SOCIALISM A JEWISH CONSPIRACY? 47
V. THE JEWISH SOCIALISTS AND BOLSHEVISM 59
VI. BOLSHEVISM AND THE JEWS 83
VII. THE VICIOUS ROLE OF ANTI-SEMITISM 99
VIII. WHAT ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA MEANS 110
IX. WE NEED THE CO-OPERATION OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW 121
X. A FINAL WORD 136
POSTSCRIPT 140
FOREWORD
This little book was written without the knowledge of any Jew. It is
not a defense of the Jew. It is not a pro-Jewish argument. It is a
defense of American ideals and institutions against anti-Semitism; a
plea for Christian civilization.
JOHN SPARGO.
"NESTLEDOWN,"
OLD BENNINGTON, VERMONT.
_January, 1921._
THE JEW AND AMERICAN IDEALS
I
A PACIFIST TURNED ANTI-SEMITE
About five years ago I was honored by an invitation to join with a
well-known American capitalist and certain other men and women in an
attempt to bring about the termination of the great World War. The
manufacturer in question believed that it was possible to "get the
boys out of the trenches by Christmas," and to that end organized an
expedition which is now remembered chiefly for the bellicosity and
belligerency of many of the "pacifists" who journeyed to Europe upon
the "Peace Ship."
In declining the invitation to associate myself with this expedition,
I felt that it was incumbent upon me to explain that, while I doubted
the wisdom of the undertaking and felt that it might do harm instead
of good, I honored the noble and unselfish motives by which Mr. Ford
was inspired. His hatred of war and blood-shed, and his desire to
promote peace and good will among all peoples and races, seemed to me
to be both profound and sincere and evoked my heartfelt admiration and
sympathy. The more I doubted his political judgment--believing that he
was being used as a dupe and tool in a very dangerous intrigue--the
more willing I was to acknowledge those qualities of mind and heart
which distinguished the famous manufacturer, and which the authors of
the intrigue sought to exploit and use for sinister ends. On many
occasions I have given public expression to my belief in Mr. Ford's
sincere and unselfish idealism.
If any justification is required for my now associating the name of
Henry Ford with a matter of grave international political importance,
I venture to suggest that it can be found in the pre-eminent position
which he occupies in one of the great branches of modern industry and
in the fact that as recently as two years ago he aspired to a seat in
the United States Senate, being nominated for that position by the
Democratic party in the great state of Michigan. Upon both counts
views expressed by Mr. Ford upon international questions which may
involve great and serious national or racial conflicts become the
subject of legitimate public interest, and when in furtherance of such
views he associates himself with an active policy which deals with one
of the most difficult and dangerous problems confronting civilized
mankind, his views and his acts assume public importance and invite
and compel attention and discussion. Therefore, believing as I do that
Mr. Ford is primarily responsible for a propaganda which is subversive
of the best traditions and institutions of this Republic, and which
has everywhere and at all times resulted in shameful crimes against
humanity, and in resistance to every progressive and humane movement,
I feel that it is my right and duty to utter my solemn remonstrance
and protest.
I have just returned from a tour through several of the European
countries most seriously involved in the late war. On the one hand, I
was deeply and gratefully impressed while in Europe with the manner in
which some of the intensest hatreds engendered by the war appear to be
dying out. On the other hand, I was deeply and painfully impressed by
the fact that, in country after country, racial hatreds older than any
nation in the world were being deliberately and systematically revived
and intensified, threatening brutal and ugly crimes against humanity
exceeding in horror the worst and most inhuman violence of the Great
War which so nearly achieved the ruin of civilization. In Germany, for
example, I found no hatred of America, notwithstanding the fact that
alone among the nations lately fighting against her we were still
technically at war with her. On the contrary, there was manifest an
almost universal desire for the restoration of friendship between the
two countries. In Belgium I saw hundreds of little German children
being fed by Belgian agencies, proving that hate was being dissolved
by compassion. Even in France the fierce hatred of Germany was
obviously dying.
So much for the bright side of the European situation as I saw it.
Unfortunately, to complete the picture, it is necessary to acknowledge
the numerous evidences of a widespread revival of one of the most
despicable, brutal, and dangerous forms of racial hatred and
antagonism known to mankind--anti-Semitism. Even in England, long
hitherto so free from Jew-baiting, the land in which the Jew Disraeli
became Prime Minister, I found an extensive, active, and skillfully
organized campaign directed against Jews, as Jews. It was and is a
campaign differing hardly at all from similar campaigns against the
Jews in Russia under tsarism, in Rumania, in Poland, and, to a less
extent, in Germany under the Hohenzollern. Unless this propaganda is
checked, unless the intelligence and the conscience of England can be
marshaled against it, England will take the place of the Russia of the
Romanovs as the land of pogroms, and infamies like the horrible
pogroms of Kishinev may occur in British cities.
I found in England great nation-wide organizations, obviously
financed, devoted to the sinister purpose of creating anti-Jewish
feeling and sentiment. I found special articles in influential
newspapers devoted to the same evil purpose. I found at least one
journal, obviously well financed again, exclusively devoted to the
fostering of suspicion, fear, and hatred against the Jew. Nothing that
the Black Hundreds of Russia under the tsars said of the Jews, in
order to inflame the ignorant masses and inspire them to savage
attacks upon the Jewish population, could have been worse than much of
this propaganda. It appealed to every passion, charged the Jews as a
race with every crime calculated to rouse the frenzied anger of the
non-Jewish population. And in the bookstores I discovered a whole
library of books devoted to the same end. One of the greatest living
statesmen of England, who is not a Jew, told me that in his judgment
this systematically propagated anti-Semitism is likely to bring
greater difficulty and shame to England than the Irish question, even.
And now, returning to the United States, I find America confronted by
the same peril and shame. Here, too, I find anti-Jewish meetings being
held. To my great astonishment and regret, I find that the personal
influence and the vast fortune of the erstwhile pacifist-philanthropist
are apparently enlisted in the same cruel and vicious propaganda. The
_Dearborn Independent_, which is the personal organ of Mr. Henry Ford,
maintained for the promulgation of his personal political and
sociological views, has been devoting a large amount of its space to
the creation of anti-Jewish feeling and sentiment. One of the first
pieces of accumulated mail to claim my attention on my return was a
pamphlet, sent to me by some unknown correspondent, obviously a Jew
hater in view of the coarse and brutal comments written upon the
margins. This pamphlet contains a reprint of nine articles which
originally appeared in the _Dearborn Independent._ It is, therefore,
apparently impossible for Mr. Ford to disclaim personal and direct
responsibility for the contents of the pamphlet. If I am wrong in any
of these particulars I shall be very glad to be corrected and to
apologize for the error. To find any American engaged in such a
propaganda seems to me such a pity and such an outrage against our
national ideals that I should welcome proof that my information and
inferences are all wrong and unfounded so far as Mr. Ford is
concerned.
In this discussion of the anti-Semitic propaganda, and of the share of
the _Dearborn Independent_ in that propaganda, I have not the
slightest intention of attacking Mr. Ford personally. While I find
myself deeply interested in the psychology of the transformation of an
extremely idealistic pacifist into an aggressive propagandist of race
hatred, with that I am not here and now concerned.
II
THE ALLEGED "GREAT JEWISH CONSPIRACY"
Just as in the case of the British anti-Semitic press, the Jew-baiting
campaign in the _Dearborn Independent_ and other newspapers makes much
of the so-called "protocols" of the Wise Men of Zion, first published
in Russia in 1905, but lately translated into English and published in
England and the United States. In a sense it is not my business to
expose the dubious origin and history of these documents. That is a
Jewish task, to which various Jewish scholars have devoted their
attention. In the London _Spectator_ Mr. Lucien Wolff has performed it
with distinction. I am not a Jew, racially or otherwise, and can lay
no claim to any special ability or knowledge which would impose such a
task upon me. There are, however, some things which must be said
concerning the above-mentioned protocols, things which do not require
specialized scholarship, and which even the non-Jew can say with
confidence.
These protocols are offered as evidence of the existence of a
world-wide conspiracy far more serious and extensive than anything
else of the kind recorded in history. By comparison, the greatest
conspiracy hitherto revealed seems like a kindergarten game. It is
charged, and these documents are submitted as evidence in support of
the charge, that there, exists, and has existed for centuries, a
Jewish imperialistic program; that Jews in all lands have been and are
united in a highly organized and subtly directed secret movement to
bring about the overthrow of all non-Jewish governments, to substitute
therefor a Jewish world government, to obliterate all national
boundaries, and to destroy all religions other than Judaism. This, it
is alleged, is the concrete form in which the Jews visualize their
destiny as the Chosen People. In order to attain this grandiose ideal,
every means to weaken the non-Jewish elements and institutions in
civilization is encouraged by the invisible Jewish government, the
leaders of this vast conspiracy.
If we are to place credence in these documents, the principal agency
through which the Jewish conspirators have worked is Freemasonry. The
Masonic orders throughout the world have been the blind dupes and
tools of this superimperialism of the Jews, if the statements made in
these protocols are true. Indeed, there can hardly be any question at
all that if the truth of these documents can be established, there is,
to say the least, quite as much reason for suppressing Masonic lodges,
and making them illegal, as there is for suppressing Bolshevist or
other conspiratory organizations. I should just as little expect to
find sympathy for Bolshevism in a Masonic lodge as in the College of
Cardinals, or in the Union League Club, let us say. When we enter into
the mysteries of this "Jewish conspiracy" we encounter many
surprises.
According to the statements made in these protocols, practically all
the revolutionary movements of modern times have been instigated and
directed by Jews. They have caused the assassination of rulers and
heads of states, so that behind the murderous fanaticism of
individuals there has generally been the cold calculation of the most
cunning and unscrupulous intellects of the human race. According to
the same evidence, the wars which have drenched the world with blood
and rent it with passion, including racial wars in Asia and Africa,
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Russo-Japanese War, and the
recent World War, were all brought about deliberately by Jewish
cunning, for the purpose of weakening the fabric of non-Jewish states
and providing the Jews with new sources of strength and power to be
used to establish their universal dominion.
All this is terrible enough. But there is even worse to follow. We
must remember that these documents were first published in Russia in
1905, and they purport to be the _procès-verbaux_ of a conference held
eight or nine years prior to that time. It is rather startling,
therefore, to find outlined therein a program of revolutionary action,
to be initiated in Russia and developed throughout the civilized
world, remarkably like the Bolshevist program, not merely in the
precise measures contained in the program, but also, and especially,
in the general conception of policy underlying it. We find in this
alleged Jewish program the same negation of all the accepted
principles of law and honor and morality that the Bolshevist policy
has so conspicuously manifested. It is brazenly stated that bribery,
deceit, and treachery are to be used (Protocol I). A vast army of
spies and secret agents abundantly supplied with funds is to be relied
on to promote revolt and dissension in all the principal countries
(Protocol 2). "Ferments, discords, and hostility" are to be
deliberately created and fostered throughout Europe and, through the
international relations of the European countries, to the other
continents also (Protocol 7). Efforts are to be made to compromise the
honor and besmirch the reputations of the most influential statesmen
and to use blackmail in order to make these statesmen serve the
purposes of the conspirators (Protocol 10). Revolutionary movements,
anarchistic, communistic, and socialistic, are to be fostered for the
purpose of destroying non-Jewish civilization (Protocol 3). In the
event of unfavorable action by any power or group of powers, it is to
be met by resistance in the form of universal war (Protocol 7).
Disorganization of the economic life of the world through the
debasement and ruin of the credit and currency systems, of the
principal nations, and the creation of "a universal economic crisis"
are also to be used to the same end (Protocol 3).
I have briefly summarized only a few of the more important items in
this monstrous program. There is more of the same general type of
fiendishness. Concerning the character of the program itself, there
can be no difference of opinion between honest Americans. It is as
diabolical as it is fantastic. What importance we ought to attach to
it, however, must necessarily depend upon our judgment concerning its
origin. If these protocols, and the program contained in them, are to
be seriously accepted for what they pretend to be--namely, a
deliberate statement of the purposes and aims of the leaders of the
Jewish people throughout the world, with practically the entire Jewish
race behind them--then the matter assumes enormous importance. If, on
the other hand, there is no substantial evidence of this--and such
evidence as is available indicates that the protocols are the product
of a single diseased and depraved mind--the documents cease to possess
any great significance and the terrible injustice and frightfully
dangerous consequences of charging them against the Jewish people are
obvious. We must, therefore, pay critical attention to the origin of
the protocols and the circumstances surrounding their publication, as
well as to any internal evidences of their genuineness or otherwise.
III
THE MYSTERY OF THE PROTOCOLS
First of all, then, what do we actually know about the origin of these
protocols? In the year 1903 a book was published at Solotarevo in
Russia, entitled _The Great in Little_. The reputed author of the book
was one Prof. Sergei Nilus, concerning whom we have no absolutely
reliable information. Author of a book which has made an enormous
sensation in many lands and become the subject of furious controversy,
he is quite unknown. No responsible person in or out of Russia has
ever positively identified Nilus, so far as I have been able to
discover. From what he says of himself it is practically certain that
he was in the service of the infamous Secret Police Agency of the late
Tsar Nicholas II. For reasons which will presently appear, I am
disposed to believe that the very un-Russian name Nilus is really a
pseudonym.
In a second edition of his book, published in 1905, Nilus gives a
brief autobiographical account of himself. He says that he was born in
1862 of Russian parents who held liberal opinions, and that his family
was well known in Moscow, its members being educated people who were
firm in their allegiance to the Tsar and the Greek Church. This is
hardly what a Russian of the period would describe as holding "liberal
opinions," but let that pass. Nilus claims to have been graduated from
Moscow University and to have held a number of civil-service posts,
all of them, so far as his specifications go, connected with the
police and judicial systems. He went to the government of Orel, where
he became a landowner and a sort of petty noble. He entered the
Troitsky-Sergevsky Monastery, near Moscow, or so he says. Although
numerous efforts have been made in Russia to find this Sergei Nilus,
none has succeeded.
It is true that a number of persons have testified to the existence of
Sergei Nilus, but in each case a different person has been referred
to, though Nilus is not a Russian name or commonly found in Russia.
The present writer learned of two men, father and son, each bearing
this very unusual name. First information led to the belief that at
last the mysterious author had been discovered. The father was of
about the right age and was said to be a writer interested in
religious subjects. Further inquiry elicited the information that this
man had died in 1910, whereas the Nilus we are interested in was alive
as late as 1917. Greatly enlarged editions of his work, with new
personal matter added, appeared in 1911 and 1917. Obviously,
therefore, the man who died in 1910 was not our author. The anonymous
editor of an edition of the protocols issued in New York toward the
end of 1920 says that "a returning traveler from Siberia in August,
1919, was positive that Nilus was in Irkutsk in June of that year." No
clew is given to the identity of the editor who makes this statement.
And here let me remark in passing that it is a remarkable fact that
_all_ the editors of the numerous editions of the protocols, both here
and abroad, are very shy persons and hide under the mask of anonymity.
Nor is any clew given to the identity of the traveler from Siberia.
Another report, also by a traveler returned from Siberia, who may
possibly be the same person, makes it appear that the Nilus who was at
Irkutsk is the son of the man who died in 1910, and is himself too
young to fit the autobiographical sketch of the man born in 1862. I
can only add to the foregoing, which represents all that I have been
able to find out about Nilus, that there was an edition of the
protocols published in Kishinev in 1906, the name of the author of the
book in which they appeared being given as Butmi de Katzman.
Now with respect to the protocols. No reference to these documents
appeared in the first edition of the book in 1903. If the reader will
kindly bear this fact in mind it will help to an understanding of what
follows. A second edition of the book, greatly enlarged, appeared at
Tsarskoye-Selo, near Moscow, in 1905, the added matter being given the
title, "Antichrist a Near Political Possibility." This additional
matter consisted of (1) an introduction written by Nilus himself, (2)
twenty-four documents purporting to be disconnected portions of the
report of a secret conclave of an organization of Jews called the
Elders of Zion, and (3) some commentaries thereon by Nilus. Now, it is
very significant that Nilus himself has given different accounts of
the history of these documents--accounts which differ so radically
that they cannot be reconciled.
Let us examine these various accounts very briefly. In the
introduction to the edition of 1905 Nilus tells us that in 1901 he
came into possession of the alleged protocols. He says that at the
close of a series of secret meetings of influential leaders of this
conspiracy, held under Masonic auspices, a woman stole from "one of
the most influential and most highly initiated leaders of Freemasonry"
certain documents which turned out to be disconnected portions of the
_procès-verbaux_ of lectures or reports made at the aforesaid meetings
of the Elders of Zion. He says that the protocols were "signed by
representatives of Zion of the Thirty-third Degree," but he does not
give the names of such signatories. This is of itself a suspicious
circumstance, but a close reading of the text reveals that it is only
one of several equally suspicious facts. Nilus does not claim to have
seen the actual stolen documents, the original protocols. On the
contrary, he tells us that what he received in 1901 was a document
which he was assured was an accurate translation of the stolen
documents. His own words are: "This document came into my possession
some four years ago (1901) with the positive assurance that it is a
true copy in translation of original documents stolen by a woman from
one of the most influential and the most highly initiated leaders of
Freemasonry." Nilus has not seen the original manuscript, nor has any
other known person. We have only the word of Professor Nilus that
somebody gave him assurance that certain manuscripts were true and
accurate translations of stolen documents of great international
importance. So far as Nilus himself knew, or cared, apparently, the
manuscript given, to him might well have been a forgery.
We do not even know the date of the alleged secret meetings of the
Elders of Zion at which the lectures or reports, or whatever they
were, recorded in these protocols were made and, presumably,
considered. We do not know the name of the "most influential and most
highly initiated" leader of Freemasonry from whom the documents were
said to have been stolen. Neither do we know the name of the thief.
We do not know the name of the author of the alleged protocols, though
obviously it would make all the difference in the world whether these
are summaries of statements made by a responsible leader of the Jewish
people or the wild vaporings of such a crank as infests practically
every conference and convention. We do not know who translated the
alleged protocols, nor in what language they were written. Moreover,
not one word of assurance does Professor Nilus give on his own account
that he knows any of these things. He does not appear to have made any
investigation of any kind. In view of the rest of his work we may be
quite sure that had he done so he would have told us. He does not even
tell us, in this edition of 1905, that the person from whom he
acquired the "translation" was known to him as a reliable and
trustworthy person. He does not profess to know anything more than I
have already quoted from him. No one knows Nilus himself. So much for
the explanation of 1905.
Before I pass on to consider a later and different explanation made by
the mysterious Nilus, a few brief observations upon the story now
before us may not be out of place, especially since the _Dearborn
Independent_ has accepted it and made it the basis of its propaganda.
How is it possible for any person possessing anything approaching a
trained mind, and especially for one accustomed to historical study,
to accept as authentic, and without adequate corroboration, documents
whose origin and history are so clouded with secrecy, mystery, and
ignorance? And how can men and women who are to all appearances
rational and high-minded bring themselves to indict and condemn a
whole race, invoking thereby the perils of world-wide racial conflict,
upon the basis of such flimsy, clouded, and tainted testimony? No
decent and self-respecting judge or jury anywhere in the United States
would, I dare believe, convict the humblest individual of even petty
crime upon the basis of such testimony. Serious charges made by a
complainant who does not appear in court and is not known to the
court, an alleged translation of an alleged original, not produced in
court, alleged to have been stolen by an anonymous thief not produced
in court, from an alleged conspirator not named nor produced in court,
and not a scintilla of corroborative evidence, direct or
circumstantial--was ever a chain of evidence so flimsy? By comparison,
the discovery of the _Book of Mormon_ is a well-attested event.
Now let us consider another very different story told by Nilus. In
January, 1917--the date is important--another edition of the book, so
greatly enlarged and rewritten as to be almost a new book, appeared in
Russia bearing the name of the mysterious and unknown Nilus. The title
of this book is _It Is Near, at the Door_. It was published at
Sergeiev, near Moscow, at the Monastery of Sergeiev. I have said that
the date of the appearance of this volume is important, and here is
the reason: The overthrow of tsarism occurred in March, 1917. Toward
the end of 1916 the revolutionary ferment was already apparent. What
else could be expected than that the provocative agents of the Tsar's
Secret Police and the Black Hundreds should strive to divert the
attention of the people to some other issue? And what more natural
than that they should conclude that a widespread movement against the
Jews, great pogroms over a wide area, would best suit their purpose?
The first publication of the alleged protocols took place in 1905,
also at the beginning of a popular revolution, and it did have the
effect of creating a considerable anti-Jewish agitation which weakened
the revolutionary movement. The trail of the Secret Police and the
Black Hundreds is plain. And now for the new version of the history of
the protocols. On page 96 of this new book, which is a violent
diatribe against the Jews, Nilus says:
In 1901 I came into possession of a manuscript, and this
comparatively small book was destined to cause such a deep
change in my entire viewpoint as can only be caused in the heart
of man by Divine Power. It was comparable with the miracle of
making the blind see. "May Divine acts show on him."
This manuscript was called, "The Protocols of the Zionist Men of
Wisdom," and it was given to me by the now deceased leader of
the Tshernigov nobility, who later became Vice-Governor of
Stavropol, Alexis Nicholaievich Sukhotin. I had already begun to
work with my pen for the glory of the Lord, and I was friendly
with Sukhotin because he was a man of my opinion--_i.e._,
extremely conservative, as they are now termed.
Sukhotin told me that he in turn had obtained the manuscript
from a lady who always lived abroad. This lady was a noblewoman
from Tshernigov. He mentioned her by name, but I have forgotten
it. He said that she obtained it in some mysterious way, by
theft, I believe. Sukhotin also said that one copy of the
manuscript was given by this lady to Sipiagin, then Minister of
the Interior, upon her return from abroad, and that Sipiagin was
subsequently killed. He said other things of the same mysterious
character. But when I first became acquainted with the contents
of the manuscript I was convinced that its terrible, cruel, and
straight-forward truth is witness of its true origin from the
"Zionist Men of Wisdom," and that _no other evidence of its
origin would be needed_.
Is it necessary, I wonder, to waste words in exposing this pious
fraud? His own statement comes pretty close to convicting him of
being, as I have suggested above, a hireling of the Secret Police, an
_agent provocateur_. Sukhotin, from whom he now claims to have
received the manuscript, was a notorious anti-Semite and a despot of
the worst type. Sipiagin, to whom, it is alleged, the manuscript had
been previously given, was also a bitter anti-Semite and one of the
most infamous of Russian bureaucrats. He was notoriously corrupt and
unspeakably cruel while he was Minister of the Interior. He was
assassinated by Stephen Balmashev, in March, 1902. Even if we credit
this revised version of the way in which he came into possession of
the manuscript, Nilus is closely identified with the secret agencies
of the old regime. Let us take note, however, of other peculiarities
of the canting hypocrite, Nilus. He names Sukhotin and Sipiagin only
after they are dead and denial by them is impossible; he has
"forgotten" the name of the "noblewoman from Tshernigov," the person
alleged to have stolen the original documents; he suggests that the
documents need no other evidence than their own contents. Truly, a
very typical criminal is the mysterious, elusive, unknown "Prof.
Sergei Nilus"!
Now let me call attention to two other very interesting facts in
connection with this story of 1917. The first is that Nilus omits the
very important statement made in the edition of 1905 that the alleged
protocols were "signed by representatives of Zion of the Thirty-third
Degree," without offering the slightest explanation of that most
important omission. The second fact is even more conclusive as
evidence of the man's absolute untrustworthiness. Having told us in
the edition of 1905 that the friend who gave him the protocols assured
him that they had been "stolen by a woman," and in 1917 that it was
Nicholaievich Sukhotin from whom he received the documents, who not
only told him that they had been stolen by a woman, but told him also
the name of the thief (which he has forgotten, unfortunately), he
proceeds, in the Epilogue of the 1917 edition, to tell a very
different story. He says in this Epilogue that the protocols "were
stealthily removed from a large book of notes on lectures. _My friend_
found them in the safe of the headquarters offices of the Society of
Zion, which is situated at present in Paris."
Was ever perjurer more confused? First we have an unknown woman
stealing the documents from "one of the most highly initiated leaders
of Freemasonry"; next, we have a "noblewoman of Tshernigov" as the
thief and Sukhotin as the intermediary through whose hands they
reached his friend Nilus. Now, finally, Nilus says that his
friend--_i.e._, _Sukhotin_--was the thief, and not a woman at all!
Instead of being stolen from the person of "one of the most highly
initiated leaders of Freemasonry," they are "found" in a safe in
Paris! The woman has disappeared; the highly initiated Freemason has
disappeared. Now it is Sukhotin who is identified as the thief, and he
is pointed out as having robbed a safe in Paris. So much for the
perjury of Nilus. I may add that I am assured--though I cannot vouch
for the statement--that Sukhotin was not outside of Russia between
1890 and 1905.
But it may be argued, as it has been argued in the _Dearborn
Independent_ following the suggestion of Nilus--that the authenticity
of the protocols, and the reality and seriousness of the Jewish
conspiracy, are sufficiently demonstrated by internal evidence. I
confess that I do not find in the documents any reason for reaching
such a conclusion, though I have studied them with all the patience
and care I could command, and have read the principal arguments made
in their defense. I find not a scrap of evidence to show that there
exists, or ever has existed, such a body of men as "The Elders of
Zion," or "The Men of Wisdom of Zion," or any similar secret body of
Jews. _That such a secret conspiratory body exists has been charged
from time to time during more than a century, yet not a particle of
evidence to sustain the charge has ever been produced._ I am quite
well aware of the capacity of the human mind to believe whatever
accords with preconceived prejudices, suspicions, or impressions, even
in the face of evidence to the contrary, and, correspondingly, to
reject the most conclusive evidence when it runs counter to such
prejudices, suspicions, or impressions. Laying upon my own mind the
warning implied by this knowledge, and guarding myself against the
danger of rejecting, or ignoring, or undervaluing unpleasant and
unwelcome facts, I am bound to say that those who find in these
alleged protocols a sufficient basis for bringing the Jewish race
under indictment seem to me to have brought preconceived suspicion and
fear of the Jew to their study of the documents themselves.
Personally, I can find nothing in them which suggests any highly
organized intelligence, such as the leaders of the Jewish race
represent and command in abundance; rather, they seem to me to clearly
indicate the disordered mind and distorted vision of a very common
type of monomaniac, the genus "crank."
I believe that historical study is not one of Mr. Ford's strong
points, but, even so, he must be aware of the fact that it is one of
the commonest things in history to encounter charges of conspiracy
directed against religious and political sects, supported by more or
less plausible arguments and believed by considerable numbers of
people. Were it necessary to my purpose, and did time permit, I could
quite easily fill a considerable volume with illustrations of this
fact. For example, there exists a great literature devoted to the
object of proving that the Vatican is the headquarters of such a
conspiracy to bring about or to attain world domination. Thousands of
books and pamphlets have been written to convict the Jesuits of such a
conspiracy, many of them far more convincing than these protocols.
Pamphlets aiming to convince the American people that the Knights of
Columbus is an organization aiming at the overthrow of the American
Republic and the establishment of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope
over the United States have been circulated by the million. It is a
matter of court record that this charge has been supported by the
publication of what purported to be exact copies of oaths pledging the
members of that organization to the end stated. Let me say at once
that I do not credit these sensational stories and charges. I have
confined myself to charges made against one of the two great sections
of Christianity for reasons which seem to me peculiarly cogent. The
charges made against the Jews have produced the most terrible results
in the countries where the Roman Catholic Church is strongest, and no
leader of the Christian religion has such strong reason for denouncing
such appeals to prejudice and hatred as the head of that Church.
Belief in widespread conspiracies directed against individuals or the
state is probably the commonest form assumed by the human mind when it
loses its balance and its sense of proportion. I venture to hazard the
opinion that of all the cranks who have pestered Mr. Ford since he has
attained a conspicuous position, those who imagined themselves to be
the victims of conspiracies have outnumbered all the others. These
protocols are either preposterous forgeries deliberately wrought for
the purpose of fostering anti-Semitism in Russia, or they are the
pitiable ravings of a familiar type of monomaniac.
Concerning the authorship of the protocols, there has been much
conjecture, especially on the part of those who have seriously
regarded them as an authentic expression of Jewish opinion. It has
been whispered in those places where the so-called Jewish question is
discussed, that they are the work of the well-known Zionist leader,
Dr. Theodor Herzl. This is the theory which Nilus himself advances in
the introduction to the edition of 1917. He says:
... my book has already reached the fourth edition, but it is
only definitely known to me now and in a manner worthy of
belief, and that through Jewish sources, that these protocols
are nothing other than the strategic plans for the conquest of
the world under the heel of Israel, and worked out by the
leaders of the Jewish people ... and read to the Councils of
Elders by the "Prince of Exile," Theodor Herzl, during the first
Zionist Congress, summoned by him in August, 1897, in Basle.
This is the first time Nilus has so much as hinted at the date of the
alleged secret conclave of the Elders of Zion, at the close of which,
according to the story of 1905 so elaborately contradicted in 1917,
the protocols were stolen by a woman. It is perhaps as well to remark
in passing that the first Zionist Congress was held in the open and
its proceedings freely reported in the press. Now, Herzl stands among
the foremost of the intellectual Jews of modern times. All his known
work is characterized by clear, clean-cut reasoning and direct and
forceful statement. All his known writings are characterized by these
qualities. Whatever we may think about Zionism, it must be admitted
that the great Austrian journalist and critic never lacked the courage
of his convictions, as may be seen by anybody who will take the
trouble to read his writings or the evidence delivered by him before
the British Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, in 1902. If Herzl
wrote these documents he adopted the disguise of the style and method
of a much inferior mentality.
Unless we are to believe that he deliberately adopted a style of
writing and method of reasoning entirely unfamiliar and unlike his
publicly acknowledged work, for the express purpose of hiding his
authorship of the protocols--which, if we credit the story that they
were presented to a secret conference of the leaders of the alleged
conspiracy, is an impossible hypothesis--we are warranted in saying
that, whoever wrote them, it was not Theodor Herzl. It would be as
reasonable to ascribe a Walt Whitman chant to Emerson, or a Bernard
Shaw satire to Jonathan Edwards, as to ascribe these crude, meandering
pages to the crystalline intellect of Theodor Herzl. I do not find in
them any suggestion of the trained mind of a scholar and writer of
Herzl's attainments; rather, they seem to me to belong in about the
same intellectual category as the ordinary propaganda literature of
the numerous sects, ancient and modern, based upon peculiar
interpretations of Biblical prophecies. Since the outbreak of the
World War in 1914, and throughout the whole chapter of revolutionary
events following thereupon, there has been a steady flood of such
literature. Even the much-discussed forecast of Bolshevism does not in
any material respect differ from many similar "prophecies" that have
appeared in recent years.
It cannot be denied that Bolshevism actually conforms in a notable
degree to the specifications contained in the protocols, which I have
already summarized in the preceding chapter. Shall we, then, conclude
that the charge is proven and declare the case closed, or is it
necessary to examine the evidence further and more critically? I think
that a very brief period of honest reflection will convince any
fair-minded and intelligent person of the injustice of the rendering
of a verdict holding the Jews responsible for Bolshevism upon the
basis of such evidence. Let me direct the attention of my readers to a
coincidence of dates which once more directs suspicion against Prof.
Sergei Nilus and against the alleged stolen protocols. I have already
pointed out that in 1903, in the first edition of his book, Nilus did
not use the alleged protocols, though he claims that they had been in
his possession for two years prior to that time. That this is a
suspicious circumstance will, I think, be readily conceded by the
open-minded. In 1903 the Russian Social Democratic party was split
into two factions, and the word "Bolshevism" came into use as the
designation of the policy of one of these factions. In 1905 the first
Russian revolution took place. In the period between the split in the
Social Democratic party in 1903 and the outbreak of the revolution in
1905 the leaders of the Bolsheviki had been active in formulating and
propagating their theoretical and political views. During the
revolution a sharp conflict occurred between the Bolsheviki and other
factions of the Russian Socialist movement, and the Socialist press
gave much space to the controversy.
It will be seen from this brief historical sketch that when Nilus
published a second edition of his book, late in 1905, he could find in
the Russian Socialist press all the materials for such a general
description of Bolshevism as that contained in the protocols. Of
course, if we believe that the documents are genuine, that they are
authentic translations of documents actually stolen in 1896, delivered
to Nilus in 1901, and by him first made public in 1905, we have simply
a coincidence of dates. I submit, however, that there is not a shred
of credible evidence that the documents were so obtained by Nilus, or
that they existed in 1896, 1901, 1903, or at any date earlier than
1905, the year of their first publication. I submit, furthermore, that
it is highly probable that the passages in the alleged protocols which
are now hailed as conclusive evidence that the Bolshevist policy had
been formulated as early as 1896, were in reality written after 1903
and in the light of already published accounts of Bolshevist theories
and tactics. There is not a thing that we know about these documents
and their history which does not point directly to the conclusion that
they are forgeries.
When I was in London in October, 1920, an English journalist of
distinction, well known and influential on both sides of the Atlantic,
with great earnestness and evident conviction sought to impress me
with the serious importance of these alleged _Protocols of the Elders
of Zion_. He was quite convinced that the documents were genuine, and
that they proved beyond reasonable doubt the existence of a world-wide
Jewish conspiracy. With great solemnity and manifest sincerity he
sought to enlist my co-operation in defense of what he called
"Anglo-Saxon civilization," which he seemed to regard as synonymous
with Christian civilization. He was quite astonished when I directed
his attention to the fact that a well-known French writer, Louis
Martin, had published, as far back as 1895, a book in which he
attempted to prove the existence of such a world-wide Jewish
conspiracy. My friend honestly believed that the existence of this
conspiracy had never been known or suspected prior to the publication
of the work of the mysterious Sergei Nilus. He was still more
surprised when I told him that in his book, _L'Anglais Est-Il un
Juif?_, Martin had attempted to prove that the English people are part
of the Jewish race, and that the British government is the principal
directing power of the conspiracy; so that the world-wide Jewish
conspiracy must, according to Martin, be understood as a secret
compact between the British government, as a Jewish organization, and
the leaders of Jewry in all other lands. Thus is the theory of a
world-wide Jewish conspiracy reduced to absurdity. I confess that at
that time I was not aware that in the original Russian of the 1905
edition of the work of Nilus this absurd theory of Martin had been
reproduced, but carefully omitted from every English translation
published in this country and in England. The reason for the omission
is obvious; had the passage been given it would have made a
laughing-stock of the protocols. I submit, however, that the omission
of such an important passage from the text of Nilus without any
reference to or explanation of the liberty taken with the text, places
those responsible for the several translations in a very unfavorable
light.
In closing this chapter it is perhaps well that some record should be
made of the sinister use which was made of these alleged protocols
during the World War. Not long after the United States had begun
active participation in the war against Germany, it came to my
attention that typewritten manuscripts purporting to prove that the
war was part of a great conspiracy of international Jews were being
circulated. On at least three different occasions, early in 1918, I
was asked about this charge. I was told then that the British and
American governments were in a special sense the agents of this Jewish
conspiracy. In July, 1918, in Paris, a fuller account of the documents
was given to me by a loyal Socialist, to whom they had been shown.
There was not then, as there is not now, the slightest doubt in my
mind that the pro-German propagandists resorted to this trick in order
to weaken the morale of the principal Allied nations.
IV
IS SOCIALISM A JEWISH CONSPIRACY?
Upon the strength of statements made in this collection of documents
of mysterious and suspicious origin, a number of papers, including the
_Dearborn Independent_ and the _London Morning Post_, have attempted
to account for and explain the international Socialist movement as
part of this Jewish imperialistic conspiracy. Neither in the protocols
themselves nor in the newspapers making this particular charge has any
shred of authentic evidence been adduced in its support. True, a great
deal has been made of the undeniable fact that Karl Marx, Ferdinand
Lassalle, Wilhelm Liebnecht, and other noted Socialists belonged to
the Jewish race. Against this fact might very well be set the equally
undeniable fact that the foremost opponents of these men, and of
Socialism, were also of the Jewish race. Apparently, therefore, we are
to believe that the leaders of this Jewish conspiracy set up the
Socialist movement and fostered it, while at the same time they
enlisted their ablest minds to defeat it. Surely for the normal mind
that is not obsessed this is a theory too absurd for belief.
Only those who are entirely ignorant of the history of Socialism and
Socialist theories can possibly hold this view of its Jewish origin.
Long before Karl Marx appeared upon the scene of action Socialism had
already made an impress upon European thought. Marx was a boy of
fifteen when the word Socialism first appeared in print as designating
the doctrines preached by Robert Owen, the Welshman, for almost twenty
years before that time. Was Owen the tool of Jewish conspirators? I
have read most of the literature relating to Owen's life and teaching,
including his own voluminous writings, and the innumerable
controversies in which he was engaged throughout his life. I have not
discovered in all this mass of material a single trace of Jewish
influence. He had no Jewish friends or associates during the formative
years, the period in which the Socialist ideas and ideals shaped
themselves. His Socialism was the direct outcome of his experience as
a successful manufacturer. He was not in any sense a man of books.
From time to time he required large sums of money for his enterprises.
Surely, if those enterprises, and his life's work as a whole, formed
part of a great Jewish conspiracy which had behind it the vast
financial resources of Jewry, it would not have been difficult for him
to secure the financial support he needed. It is a fact of cardinal
importance, therefore, that Owen never did receive Jewish financial
support. Those who would have us believe that Socialism originated as
a part of the great world-wide conspiracy of Jewish imperialism must
first of all explain Robert Owen.
Nor does Owen stand alone in the history of Socialism among the
Anglo-Saxon peoples. It is a well-known fact, one to which he himself
has called attention, that the most important of the economic and
sociological theories of Marx were held and promulgated before his
time by a number of British writers. As Professor Foxwell and others
have shown, the roots of what is called Marxian Socialist theory lie
deep in the soil of British political economy. Karl Marx devoted his
typically Jewish genius to the exposition of Socialist theories, but
the theories themselves were not of Hebraic origin. William Godwin,
Charles Hall, William Thompson, John Gray, and John Francis Bray all
preceded Marx, and not one of them was a Jew, nor can we find in their
writings any trace of Jewish influence. It is the same with Bronterre
O'Brien, the first to call himself a Social Democrat. If any or all of
these men were the agents of such a conspiracy, it is remarkable that
there should be an entire absence of evidence of that fact. It is
quite unbelievable that there was any sort of conspiracy which
affected them. For the most part they were poor and their books were
published in pitifully small editions at great sacrifice to
themselves. Incidentally, it is worthy of note, Karl Marx, the Jew,
suffered terrible poverty. Certainly, all this does not suggest an
international conspiracy backed by the Jewish leaders of the financial
world.
Because of the prominence of a few individual Jews in the American
Socialist movement in recent years, the writer of the anti-Semitic
articles in the _Dearborn Independent_ regards as proven the theory
that American Socialism originated in Jewish conspiracy. It is another
evidence of his entire ignorance of the subject concerning which he
writes. If there is anything which can be said about Socialism with
certainty, it is that its fundamental theories are mainly of
Anglo-Saxon origin. Karl Marx was a boy of nine years when Robert Owen
reprinted in England an American Socialist pamphlet, written by an
American workingman and published in America a year or two earlier. At
about the same time Thomas Cooper, of Columbia, South Carolina,
published his book in which the fundamental economic theories of
modern Socialism were clearly expounded. When Marx was no more than
ten years old we find O.A. Brownson, editor of the Boston _Quarterly
Review_, vigorously preaching here in America the theory of the class
war, the abolition of the wage system, and the necessity for a triumph
of the proletariat. We find such men as Thomas Skidmore, R.L.
Jennings, and L. Byllesby preaching thoroughgoing Socialism. In 1829
these men and others were exercising a notable and considerable
influence upon American thought. In vain shall we search their
writings and the meager accounts of their lives for any trace or
suggestion of Jewish influence or control.
I skip a decade and turn to the Fourierist period of American
Socialism. The profound influence of Charles Fourier upon Karl Marx
is well known and has been the subject of much learned writing. But if
the Frenchman inspired the German Jew, so likewise did he inspire many
American non-Jews, the very flower of our race. It was Albert Brisbane
who began the Fourierist agitation here, and soon he had associated
with him Horace Greeley, Parke Godwin, George Ripley, Charles A. Dana,
John S. Dwight, William Henry Channing, Margaret Fuller, John Orvis,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and many others.
Other distinguished Americans who were brought into more or less
sympathetic association with the movement included Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, and Theodore
Parker, among others. Certainly it would be difficult to name a body
of men and women more truly representative of the highest and best of
American life and genius. To suggest that these were all the agents of
a Jewish conspiracy, either consciously or unconsciously, is to invite
and deserve ridicule. In truth, Socialism is as Anglo-Saxon as Magna
Charta and as American as the Declaration of Independence, and we
might as well attribute either or both of these to Jewish intrigue as
Socialism. It is true that the organized Socialist movement in America
has long spoken with a foreign accent and borne the imprint of an
alien psychology, but that psychology, as I have elsewhere pointed
out, is German and not Hebraic.
It would take us too far afield to discuss the origin of French
Socialism, even in this sketchy fashion, but I can state with the
assurance that is born of intimate knowledge that French Socialism
shows as little sign of having been inspired by alien influences,
Jewish or other, as British and American Socialism. I stress this
point not because I would defend the Jews against the charge that they
have manifested unusual sympathy for Socialism (which, indeed, if
true, I should hold to be a virtuous distinction), nor to apologize
for or to deny the splendid contributions of individual Jews to the
Socialist movement. My concern is to enter protest against the charge
that the Socialist movement of the world originated in the ambitions
of Jewish imperialists and is neither more nor less than part and
parcel of a great international Jewish conspiracy. That is a stupid
travesty of history, and a dangerous one.
I have spent the greater part of my life in the Socialist movement, in
close and intimate comradeship with both Jews and Gentiles belonging
to nearly every civilized nation. I am as proud of the comradeship of
my Jewish comrades as I am of that of any others. My readers will
perhaps understand that I deeply resent the implication that through
all the years of struggle and sacrifice I have been either the
unconscious dupe or the willing agent of any kind of selfish
conspiracy, Jewish or other. It is, of course, difficult to disprove
such an accusation brought against a great movement, and, therefore,
by implication against the individuals belonging to that movement. If
I should charge that Mr. Henry Ford is engaged in this anti-Semitic
propaganda for purely selfish and mercenary reasons, that he has
become the spokesman and agent of great unscrupulous capitalist
interests who seek to destroy their Jewish competitors and to profit
thereby, he would find it difficult to establish the contrary by
definite and concrete proof. As a matter of justice, nothing of the
sort should be expected. The burden of proof rests upon the person
making the accusation. In like fashion, when the _Dearborn
Independent_ charges that the international Socialist movement is one
of the agents of a vicious Jewish conspiracy against Christian
civilization, it is in honor bound to submit proofs. This it has not
done, nor has any other paper making the charge. I _know_ that the
charge is a cruel and cowardly falsehood, a libel upon millions of
honest and honorable men and women, to utter which is an infamy and
degradation.
The charge is one that has been leveled against practically every
movement of protest that has been developed in modern times. It was
leveled against the Protestant Reformation; against the French
Revolution; against Mazzini and his followers in Italy; against the
German Revolutionists of 1848; against British Trade-Unionists. I have
no doubt that a little research would reveal the fact that the same
charge was directed against the Abolitionists in this country. Vicious
interests are never very scrupulous in their choice of weapons. In
those Protestant countries in which the number of Catholics is much
larger than the number of Jews it is a common practice to charge that
movements of protest and revolt are instigated and led by the Catholic
hierarchy. Where the number of Jews is very great the appeal is made
to racial hatred. In Catholic countries, in the same way, accusation
is directed against Protestantism or Judaism, according to
circumstance.
Wherever and by whosoever made, appeals to racial and religious
prejudices and hatreds in defense of vested interests merit the
condemnation of all honest and righteous men. When made in a country
which, like the United States, possesses millions of peoples of many
diverse lands and races not yet welded into national homogeneity, who
must live and work together, such accusations become the most
dangerous form of treason. Whoever propagates in this country
antagonism to any race or creed represented in our citizenship,
whether it be against Jews, Poles, Germans, Irish, English, or
negroes; or against Judaism, Catholicism, or Protestantism, assails
the very foundation of our most cherished and characteristic American
institutions.
V
THE JEWISH SOCIALISTS AND BOLSHEVISM
The anti-Semitic press of both hemispheres charges that Bolshevism in
Russia and elsewhere is a movement instigated and led by Jews, as part
of a great conspiracy to bring about the Jewish domination of the
world. The reasons for making this charge are only too obvious.
Bolshevism is repugnant to the great mass of civilized mankind, by
whom it is rightly regarded as a sort of moral leprosy. Whatever may
be thought of the possibility of Sovietism in industry and government,
Bolshevism, the spiritual dynamic as distinguished from the mechanical
agent, is the negation of every virtuous principle which mankind holds
in reverence. It frankly bases government upon brute force wielded by
the few, and denies the ideal toward which all nations are striving,
the ideal of government based upon the sanction of the governed. It
unites in a terrible synthesis all the worst agencies and methods of
tsarism and of militarism. To persuade the people of this or any other
civilized country that Bolshevism is essentially a Jewish movement,
part of a conspiracy to reduce civilization to chaos, and so prepare
the way for a Jewish supergovernment of the world, would mean the
rapid organization of the rest of the population against the Jews in
every phase of life--politics, commerce, industry, education, social
intercourse, and so on.
In support of this most serious charge not a single shred of credible
evidence has ever been adduced by any anti-Semitic writer or organ.
For the universally known fact that there are Jews among the leaders
of Bolshevism, in Russia and elsewhere, is not evidence that
Bolshevism is _essentially_ or _primarily_ a Jewish movement; neither
is it evidence that Bolshevism is a part of a Jewish conspiracy to
obtain world domination. All that it proves is that which needs no
proof--that there are Jews among the Bolsheviki. I repeat that in
support of the charge not a shred of credible evidence has ever been
adduced. In that shameful book, _The Cause of World Unrest_,
consisting of articles reprinted from the _London Morning Post_, the
anonymous author gives a list of fifty names of "persons who either
are the actual governing powers in Soviet Russia now or were
responsible for the establishment of the present regime there." There
is both guile and cowardice in the latter part of this charge. It is
easy to argue, with a certain plausibility, that every person who
helped in the revolution of March, 1917, must be held "responsible for
the establishment of the present regime." I have heard many Russians
make the charge that Kerensky, the anti-Bolshevist, was "responsible"
for the establishment of the Bolshevist regime. I have heard others
charge the same thing against such men as Rodzianko, Prince Lvov, and
Professor Miliukov. What these Russians meant was that the failure of
these men and others to deal properly with the situation existing at
the time of the March revolution made the triumph of Bolshevism
possible. In that sense, we might as well go back a stage farther and
present the names of Tsar Nicholas II and all his responsible
Ministers as "persons who ... were responsible for the establishment
of the present regime." This, however, is not what the _Morning Post_
desires to convey to the mind of the reader. It insinuates, in a most
cowardly fashion, that the fifty persons named by it are Bolsheviki
and falsely alleges that of the fifty no less than forty-two are Jews.
Concerning this list of names a few observations are necessary. The
compiler of the list was not honest; he did not intend to place the
reader in possession of the truth. This is evidenced by several facts.
In the first place, many influential leaders of the Bolsheviki whose
names are familiar to all who have given even ordinary attention to
the subject are conspicuously absent. The reason for the omission is
that these men are non-Jews. _Their inclusion in the list would have
destroyed the author's charge._ He has suppressed important facts in
the interest of his wretched case. I searched the list in vain for the
names of such prominent leaders of the Bolshevist movement as
Bucharin, Rakovsky, Miliutin, Raskolnikov, Shliapnikov, Latzis, Rykov,
Stalin, Krestinsky, Bonch-Brouyevich, Dybenko, Dzerzhinsky, Krylenko,
Gorky, Andreyeva, Nogin, Platakov, Kalinin, Boky, and many others less
well known. Anyone who is at all familiar with the subject will
recognize in the names I have here given some of the most active and
influential leaders of the Bolsheviki. Not one of them is a Jew, and I
submit that to omit them from a list of names which pretends to be
representative is as dishonest as it is cowardly.
The list is thoroughly dishonest, moreover, in that it sets down as
Jews men who are well known to be Gentiles. For example, Manouilsky,
number forty-six on the list, is described as a Jew, whereas it is
well known that he is a Gentile, a Ukrainian. Bogdanov, number ten on
the list, is likewise wrongfully described. His real name is not
Silberstein, as alleged, but Malinovsky. Neither is he a Jew, as
alleged, but a Gentile, a Russian. These two illustrations will serve
to show how little reliance can be placed upon the list. Whether there
are other misrepresentations of the same kind I am unable to say, for
the reason that the list contains many names of persons who do not
hold and have not held any important position in Russia, either under
the Bolsheviki or the earlier Provisional Government headed by
Kerensky. These persons are absolutely unknown to me, even by name,
and they are equally unknown to every Russian revolutionary leader to
whom I have submitted them. It is quite probable, therefore, that
these names of alleged Jews hide the identity of men who are not Jews
at all.
Not only does this precious list studiously omit many of the principal
leaders of the Bolshevist regime simply because they are not Jews, and
misrepresent well-known Gentiles as Jews; quite as bad is the fact
that it includes many names of men who are not only not supporters of
the Bolshevist regime, but actually leaders of the most determined
opposition to it. Here is a list which is submitted in proof of the
charge that "nearly all the Bolshevist leaders are Jews," and in that
list I find the names of ten men who are known to me to be among the
most active leaders of the struggle against the Bolsheviki, men who
have made heroic sacrifices and risked their lives in that fight. I
say that the list includes the names of ten men known to me to be
bitter opponents of Bolshevism; there may be others concerning whom I
am not informed.
Included in the list I find the name of Izgoev (forty-three), for
instance. His real name is alleged to be Goldman, when in fact it is
Landau. Not only is he not a Bolshevik, but, as everybody familiar
with the Russian movement knows, one of the active publicists of the
Russian Constitutional Democratic party. Orthodoks, number thirty-five
on the list, is not a Bolshevik, but one of the most active members of
the group of so-called Socialist Patriots, the "Unity" group organized
by the late George Plechanov to support the Allied war aims, an
organization that did much to strengthen Russian morale in the early
stages of the war and which has vigorously and bitterly opposed
Bolshevism and all its ways. Bounakov, number forty-five on the list,
is also a leader of the anti-Bolshevist forces. When I was in Paris
recently he was there actively engaged with other Socialists in
carrying on anti-Bolshevist propaganda. Kamkov, number fifteen on the
list, was one of the leaders of the Socialists-Revolutionists party, a
determined opponent of the Bolsheviki. According to the best
information at my command, he was one of the men responsible for the
assassination of the German ambassador, Count von Mirbach, which was
a protest against the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and was put to death by
the Bolsheviki. Gorev, number eleven on the list, has consistently
opposed Bolshevism with the rest of his colleagues of the Mensheviki.
The same thing is true of Abramovich (twenty-four), of Dan
(seventeen), of Martinov (twenty-one), of Martov (four), and of
Meshkovsky (eighteen).
The anonymous author of _The Cause of World Unrest_ says of this list
that it is "the result of much labor and the work of several hands." I
do not need to characterize it, in the light of the foregoing
analysis. The facts to which I have called attention can be very
readily verified. I submit that most abject apology is due to the
reader from everybody concerned in the preparation and circulation of
this book--from the anonymous author, the compiler of the list, the
London _Morning Post_, and the publishers. There is nothing more
contemptible than such poisoning of the wells of public information.
For the present I have finished with the _Morning Post_. Let us turn
now to Mr. Ford's _Dearborn Independent_. In its issue of May 29,
1920, this organ of American anti-Semitism desperately tries to
bolster up the charge that nearly all the leaders of the Bolsheviki
are Jews by a clumsy invention of its own. It says:
Every commisar in Russia to-day is a Jew. Publicists are
accustomed to speak of Russia as if it were in disorder, but the
Jewish government of Russia is not. From a mass of underlings,
the Jews of Russia came up in a perfect phalanx, a flying wedge
through the superinduced disorder, as if every man's place had
been previously prepared for him.
For these statements there is no justification in fact. They are
absolutely and unqualifiedly untrue, as every person familiar with the
facts must know. It is not true that "every commissar in Russia to-day
is a Jew." Not even a majority of the members of the Council of
People's Commissars are Jews. Lenin, who is at the head of the
government, is not a Jew. Tchitcherin, who is in charge of foreign
affairs, is not a Jew. Krassin, who is in charge of the trade
negotiations with the British government, is not a Jew. These three
men wield greater power and influence in Soviet Russia than all the
Jewish officials combined. Dzerzhinsky, head of the infamous
Extraordinary Commissions, is not a Jew. Lunarcharsky, who has charge
of public education, is not a Jew. Rykov, chairman of the Economic
Council, is not a Jew. Bonch-Brouyevich, secretary of the Council of
People's Commissars, is not a Jew. Kolontai is not a Jewess. There are
many other Gentile Commissars. How completely the London _Morning
Post_ and the _Dearborn Independent_ misrepresent the essential facts
I have already shown by my analysis of the pretentious list of fifty
names published by the former. I have before me the official list of
the members of the _Sovnarkom_--that is, the Council of the People's
Commissars of the Soviet government. As is well known, the elaborate
and intricate governmental system of Soviet Russia centers ultimate
authority in this Council of People's Commissars, which consists of
seventeen members. A most striking refutation of the statement made by
the _Dearborn Independent_ is found in the fact that of the seventeen
members of this supreme Bolshevist authority only one, Trotzky, is a
Jew. The official list speaks for itself.
_Official Name_ _Real Name_ _Department_
1. N. Lenin[1] Oulianov President
2. G. Tchitcherin[1] G. Tchitcherin Foreign Affairs
3. L. Trotsky[2] Bronstein War
4. E. Raskolnikov[1] E. Raskolnikov Navy
5. G. Petrovsky[1] G. Petrovsky Interior
6. N. Krestinsky[1] N. Krestinsky Finance
7. L. Krassin[1] L. Krassin Industry and Commerce
and Ways of
Communication
8. S. Sereda[1] S. Sereda Agriculture
9. N. Bruchanov[1] N. Bruchanov Supply
10. A. Lunarcharsky[1] A. Lunarcharsky Public Instruction
11. V. Stuchka[1] V. Stuchka Justice
12. A. Kolontai[1] A. Kolontai Public Welfare
13. V. Smidt[1] V. Smidt Labor
14. A. Rykov[1] A. Rykov Chairman, Economic
Council
15. K. Stalin[3] Djugashvili National Affairs
16. Dr. N. Semashko[1] Dr. N. Semashko Public Health
17. V. Bonch-Brouyevich[1] V. Bonch-Brouyevich Executive secretary
of the Council of
People's Commissars
[1] Russian [2] Jew [3] Georgian
Of course there are many Jews holding minor positions in the
Bolshevist regime. It would be quite impossible to name any part of
the Russian population to which that statement would not equally
apply. For millions of people, Christians and Jews alike, the only
possible alternative to starvation and death is to accept service
under the Bolsheviki. Even loyal generals of the Tsar's army have
accepted such service in order to avoid the starvation of themselves
and their loved ones, despite their hatred of Bolshevism and the
Bolsheviki. It is a fact, however, that there are very few Jews
holding responsible posts in the Bolshevist government of Russia,
while there are many Jews prominently identified with the
anti-Bolshevist movement. I have followed very closely the accounts of
the proceedings of the Bolshevist movement and of the Communist party,
as reported in the official press, and have paid special attention to
the activity of the Jews. Up to the present my list of Jews holding
prominent positions in either the Soviet government or the Communist
party contains less than twenty names, yet I believe it is fairly
complete. It includes the names of Trotzky, Steklov, Zinoviev,
Kamenev, Uritsky, Volodarsky, Sverdlov, Ganetsky, Helfandt (Parvus),
Riazanov, Radek, Litvinov, Joffe, and Larin. It will be rather
difficult, I think, to name any important omissions. As against this
meager list of Jews, a very hastily compiled list of non-Jews who are
prominent in the government or in the Communist party contains
seventy-five names. In this list I do not include any of the many
former generals of the Tsar's army now holding important positions in
the Red Army and various departments of the Soviet government. With
entire confidence I submit these incontestable facts to my readers in
reply to the _Dearborn Independent_.
It is absurdly untrue to say, as the _Dearborn Independent_ does, that
"the Jews of Russia came up in a perfect phalanx" after the overthrow
of tsarism. Throughout the revolutionary period the Jews in Russia
have presented about the same political divisions as the Russian
population in general. Like the overwhelming mass of the Russian
people, they are anti-Bolshevist. Even if we confine our attention to
the Jewish Socialists, overlooking for the moment the large number of
Jews belonging to the Constitutional Democrats and other non-Socialist
parties, we shall find absolutely no evidence of anything approaching
a united Jewish Socialist support of the Bolsheviki. On the contrary,
the most implacable and determined opponents of the Bolsheviki have
been, and still are, Jewish Socialists. Such Jews as Martov, Dan,
Lieber, Abramovich, and others have distinguished themselves by their
relentless and unremitting opposition to the Bolsheviki.
In reply to Mr. William Hard, who called attention to the fact that
Jews like Vinaver, Martov, and others have been as active on the
anti-Bolshevist side as Trotzky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and others have
been on the Bolshevist side, the anonymous writer employed by the
_Dearborn Independent_ resorts to a more cowardly and despicable
controversial trick than I have hitherto encountered, even in
anti-Semitic literature. Having charged that the Jews were united "in
a perfect phalanx" in support of Bolshevism, when confronted by Mr.
Hard with the evidence that there are Jews at the head of the
anti-Bolshevist forces, he coolly abandons his charge and insinuates
another. He says: "Look how the Jews control every phase of political
opinion in Russia! Doesn't there seem to be some ground for the
feeling that they are desirous of ruling everywhere?"
Not often, I venture to say, has any American journalist descended to
this low level. I am justified in asking Mr. Ford, who is primarily
responsible for the _Dearborn Independent_ and for its policy, whether
he considers it to be compatible with sound American citizenship and
with the traditions of our race to spread broadcast through the land
such cruelly unjust appeals to prejudice. Surely it is not difficult
to see this matter from the viewpoint of the Jew, which in this
instance is also the viewpoint of every fair-minded non-Jew. For the
Jew it is a case of being damned either way. When it is noted that
there are a few Jews holding prominent positions in the Bolshevist
regime, the whole race is stigmatized and charged with being engaged
in a conspiracy to destroy civilization; but when attention is called
to the fact that other Jews, far more numerous, are engaged in
fighting Bolshevism and attempting to save civilization, no credit for
that fact is given to the race; it is not admitted as a fact modifying
the previously formed sweeping judgment, but, on the contrary, is held
to be additional evidence of guilt. Nothing that Bolshevist
propagandists have attempted to do in this country involves anything
like the peril to our institutions that is involved in this deliberate
attempt to silence the anti-Bolshevist Jews by making even their
propaganda against Bolshevism appear as part of a conspiracy against
those institutions.
I am not here and now concerned to defend the Jews. Even were my gifts
much greater, I should not presume to arrogate to myself that honor.
The defense of the Jewish people against the aspersions cast upon them
by this cruel propaganda belongs in the first place to Jewish scholars
and publicists and can be left to them. My concern is the defense of
Christian civilization, of American ideals and institutions, of the
noblest Anglo-Saxon traditions. These things are our greatest wealth;
they are the heritage of our children. When, therefore, this hateful
propaganda imperils these things, it is both my duty and my privilege
to defend them. Anti-Semitism has no place in Christian civilization;
its spirit and its language are both alien and hostile to our Republic
and to the genius of the race of Milton and Lincoln.
It can be demonstrated to the full satisfaction of any open-minded
person of normal intelligence that Bolshevism is the negation of the
faith and morals which constitute the strongest bond of the Jewish
people. Trotzky has many times declared that he is no Jew, but a
"general proletarian," and Bela Kun, in a formal statement, declared
himself to be opposed to all religions and national cultures, the
Jewish included, and that he stood only for the economic interests of
the proletariat. I could quote many similar statements by prominent
Jewish Bolsheviki, were it necessary. The position taken by these men
is, of course, entirely logical. Not only is Bolshevism fundamentally
opposed to the Jewish religion; it is equally antagonistic to the
principle of nationality itself. How, then, can it be possible to
regard Bolshevism as typically and essentially Jewish, or as part of
an all-Jewish conspiracy? Is it possible to believe that a great
conspiratory scheme to direct the whole weight and influence of the
Jewish people to a single political end, conceived and led by the
ablest leaders of that great people so remarkable for their
intellectual power, would or could rest upon principles diametrically
and irreconcilably opposed to the greatest psychological force
motivating the conduct of the masses of that people?
These questions by themselves shatter the charge we are discussing.
There is, however, an immense mass of direct and positive evidence
available to all who desire to know the truth, but which is carefully
and studiously ignored by the preachers of anti-Semitism. If such men
as Mr. Ford are ignorant of the existence of this evidence, as we must
suppose them to be, their offense against America and American ideals
is not thereby appreciably lessened; their reckless and irresponsible
use of the wealth and other influential agents at their command adds
to the sum of their shame and wrongdoing. The greatest and strongest
Jewish Socialist organization in Russia and Poland, the "Bund," has
stood in solid opposition to Bolshevism and the Bolshevist regime
from the very beginning until now. Not only have leaders of the right
wing, or moderate section of the "Bund," such as Lieber, fought
Bolshevism with their full might, but leaders of the radical left
wing, such as Kossovsky and Medem, have been equally courageous and
uncompromising on the same side[1]. A tiny and negligible minority
split off from the "Bund" because of its anti-Bolshevist character and
formed a new organization, the "Communist Bund." Similarly, the
overwhelming mass of the Zionist party has consistently opposed
Bolshevism and all its works, and such men as Doctor Pasmanick, the
well-known Zionist leader of Odessa, have given their full support to
every anti-Bolshevist movement, political and military.
I have already referred to the activity of the well-known Jewish
leader, Vinaver, in the fight against Bolshevism. Mr. Vinaver is not a
Socialist; on the contrary, during many years he has been a
consistent opponent of Socialism and one of the foremost leaders of
the Constitutional Democratic party, of whose Central Committee he
was, and I believe still is, the chairman. Immediately after the March
revolution of 1917, Mr. Vinaver was appointed Senator by the First
Provisional Government. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly
from Petrograd, and later on, after his escape from Petrograd, served
as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of the Crimea. This
prominent Jewish anti-Socialist testifies that "not a single Jewish
Socialist faction has joined the Bolsheviki." From a report on this
subject cabled to this country by Vinaver in July, 1919, I quote the
following paragraphs, which speak for themselves.
The entire Russian Jewry struggles against Bolshevism. This is
true not only with regard to the bourgeoisie, but to the
democratic classes of the Russian Jewry as well. It is
sufficient to say that not a single Jewish Socialist faction has
joined the Bolsheviki. All political factions of the Russian
Jewry are struggling against Bolshevism.
The great majority of the Jewish population, including many of
the poor, are being classed by the Bolsheviki with the so-called
bourgeoisie, and every place where the Bolsheviki rule, the
Jewish population, not to speak of very insignificant
exceptions, is suffering and starving.
The Bolshevist regime has destroyed the industries and the
trade, and the Jewish population, which made its living mostly
through participation in the industrial and commercial life, is
suffering probably more than other nationalities. At the same
time, the Bolsheviki are persecuting all religions, and the
Jewish religious institutions have suffered from their despotic
rule not less than the institutions of the Christian religion.
The anti-Semites are making very wide use of the fact that
Trotzky is a Jew, but the participation of several Jews among
the Bolshevist leaders does not nullify the fact that the
Russian Jewry, in its overwhelming majority, struggles actively
against Bolshevism. _It is significant that Bolshevism spread
mostly in central and eastern Russia where the Jews constitute
an insignificant minority._
It is a significant fact that the only Socialist elected to the United
States Congress in the recent election, Meyer London, a Russian-born
Jew, is a vigorous opponent of Bolshevism. In view of such evidence as
the foregoing, it is surely not less than ridiculous to attempt to
make Bolshevism appear as a phase of Jewish Socialism, and a part of a
world-wide Jewish conspiracy, instead of what it is--namely, the wild
anarchical outburst of despairing and desperate masses of men. I
venture to say that when the history of this tragic episode in the
life of Russia is authoritatively written, it will be found that Jews
have not been responsible for the most objectionable features of
Bolshevism. Not even Trotzky need be excluded from this
generalization, for, while it is true that his genius made Bolshevism
the formidable military power it became, the brutal excesses of the
Red Terror must be charged against such men as Peters, the Lett, and
Dzerzhinsky, the Pole.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] see the articles published in the New York pro-Bolshevist weekly,
_Die Neue Welt_, June 27, July 4 and 11, 1919.
VI
BOLSHEVISM AND THE JEWS
No one who knows how the Jews of Russia, in common with the rest of
the population, have suffered from Bolshevist misrule will be likely
to give credence to the theory that Bolshevism is part of a Jewish
conspiracy. As everybody knows, Jews made up a very considerable part
of the commercial class in Russia. The indemnities levied upon this
class by the Bolshevist commissions in the cities have applied equally
to Jew and Gentile. It is a fact that ordinary Jewish shopkeepers have
been compelled to pay their full share of the indemnities so levied.
Scores of thousands of Jews have had their property confiscated and
been reduced to abject poverty. Many thousands more have had to flee,
leaving everything behind them, thankful only that they could save
their lives. The _Chresvy-chaikas_ have drawn no distinction between
Jew and Gentile, and the available records, meager as they are, prove
that the Jews have contributed their full quota to the long list of
the victims of these infamous terrorist organizations. Pogroms and
other manifestations of anti-Semitism have been too common in
Bolshevist Russia to permit any suspicion that Bolshevism is a
pro-Jewish movement. The evidence upon this point is overwhelming.
I am quite well aware that the statement that pogroms have been common
in Bolshevist Russia will be challenged and indignantly denied by many
of our American defenders of the Bolsheviki, Jews and Gentiles alike.
It is none the less a well-attested fact. I have in my possession a
mass of evidence which amply proves the truth of the statement. At the
same time, I do not mean to charge that the Soviet government has
deliberately instigated or authorized pogroms. Indeed, I am quite
ready to believe that the Soviet government has honestly desired and
attempted to prevent such pogroms. Lenin accepted the presidency of an
organization formed to combat anti-Semitism. The truth seems to be
that just as pogroms have admittedly taken place in the new republic
of Poland, despite the efforts of the Polish government to prevent
them, and just as pogroms were carried out by Denikin's Volunteer Army
despite General Denikin's attempts to prevent them, and the severe
punishments inflicted by him upon the culprits, so regular Bolshevist
troops in southern Russia have plundered and murdered Jews and raped
and mutilated Jewish women and girls. Just as these lines are being
written word comes, from sources of unquestionable authority, of
pogroms against the Jews in the Ukraine, in which Bolshevist troops
participated.
The Pogrom Victims' Relief Committee of the Russian Red Cross Society
published a report of its investigations of the Jewish pogroms in
southern Russia during the period when General Denikin's forces were
fighting the Bolsheviki. The report, based upon evidence of
unquestionable reliability, showed that Jews had been plundered and
murdered not only by disorderly troops of Denikin's Volunteer Army,
and by the troops of Petlura and by the robber bands led by "atamans,"
like Makhno, _but also by regular Bolshevist troops_. The report
attributes to the latter the destruction of at least thirteen Jewish
communities in southern Russia and the murder of five hundred Jews.
And this is only one report of many. Before me as I write is the
account given by an eyewitness of the pogrom which opened at
Novo-Poltavka on September 1, 1919, and lasted through the whole of
the week following. _More than one hundred Jews were murdered,
numerous women and girls were raped, and the entire colony was
plundered._ This pogrom was carried on by the guerrilla bands led by
"atamans" Makhno and Grigoriev, together with regular Bolshevist
troops.[2] Do you ask me to believe that these pogroms were
deliberately brought about as part of a "Jewish" conspiracy?
Under the rule of the Bolsheviki the local organs of Jewish autonomy
in the Ukraine were entirely destroyed.[3] The chairman of the Jewish
Community in Kiev, Mr. D. Levenstein, has testified to the brutal
treatment of the Jews in that city during the Bolshevist occupation.
Vladimir Kossovsky, one of the foremost leaders of the "Bund," well
known in Socialist international circles, in an article published in
the Jewish Socialist monthly, _Die Zukunft_, of New York, says:
Jewish pogroms in Bolshevist Russia have occurred with
particular intensity during the first half of 1918. I shall
point, as an example, to the pogroms in Gulkhov, in the
government of Chernigov, where they assumed a particularly
brutal form, and in a number of places in the Poliesiye. _All
of these pogroms were the work of Bolshevist troops._
The Glukhov pogrom, which has attained such sad notoriety,
started on February 28, 1918, after a Bolshevist detachment had
entered the city. The Red Army men, transformed into savage
beasts, murdered the arrested Jews who were being taken under
guard to the building of the Soviet, _and the street which
housed the Soviet was literally sodden with Jewish blood. All
Jewish stores and residences were sacked._ Peasants from the
near-by villages soon joined the plunderers of the Red Guard in
their work of looting and pillaging. According to newspaper
reports, four hundred and fifty Jews were murdered, among these
some Jewish soldiers who had been rewarded with "St. George"
medals for bravery. Long lists of victims--such as could be
identified--were at that time published in the newspapers. _The
pogrom was directed exclusively against the Jews, and the
Christian population of the city did not suffer in the least._
Concerning the pogroms in Poliesiye, Kossovsky quotes from the
official organ of the Menshevist party, the _Novaia Zaria_, of Moscow,
June 10, 1918, the following:
The large Jewish population of this region (Poliesiye) finds
itself in a particularly tragic situation. The "activity" of the
Red Army in Novogorod-Sieversk, Seredina-Buda, and Glukhov,
where the Soviet detachments massacred the Jewish populations,
has found an echo in other cities, and the sword of Damocles
hangs at present over the unfortunate Jewish people. In the city
of Potchep the Jews saved themselves from a pogrom by collecting
in time fifteen thousand rubles, which they handed over to the
pogrom-mad Red Army detachment upon its entrance into the city,
in addition to giving it a splendid reception and a sumptuous
feast. As reward for this reception the bashi-bazouks of the
Soviet decided to spare the city.
Pogroms and other manifestations of anti-Semitism have been so common
in Bolshevist Russia as to make the "Jewish question" one of extreme
difficulty and importance. In numerous Soviets, notably Yaroslavl,
Vitebsk, and Smolensk, Jewish members were openly insulted by the
Bolsheviki; such epithets as "_szhid!_" ("sheeny!") were hurled at the
Jewish members. Once more I quote from the article by Kossovsky:
In the provinces the pogrom mania invaded even the Soviets, not
mentioning the Red Army which became more and more infected with
it. According to the Kiev _Naiye Zait_, in the Vitebsk Soviet
shouts were heard, "Chase the Jews out of the Soviets and its
institutions!" In the Yaroslavl Soviet, according to information
printed in the Moscow Social-Democratic newspaper, _Vperiod_,
there were often heard insulting and shameful cries directed
against the Jews. In Smolensk, according to _Svobodnaya Rossia_,
members of the Red Army would come to the Soviet and demand that
Jews be barred from holding posts as war commissaries and
commanders. A lively anti-Semitic propaganda was carried on in
Moscow and Petrograd, too, though it never reached the stage of
a pogrom. In Petrograd anti-Jewish posters, signed by a "Kamorra
of the People's Revenge," were spread broadcast. As a result of
the apprehensiveness aroused, detachments for self-defense were
organized by the Jews of Moscow. In Petrograd the Bolshevist
authorities did not permit the organization of self-defense
bodies, fearing lest the weapons of the self-defense detachments
be turned against the Soviet.
Upon the initiative of the Petrograd Jewish Community the day of
May 23, 1918, was designated as a Jewish National Day of
Mourning throughout Russia as a protest against the latter-day
Jewish pogroms in Russia. On that day the Jews were to close all
their business establishments, not to issue newspapers, etc.,
etc. The May 23d issue of the Petrograd Jewish daily, _Unser
Tagblat_, appeared in a black border and was full of articles
relating to anti-Jewish attacks and pogroms, entitled: "Protest
by Mourning," "Let Jewish Blood Boil," "The Day of Sorrow," "The
Bloody Roll (Statistics Concerning Jewish Pogroms)." To convey
to the reader the substance of these articles I will quote the
closing words of the article, "The Bloody Roll": "The old
tsarist, bloody Russia, fell, and a new Russia, a
radical-Socialist, a communist, Russia came in its place. And
still, as before, we stand facing a roster of Jewish pogroms, a
roster which is, as yet, far from ended, as each day adds new
names, new victims, and new massacres."
Mr. Louis Marshall, who is universally recognized as one of the
foremost leaders of the American Jewry and who headed the
American-Jewish delegation to the Peace Conference, in an interview
published in the New York Jewish daily newspaper, _The Day_, July 27,
1919, categorically denied the assertion that there have been no
Jewish pogroms under the rule of the Bolsheviki. He declared that such
pogroms took place in the districts of the Ukraine controlled by the
Bolsheviki as well as in those controlled by the robber bands. "We
know of such pogroms having occurred," he said, "and very often the
Bolsheviki care just as little about the Jews as others who make
pogroms. It is possible that some of their pogroms are at times
different, but in substance there were Jewish pogroms in Bolshevist
territory as well." Mr. Marshall added the following observation:
"_All Jewish representatives that I have met in Paris who came from
Russia are strong opponents of Bolshevism. Even to this day the Jewish
Socialist parties are no less sharp in their condemnation of the
Bolsheviki than are the bourgeois parties._"
So far as I have been able to discover, there is not a large Jewish
Community in Russia which has not repudiated Bolshevism. Not in a
single instance has the support of the leaders of such a Community
been given to the Lenin-Trotzky regime. For example, I have before me
the report of the annual general meeting of the Jewish Community of
Archangel, which took place on May 11, 1919. Therein is contained a
Memorandum by the Council of the Community on the relation of the Jews
to Bolshevism. The Memorandum points out that, while it is true that
there are Jews among the leaders of the Bolsheviki, it is also true
that there are many Jews among the leaders of the anti-Bolshevist
forces. It names such men as MM. Vinaver, Gotz, Minor, Bliumkin (who
assassinated Count Mirbach), Kannengisser (who shot Uritzki), and Dora
Kaplan (who attempted to assassinate Lenin and forfeited her own
life).
The Memorandum asks the non-Jewish world to remember that all of the
Jews connected with the Bolshevist movement in any prominent capacity
are apostates, that not one of them ever took the slightest part in
the affairs of Russian Jewry, and that the Jewish people only learned
of their existence at about the same time and in the same way as the
Russian people in general became aware of the existence of such
non-Jewish Bolshevist leaders as Lenin, Lunarcharsky, Tchitcherin,
Krylenko, Dybenko, and many others. Attention is called to the fact
that prominent Jewish national workers in Russia have been subjected
to the same persecution and maltreatment by the Bolsheviki as the
public-spirited men and women of other nationalities. The Memorandum
cites the imprisonment of Doctor Maze, Rabbi of the Moscow Community,
and the confiscation of the buildings belonging to the Petrograd
Jewish Community, where the cultural and religious institutions of the
Jews of that city were centered. I commend to the attention of all
fair-minded men and women the following paragraph from this document:
Aside from this group of Jewish Bolshevist leaders there is the
Jewish people, the many millions of the Jewish population of
Russia. The unassuming representatives of that Jewish Community
of Archangel take the liberty to affirm that neither the Jewish
people as a whole, nor any of its socially organized groups, are
responsible for the savagery, violence, acts of blasphemy, and
mockery of human rights which characterize the Bolshevist
regime.
The Jewish people are fully familiar with acts of brutality,
with the Red Terror, familiar from long-past experience and from
present experience in Bolshevist Russia, together with all the
other nations inhabiting that unhappy territory. But the hands
of the Jewish masses, of all the classes of the Jewish people,
are not stained with this blood. We have not heard, and we
believe that we shall never hear, of any act of terror
committed by any masses of Jews led either by Jews or by
non-Jews.
Let the Jewish Bolsheviki stand accused and condemned of their
guilt like their compatriots of other nationalities, but there
must be no room for generalization and wholesale accusation when
the people as a whole are guiltless and where millions,
permeated by a powerful cohesive force of an ancient culture
organically foreign to the spirit of violence and vandalism,
stand apart from a few individual persons.
Quite similar to the foregoing is a Memorandum addressed by the
Council of the Vladivostok Jewish Community to the Russian people. The
concluding paragraphs of this address seem to me to be a complete and
crushing refutation of the monstrous calumny that is being so
assiduously spread among our people:
In the present historic movement the Council of the Jewish
Community of Vladivostok deems it its sacred civil duty to come
forward with the following protest. The Council declares that:
(1) The many millions of the Russian Jewry reject every
responsibility for the crimes committed against Russia by a
small group of Jewish renegades who have nothing in common with
the Jews and have long since broken off all connections with
them, such as Bronstein-Trotzky, Nakhamkes-Steklov,
Apfelbaum-Zinoviev, Joffe, Kamenev, and others connected with
Bolshevism, just as the Russian, Lettish, Polish, Georgian,
Armenian, and other nationalities cannot be held to answer for
the deeds and misdeeds of Bolshevist leaders who were born in
their midst. (2) The Russian Jewry, as a whole, is warmly and
sincerely devoted to the interests of Russia, its motherland,
and has struggled and is still struggling for the regeneration
of the Russian state, and is heartily interested, together with
all the other peoples inhabiting Russia, in the speediest
overthrowing of Bolshevism and the reconstruction of orderly
life in Russia. The Russian Jews have lost over one hundred
thousand of their brothers and sons in killed and wounded in the
war with Germany. Thousands of Jews are found at present in the
ranks of the armies of Admiral Kolchak and of General Denikin.
(3) Bolshevism has ruined hundreds of thousands of Jewish
merchants, business men, artisans, and men in various
enterprises, and has completely destroyed the entire population
of the Northwestern Territories. _Thousands of Jewish families
have been deported from Soviet Russia_ and are now dragging out
a miserable existence as refugees in Siberia, in the Ural
region, and in the border cities.
_The Soviet government has shot and is still shooting Jewish
public men, lawyers, engineers, physicians, and workmen who have
participated in the struggle against the Soviet rule._ In the
near future there will be published documents and irrefutable
facts revealing the number of Jewish lives and the billions of
Jewish wealth that have perished during the past two years in
the struggle with Bolshevism.
The Vladivostok Jewish Community protests to the Russian public
opinion and to the honest and independent Russian press against
the falsehoods, insinuations, and calumnies directed against the
Jewish people in such profusion by the enemies of humanity and
the state.
In view of such facts as these, is it reasonable to suppose that
Bolshevism is a pro-Jewish conspiracy? Is it less than ridiculous to
suggest that the system which has reduced hundreds of thousands of
Jews to abject poverty, broken up thousands of Jewish homes and
families, confiscated billions of Jewish wealth, imprisoned thousands
of prominent Jews, and murdered numerous others, is part of a Jewish
conspiracy? Surely, every intelligent person must see that any such
conspiracy must necessarily require, as the first condition of its
success, a degree of racial solidarity never yet attained by any
people at any time in the history of the world. That solidarity could
only be obtained by assuring to the Jews their complete exemption
from the suffering and oppression imposed upon the non-Jewish
population. Had there been any thought of securing the solidarity of
the Jewish people of Russia against the non-Jewish population, it
would have been effectively thwarted by the imposition of such burdens
of poverty and suffering upon the Jews, and their resulting
resentment. Not the smallest particle of evidence has ever yet been
adduced to show that the Jews in Russia have been exempted from any of
the oppressive features of Bolshevism. As Mr. Wells reminds us, the
Bolsheviki have suppressed the Hebrew language, the historic language
of Judaism, to preserve which Jews in all lands and during many
centuries have made such vast sacrifices. Do we need any further
evidence?
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The full account of this eyewitness appeared in the _Odesskiya
Novosti_, September 27, 1919.
[3] Statement by Dr. M. Zitron, _Dos Yiddishe Volk_, of Warsaw, July
11, 1919.
VII
THE VICIOUS ROLE OF ANTI-SEMITISM
Precisely such propaganda as that which the _Dearborn Independent_ has
been carrying on is responsible for many of the blackest and most
shameful pages in history. Wherever and whenever there has been an
organized propaganda of anti-Semitism it has invariably been closely
intertwined with every other contemporary reactionary oppressive and
contemptible force. To those who know the history of anti-Semitism in
Russia, in Poland, and in Rumania, even in quite recent years, this
statement will seem so trite as not to require any demonstration. This
close association with other forms of reaction and brutal oppression
is not peculiar to anti-Semitism, but is a common characteristic of
every form of race prejudice and hatred. Among the Turks organized
prejudice and hatred of Armenians has invariably been found to be
closely associated with all the other evil forces in the Turkish
Empire. In our own country, discrimination against and injustice to
the negro goes hand in hand with almost every other form of reaction
and oppression.
It is quite useless to pretend that such articles as those published
in the _Dearborn Independent_ and the London _Morning Post_ are not
really anti-Semitic propaganda, but merely a legitimate discussion of
a great and serious problem. Such specious pleading will not deceive
any intelligent, honest person. The only possible object of the
articles is to convince the people who read them that civilized
society is threatened by a great world-wide secret conspiracy of the
Jews; that this virile and highly intelligent people, scattered
throughout the civilized world, and numbering, it is estimated, about
sixteen millions, is secretly organized and led by an "invisible
government" composed of some of the ablest and keenest minds in the
world, to the end of bringing all the governments of the earth,
together with all industry and commerce, under the absolute rule and
dominion of a dynasty to be set up by an aristocratic Jewish
Sanhedrin.
Even if we ignore, for the purpose of this discussion, the fact that
to sustain this charge a structure of cruel falsehood has been erected
with great cunning, it is surely plain enough that the effect of such
a charge upon the minds of such non-Jews as believe it can only be the
development of a spirit of antagonism toward Jews, as Jews. In so far
as the _Dearborn Independent_ succeeds in its efforts, it must
inevitably make our Gentile population regard their Jewish neighbors
with fear and suspicion. And from such fear and suspicion emanate
intolerance and hatred and their brutal progeny. There is no essential
difference between the articles which have been appearing in Mr.
Ford's paper, either in spirit or in text, and those which, in a past
so recent that its horror haunts the memory of men and women of our
generation, let loose upon tens of thousands of helpless and
inoffensive people the most bestial and fiendish cruelty and hatred
ever attained by beings called human.
I can quite well remember the intense horror with which the Christian
world read of the wave of pogroms against the Jews which swept over
Russia in 1891, following the inhuman enforcement of the "May Laws."
Jewish women in travail, forced to flee for their lives, hid in
cemeteries, and in those "cities of the dead" brought forth their
babes. Jewish fathers took their daughters to brothels for safe
hiding. Jewish women and girls were raped. Jewish homes were looted,
and whole villages inhabited by Jews were burned down. Even women and
children were brutally murdered, simply because they were Jews and
because a newspaper propaganda in all respects like that now being
carried on in this country and in England had made the Jewish people
the object of suspicion and fear and, therefore, of hatred. It was
then that a Russian statesman declared that the "Jewish question"
would be solved only when one third of the Jews had perished, another
third emigrated, and the remaining third been converted to the
orthodox Church!
The frightful massacre of Jews at Kishinev in 1903 likewise resulted
from a newspaper propaganda very similar to that which is now being
carried on by the _Dearborn Independent_ and the London _Morning
Post._ On that occasion an unexampled and unprecedented outburst of
horror thrilled the whole civilized world. John Hay, our then
Secretary of State, said: "No person of ordinary humanity can have
heard without deep emotion the story of the cruel outrages inflicted
upon the Jews of Kishinev. These lamentable events have caused the
profoundest impression throughout the world." President Roosevelt
said, "I have never in my experience in this country known of a more
immediate or a deeper expression of the sympathy for the victims and
of horror over the appalling calamity that has occurred."
The Kishinev outrages were the direct and logical outcome of the
campaign of calumny and hatred against the Jews waged by the local
newspaper, the _Bessarabetz_, owned and edited by a Moldavian named
Kroushevan. Except for the specific charge of "ritual murder," with
which I shall presently deal, the campaign of Jew-baiting pursued by
this journal, which produced such disastrous and monstrous results,
was the counterpart of that now being carried on by the _Dearborn
Independent_. Kroushevan charged that the Jews were conspiring to
secure world dominion; he charged that the economic power of the
Jewish race in Russia was a peril to the nation; he charged that Jews
were responsible for Socialism and social unrest. The anti-Semitic
articles appearing in this country and in England during the past few
weeks are quite like those which used to appear in the _Bessarabetz_.
Of course, the crowning infamy of the campaign of hate waged by the
Kishinev paper was the charge of "ritual murder." A Christian boy,
named Ribalenko, belonging to the village of Doubossar, midway between
Kishinev and Odessa, was murdered, his body being found in an orchard.
The _Bessarabetz_ at once declared that the boy had been killed by the
Jews for sacrificial purposes, thus reviving one of the most terrible
and most infamous libels ever directed against any race or sect--a
calumny that has been exposed and refuted again and again.
Subsequently, after the mischief had been done, _it was proved that
the boy was murdered by his uncle and the care-taker of the orchard in
which the body was found--both of them Russians and Gentiles._ The
murderers confessed their guilt, the motive for the crime being gain.
The horrors of 1891 were repeated and even excelled at Kishinev in
1903 as a result of this propaganda. It is not necessary to go into
the gruesome details of the numerous nameless sex mutilations, the
awful outrages committed upon young girls and their gray-haired
grandmothers, the shockingly brutal and bestial murders, the
well-authenticated cases of nails driven through the eyes of a woman
and the cutting out of the tongue of a two-year-old child; let these
brief references suffice. It is all too evident from the most reliable
accounts of the massacre that hatred born of resentment and fear had
made the Gentile mobs as savage as wild beasts. They were no longer
human.
Thus far neither the _Dearborn Independent_ nor the London _Morning
Post_ has reproduced the "ritual murder" lie. Perhaps neither will do
it. Probably not. At the same time _both papers have done their utmost
to create in the minds of their readers a readiness to believe that or
any other infamy when attributed to the Jews_. There is not, and there
cannot be, any assurance that in the soil thus prepared by these
papers, others more ignorant or less scrupulous will not successfully
plant belief in the ancient legend of sacrificial murders committed
by Jews. And even if this never happens at all, the fact remains that
in charging that the horrors of Bolshevism were deliberately
instigated by Jews, British and American anti-Semites have appealed to
the same unreasoning, instinctive, primal passion. For Bolshevism,
primarily a political and economic program though it be, impinges upon
religious faith and religious authority. Thus do the anti-Semites play
with fire in close proximity to the high explosives of human nature.
It was not the ancient, insensate hatred inspired by belief that the
Jews kill Christian children in their Paschal rites which made the
Kishinev pogrom possible. That added the element of savage fanaticism
to the antagonism and resentment already developed by the economic
position of the Jews. The extortions practiced by Jewish money-lenders
the superior business capacity, perseverance, and resourcefulness of
the Jewish traders and shopkeepers as compared with their Gentile
rivals; the intense competition of Jewish artisans, superior to the
average Russian workman in intelligence, industry, thrift, sobriety,
and ambition--all these things resulted in bitter antagonism. Upon
that economic fear and resentment religious fanaticism fastened and
flourished.
Herein lies the danger of the anti-Semitic propaganda in this country
and in England. It is invoking economic fear and resentment. The
non-Jew is adjured to contemplate the spectacle of the Jews ousting
the Gentiles from one industry after another, gradually assuming
leadership and control of our industry and commerce, thanks in part to
superior intelligence, skill, and diligence, but in part also to a
lack of moral scrupulousness. So the Jew is presented as a dangerous
economic rival to be feared and guarded against. The Gentile is thus
taught to look upon Jewish prosperity as a sort of parasitism, and as
a menace to the well-being of all non-Jews, even where the withdrawal
of Jewish enterprise and activity would mean ruin for Jew and Gentile
alike--a condition long recognized in the principal Russian cities.
Now, I do not deny that some of the worst aspects of capitalism have
been developed to a special and notable extent by some Jews. Neither
do I forget that others have developed the very noblest social
idealism. The point I am now making is that hatred of the Jew, even
when it is motivated by economic fear and resentment, will inevitably
nurture every other form of anti-Jewish prejudice. If the campaign of
the anti-Semites succeeds in cultivating that fear and hatred in the
minds and hearts of our people, there can be no assurance against the
occurrence of pogroms here.
VIII
WHAT ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA MEANS
In an article published in the _Dearborn Independent_, June 19, 1920,
it is argued that, transplanted in American soil, anti-Semitism will
change its character and that it will not, in this country, take the
form of mass violence. Not a single fact or historical example is
cited in support of this optimistic theory. There are fine phrases
about "the genius of Americanism" and the "innate justice of the
American mind," but that is all. And these fine phrases can be easily
and adequately disposed of by the simple observation that
anti-Semitism, like all other forms of race hatred, is incompatible
with "the genius of Americanism" and with "innate justice."
These seem to me to be self-evident truths. Nevertheless, we have had
many bitter manifestations of race hatred in this country, not a few
of which have been attended by mass violence. When I reflect upon the
savage race riots which have occurred in this country, and the
numerous lynchings of negroes by infuriated mobs, I cannot bring
myself to accept the easy optimism of the anonymous Jew-baiter. Even
as I am writing these lines the morning newspaper comes to hand with
the account of the lynching of three negroes, one of them a woman, in
Georgia. The story is quite familiar in its shocking details. The
three negroes, who were charged with murder, were in the custody of
the sheriff of the county, when they were seized by a mob and brutally
murdered. That this was due to the fact that they were negroes, a
manifestation of race hatred, is beyond question.
My faith that we shall be spared the shame and ignominy of pogroms
rests upon other and, I believe, more solid foundations. I have
confidence that the anti-Semitic propaganda will be met by the stout
resistance of the great mass of our citizens of Gentile birth and
heritage who will fight and crush anti-Semitism in defense of
Christian civilization and of American ideals, traditions, and
institutions. That seems to me to be a rational faith; it affords firm
anchorage. On the other hand, it is a stupendous and dangerous folly
to believe that you can cultivate, as part of our national psychology,
anti-Jewish fear and prejudice without reaping in due course a harvest
of hatred and violence toward the Jewish people. Racial hatred is
everywhere the same.
There is no reason for believing that here in the United States we
possess a special immunity from the worst forms of anti-Semitism. It
would probably be safer to say that our conditions afford exceptional
opportunities for their development. We have drawn heavily upon the
Old World for our population, which reflects the divisions and the
antipathies, the hereditary jealousies and suspicions, which for
hundreds and, in some instances, thousands of years have troubled
mankind. We have not yet welded these diverse elements into anything
approaching homogeneity; our national consciousness is still
undeveloped and, as a consequence of that fact, we have as yet not
developed fully those self-imposed disciplines and restraints which
are attendant upon highly developed national solidarity. Our national
life, with its alien masses only partially assimilated, is as
susceptible to inflaming passion as the wind-blown dry autumn leaves
are susceptible to the flame of the torch.
Michael Davitt called attention to the fact that in the Kishinev
pogrom it was not the rich Jews who were the victims, but Jewish
workingmen and their families. That, I believe, is the universal
experience. The rich Jews can buy immunity or protection. If as a
result of vicious propaganda serious anti-Jewish riots take place in
this country the victims will not be the rich Jewish financiers and
brokers, against whom the _Dearborn Independent_ fulminates, but
innocent and inoffensive, hard-working men and women and their
children. And if ever that time comes such men as Henry Ford must bear
the major responsibility and guilt.
Let us suppose, for the argument's sake, that anti-Semitism in this
country develops, as predicted in Mr. Ford's paper, along less brutal
lines; that there will be no such orgies of murder and lust and
spoliation as some other nations have had to their shame and dishonor.
In that case, how will the organized hostility to the Jews be
manifested? Specifically, what is the program of the group of
anti-Semites in this country with which the _Dearborn Independent_ is
identified? Are they prepared to announce that program, and to have it
measured by the standard of the American ideal? Or is it possible that
the only "secret conspiracy" is on their side; that the real object of
this anti-Semitic agitation is to prepare the way for a political and
economic program which its authors dare not publicly avow?
When I was in England recently,[4] I gained a fairly clear and
reliable idea of the political and economic program of those bitter
Jew-haters who are responsible for the organized campaign of
anti-Semitism in that country. In view of the fact that our
anti-Semites, including the _Dearborn Independent_, have so slavishly
copied the propaganda of the British anti-Semites, it is justifiable
to assume that they are in general agreement with that program, and
that they would adopt it in this country, subject to whatever
modifications may be made necessary by the differences between the
institutions of the two countries. At all events, unless and until the
actual program of the anti-Semites of this country is set forth with
candor and precision, they have no cause for complaint if it is
assumed that their aims are practically identical with those of the
British anti-Jewish propagandists whose arguments they repeat in
detail, including every grotesque stupidity and every clumsy
distortion of the truth.
The program of the British anti-Semites, adapted to American
conditions, would involved, as a minimum, the following measures:
1. Disfranchisement of all Jews whose parents and grandparents were
not all native-born American citizens.
2. Denial of the right to hold legislative or administrative office,
either elective or appointive, to all Jews other than those whose
parents and grandparents were all born in the United States.
3. Denial of the right of naturalization to Jews on the ground that
they are not assimilable.
4. Prohibition or very strict limitation of further Jewish
immigration.
5. Exclusion from the legal, medical, and teaching professions of all
Jews except those entitled to full citizenship. (See 1 and 2.)
6. Exclusion of all Jews, except those entitled to full citizenship,
from certain economic rights and privileges, including the right to
acquire and own land, the right to engage in the sale of stocks,
bonds, securities, or real estate, or in banking, money-lending, or
insurance.
7. The right of admission to colleges and universities to be so
limited as to admit only a small percentage of Jewish students.
That this outline of a program will seem to many to be simply a
fantastic jest I am quite well aware. The fact remains, however, that
it is simply a bald presentation of the program believed in by a great
many anti-Semites. I have only taken the measures that are seriously
urged for adoption in England and changed their wording to correspond
to American conditions. There is not one item in the program which I
did not hear advocated with evident seriousness when I was in England.
I learned of one society organized upon a national scale, all of whose
members must "prove that their parents and grandparents were of
British blood." This society is very actively engaged in the spread of
anti-Semitic propaganda. Its prospectus states that it was "Founded to
secure the re-enactment of the Act of Settlement, 1700, 1701, which
secured the government of Britain to Britons and the land of Britain
to the ownership of Britons."
The point of the demand for the re-enactment of the Act of Settlement
lies in the fact that one of the clauses in that historic instrument
provides that, "no person born out of the kingdoms of England,
Scotland, or Ireland, or the dominions thereunto belonging (_although
he be naturalized_ or made a denizen), except such as were born of
English parents, _shall be capable to be of the Privy Council, or a
member of either House of Parliament, or enjoy any office or place of
trust, either civil or military_." It is also stipulated that no such
person shall be capable "to have any grant of lands, tenements, or
hereditaments from the Crown to himself, or to any other or others in
trust for him." In the light of the constitution of this British
society with its large dues-paying membership, and its demand for the
re-enactment of the above-quoted provisions of the Act of Settlement,
the most drastic parts of the suggested program do not seem so
fantastic, after all.
Here, then, is a program of anti-Semitism which fairly expresses the
political and economic aspirations of large groups with whom our
American anti-Semites, led by the _Dearborn Independent_, appear to be
working in close co-operation and harmony. Whether the program fully
meets with their approval or not, it can hardly be questioned that, if
their anti-Jewish agitation is to have the result of bringing about
political and economic remedies for the conditions they assail, and
not pogroms, it will be necessary to discriminate between Jews and
Gentiles in citizenship, in education, in property rights, and in
economic opportunity. Precisely how these discriminations are to be
made may be open to doubt, but that they must be made is--once the
anti-Semitic position is taken--beyond all doubt.
Against that reactionary aim I set the American ideal, or what
President Roosevelt called "the historic American position of treating
each man on his merits as a man, without the least reference to his
creed, his race, or his birthplace." Anti-Semitism would divide our
citizenship by racial and religious barriers; the Americanism of
Washington and Lincoln and Lee and Roosevelt would weld all into a
united whole, regardless of race or religion. The way of the
anti-Semite is the way of Russia under the tsars, the way of the
unspeakable despots who for centuries made the word "Turk" a synonym
for oppression and brutal reaction. I prefer the American way. I am
opposed to anti-Semitism, not alone for humanitarian reasons, but as a
matter of loyalty to America. Anti-Semitism is treason to the American
ideal.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] September and October, 1920.
IX
WE NEED THE CO-OPERATION OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW
The greatest nations of the world are just emerging from the strain
and agony of the most terrible and disastrous war in the history of
mankind. From a tiny spark of hatred a great conflagration of passion
spread over the world, well-nigh destroying the entire fabric of
civilization. How near we have come to that catastrophe, as a result
of the war and its evil progeny, they best know who have recently
visited the countries principally involved and most vitally affected.
Even now civilization is not out of danger, but is weak and unsteady
like a man beginning to recover from a terrible fever. Infinite care
and patience and wisdom must be exercised by statesmen and peoples
and by the molders of public opinion in every nation in order to make
recovery possible.
Never was there a moment when racial or religious antagonism was as
dangerous and so much to be feared as in this crisis. Never were the
citizens of all lands so solemnly warned to avoid the poison of
hatred. The passionate hatreds engendered by the war must be crushed
down and they who were foes, seeking to destroy one another, must now
work together for the preservation of the civilization that is their
common heritage. With the carnage and wrack and ruin of the war still
oppressing us, and our hearts still lacerated and bruised, a common
peril is compelling us to unite and to seek safety in fellowship and
co-operation. Yesterday we relied upon the destructive arts of the
warrior; to-day we must rely upon the conserving arts of the healer.
Yesterday we hailed Mars; to-day we hail the Christ in whose touch is
life and healing.
What perverse and malevolent genius it must be that chooses this
moment to open the flood gates and set free the pent passions of
anti-Semitism! How monstrous a thing it is that from a great historic
pulpit of the Christian Church which Beecher glorified by his
courageous idealism, the brutal and un-Christian appeals of
anti-Semitism should be made now when the world needs, above all
things, to be purged of the poison of hatred and strengthened by
fellowship! How great a tragedy it is that men like Mr. Ford and his
associates can find nothing to inspire them in the vast work of
restoration and reconstruction; that their energies and resources are
directed to the ignoble and dangerous end of inciting in the minds of
millions of our people fear and hatred of the Jew, as Jew!
I am not insensible of, or indifferent to, the problems incidental to
the presence in this country of more than three million Jews. Neither
am I insensible of, or indifferent to, the problems incidental to our
vast negro population, or to the presence of Europeans and their slow
and imperfect assimilation. Recognizing these problems clearly and
fully, I am quite certain that racial hatred and antagonism is no
solvent for any one of them. The complete success of the appeals that
are being made against the Jews would not benefit the Gentiles in this
country in any particular. There never has been an organized
propaganda of race antagonism and hatred, anywhere in the world, which
benefited either race. In Russia and in Rumania--to cite only two
examples--anti-Semitism has injured the Christians fully as much as it
has injured the Jews. Turkish hatred and persecution of Armenians has
invariably injured the Turks quite as much as it has injured their
victims. In opposing the propaganda of anti-Semitism I am defending
equally the interest of Jew and non-Jew. I hold no brief for the
Jewish "race," so-called, or for Judaism. The only brief I hold is for
the democratic and humanitarian ideals of America. That brief I hold
by reason of my citizenship, voluntarily assumed, and the freeman's
oath with which that citizenship was consecrated.
The solution of the problems arising out of the massing of so many
Jewish people in our large cities requires the unity and co-operation
of all men and women of good will, both Jews and Gentiles, in
precisely the same way, and for precisely the same reasons, as the
solution of all our other problems does. There is nothing in our
history which justifies the fear that our citizens of Jewish birth
will be less ready than their Christian neighbors to give their
whole-hearted service to that end. There never has been a call for
service to this nation which found the Jewish citizens less patriotic,
less willing to serve the nation, and even to sacrifice for it, than
other sections of our citizenry. From Valley Forge to Château-Thierry
that record is written. I remember well that memorable day in July,
1918, when I heard from the lips of M. Clemenceau the news, just
received by him, that our American soldiers were victorious at
Château-Thierry. Later, on the way to Château-Thierry, I passed the
long lines of ambulances bearing away the wounded men, many of whom
were beyond all hope of recovery. Then, still later, in the great,
wonderful hospital at Neuilly, I talked with many of those who fell
wounded in that terrible fight. There were Jews as well as Gentiles
among those men, but there was no difference in the quality of their
Americanism, in their patriotism, their fortitude, or their courage.
President Roosevelt, who was too decent as a man and too loyal as an
American citizen to have any tolerance for anti-Semitism, more than
once called attention to the fact that citizens of Jewish ancestry and
faith have, in every crisis in the history of the nation which has
shown justice to them, repaid the nation with loyal service. In an
address to the B'nai B'raith, June 15, 1905, delivered at the White
House, President Roosevelt said:
"One of the most touching poems of our own great poet,
Longfellow, is that on the Jewish cemetery in Newport, and
anyone who goes through any of the old cemeteries of the cities
which preserve the records of Colonial times will see the name
of many an American of the Jewish race who, in war or in peace,
did his full share in the founding of this nation. From that day
to this, from the day when the Jews of Charleston, of
Philadelphia, of New York, supported the patriot cause and
helped in every way, not only by money, but by arms, Washington
and his colleagues, who were founding this Republic--from that
day to the present we have had no struggle, military or civil,
in which there have not been citizens of Jewish faith who played
an eminent part for the honor and credit of the nation."
There is no movement for the advancement of humanitarian ideals in
this country to which American citizens of Jewish ancestry and faith
have not contributed their full share. It is impossible for any
fair-minded man who knows the facts to read without indignation the
article published in the _Dearborn Independent_, June 5, 1920. In
addition to charging that "Jewish business methods" are responsible
for the high prices which have obtained for so long, the article
accuses Jewish employers of being responsible for conditions of
employment not known to the Gentile world. Lest I be accused of
misrepresenting the writer of this libel, I will quote his exact
words:
When the susceptible people of the nation commiserated the poor
Jews of the New York sweatshops they, for the most part, did not
know that the inventors and operators of the "sweatshop" method
were themselves Jews. Indeed, while it is the boast of our
country that no race or color or creed is persecuted here, but
liberty is insured to all, still it is a fact that the only
heartless treatment ever accorded the Jew in the United States
came from his own people, his overseers and masters....
... The record of the great Jews in charity is very noble;
_their record in industrial reforms is nil_. With commendable
sympathy toward their own people they will donate a part of
their profits to rectify some of the human need resulting from
the method by which they made their profits, but as for
reforming the method by which they get their profits in order
that the resulting need might be diminished or prevented,
apparently it has never occurred to them. _At least, while there
are many charitable names among the wealthier Jews, there are no
names that stand for an actual, practical humanising of
industry, its methods and its returns._
I respectfully suggest that these statements are intended to convey to
the mind of the reader two impressions, neither of which corresponds
to reality. The first impression is that Jewish employers have been
and are more brutal and merciless than Gentile employers. Now, it is a
fact that the "sweatshop," using that term in its strictest, technical
sense, developed, in this country, after 1885--that is to say,
following the great influx of Polish and Russian Jews and the equally
great increase in the manufacture of ready-made clothing. But, while
this is technically true of sweating, we had in this country long
before the Jews came children's and women's labor under terrible
conditions. In 1884 young girls and women worked in the factories of
New Hampshire from five in the morning until seven at night, with only
forty-five minutes' intermission, and their wages ranged from a dollar
and a quarter to two dollars per week. Until quite recently, in our
Southern cotton mills, owned and operated by Gentiles, we maintained
conditions as bad as ever existed in the sweatshops of our large
cities. It does not require any great amount of research to prove that
Gentile employers have in the past been just as indifferent to the
well-being of their employees, just as reactionary, and just as
opposed to reform, as Jewish employers. I would remind the reader, in
this connection, that we have never had in this country, not even in
the sweatshops owned and controlled by Jews, anything approaching the
terrible conditions which obtained in English factories in the early
days of the factory system, when, in factories owned by Christians,
little children, mere babies in fact, were made to work under
conditions of revolting cruelty, whipped by brutal overseers, and not
infrequently driven literally to death from exhaustion. Thus did
Christian employers treat Christian children.
But, while it is true that in our great cities sweatshops principally
developed under Jewish auspices, it is equally true that in the fight
to abolish sweating Jews have taken an active and honorable part. This
I know of a certainty, and the insinuations to the contrary contained
in the article under discussion are as cruelly unfair and unjust as
they are untrue. So, too, in the fight against child labor in the
cities and factories of the North. It was my privilege to take part in
that fight, and I know that in the very forefront of the long struggle
for remedial legislation, helping with money and with personal
service, side by side with Christians, were many men and women of
Jewish ancestry and faith. I know, too, that fighting on the other
side were both Christians and Jews. It is preposterous that any
attempt should be made to so misrepresent the struggle for "the
practical humanizing of industry" as to make it appear that the Jewish
people in particular were either hostile or indifferent to it.
The second impression which the article is intended to convey is that
in those industries which are controlled by Jews no such attempts have
been made to better the lot of the workers employed in them as have
been made in those industries which are controlled by non-Jews. This
charge, likewise, is wholly baseless, as anybody who desires to know
the truth can readily ascertain. It was my good fortune and privilege,
as one of the representatives of the public appointed by President
Wilson, to serve as a member of the First Industrial Conference
convoked by the President in October, 1919. Among the members of that
Conference chosen to represent the public were both Christians and
Jews, and I venture to say that there was not one of the former who
for a single moment doubted the sincerity, the patriotism, or the
humanitarianism of the Jewish members. Moreover, in the course of our
work there was brought to our attention an astonishing amount of
information concerning efforts being made by progressive and
high-minded employers in all parts of the country to introduce into
their industries reforms looking to the betterment of the lot of their
employees, including profit-sharing and participation in shop
management and control by the workers. It is neither more nor less
than the literal truth that these reports were quite as favorable to
the Jewish employers as to their Christian competitors. As a matter of
fact, in the ready-made-clothing industry, which is very largely in
the hands of Jews, many of the most interesting experiments in
industrial democracy and many of the sincerest efforts to humanize
industry are being made. These things are known to every student of
the problem--and they suffice to brand the statements made against the
Jews in the article under discussion as both untrue and studiously
unjust.
Not only is it true that in the ever-increasing effort to bring about
"the practical humanizing of industry" no distinction can honestly and
justly be drawn between Gentile and Jewish employers, just as no such
distinction can honestly and justly be drawn with respect to the
selfishness and ignorance which result in conditions that are inhuman
and oppressive; it is equally true, as a study of the records of
Congress and the legislative bodies of the individual states will show
beyond question, that no such distinction between Jew and Gentile can
be honestly and justly drawn with respect to the mass of social
legislation enacted in recent years. Socially minded men and women
have supported such legislation, regardless of differences of race and
creed, while men and women who lacked social consciousness, who were
selfish and indifferent to the claims of their fellow human beings,
have opposed such legislation, making common cause regardless of
differences of race and creed.
All this is exactly as it should be, of course, and precisely what
might be expected to result from our ideals, our institutions, and our
laws. It would be tragic and disastrous, indeed, if our experience
were otherwise. The charges made against our Jewish citizens by the
_Dearborn Independent_ amount in reality to a terrible verdict of
failure against America and the democratic ideal which America
represents. The only hope we can have of solving the great problems
which confront this nation rests, and can only rest, upon the
assurance that an enlightened citizenry, united by love of country and
of mankind, and undivided by race or creed, will strive with
ever-increasing strength, vision, and courage toward the goal of
equality of opportunity for all. Thus only shall this nation which we
love fulfill the high hopes of its greatest spiritual leaders and
statesmen. To destroy the faith of our sons and daughters in American
democratic ideals--which is precisely what anti-Semitism is aiming to
do--is a monstrous thing.
X
A FINAL WORD
I have finished with the _Dearborn Independent_ and the flimsy fabric
of its ridiculous charges. My self-imposed task is finished, and I am
content to leave the grotesque legend of the protocols, together with
the monstrous and cruel charge based upon them, to the judgment of my
fellow citizens of Gentile birth. Into the motives of Mr. Henry Ford I
do not care to enter. I suspect that they are pathological in their
origin. Be that how it may, my pity for the man is as profound as my
contempt for the propaganda with which he has chosen to associate
himself. To be capable of deliberately inciting and fostering race
hatred at any time is to cease to be capable of enjoying the
fellowship of decent and just men and women; to incite such hatred
now, in the midst of such unprecedented suffering and the universal
need of fellowship and healing, is a pitiful self-degradation.
This organized propaganda of anti-Semitism has had one wholesome
result which its organizers neither foresaw nor intended. It has
called forth a notable protest by men and women of Gentile birth and
Christian faith which may well stand as the answer of American
civilization and democracy to this ancient and hateful evil. All honor
to President Wilson for departing from official traditions and placing
his name to that protest. Throughout the civilized world that
declaration has gone--America's answer to anti-Semitism.
I suppose that so long as the imperfections of human nature endure, so
long as there are men and women who are weak, selfish, cruel,
vengeful, or ignorant, there will be racial and religious hatreds to
be guarded against and opposed. I suppose, too, that until wars have
ceased to be possible, in war's aftermath such hatreds will flourish.
Against every form of racial and religious hatred, against sectarian
bigotry and intolerance, every loyal American citizen should be
prepared to take an uncompromising stand. That obligation, I take it,
is implicit in our citizenship. It is for the integrity of that
citizenship that I am concerned to plead. Anti-Semitism commands our
special attention to-day because it is being spread by an elaborately
organized propaganda. But the duty of the Christian to defend the Jew
against persecution is neither greater nor less than the duty of the
Protestant to defend the right of the Catholic or of all white
citizens--Christians and Jews, Catholics and Protestants--to stand
solidly against injustice to the negro and in defense of his rights
when these are assailed. My plea, is not for pro-Semitism in
opposition to anti-Semitism, but for loyalty to American ideals in
opposition to any and all attempts to divide our citizenship on racial
or religious lines.
Because of a reasoned faith in those principles and ideals of
democracy which brought this nation into being, and toward the
realization of which we have steadily progressed through sunshine and
storm, through peace and war, I am opposed to anti-Semitism and every
manifestation of it. Anti-Semitism and the American ideal can never be
reconciled. Far sooner shall men reconcile fire and water, or mix oil
and water inseparably, than blend the cruel and hateful passions of
anti-Semitism with the generous spirit of America. For America's
safety and honor, therefore, I plead for unity against this sinister
foe lurking within the gates, as against all other foes, no matter
under what flag they may be marshaled.
POSTSCRIPT
After the foregoing was written I received from the head of a great
American corporation a letter calling my attention to an anti-Semitic
pamphlet published in New York City, entitled "Who Rules Russia?" and
asking me for information concerning certain statements made therein.
The pamphlet is printed in two languages, English and Russian, and
bears the imprint of an organization called "Association Unity of
Russia." Letters to the address given in the pamphlet, ordering copies
of it, brought no response of any kind and it was necessary for me to
resort to other methods of obtaining a copy. Incidentally, I caused
certain inquiries to be made concerning the Association Unity of
Russia. Now that I have made a careful examination of the pamphlet, I
do not wonder that my request that copies be sent me was ignored.
Certainly the publishers did not intend that it should be circulated
among persons familiar with the subject and competent to expose its
misrepresentations.
So far as I can learn, the Association Unity of Russia is the name of
a group of Russian _emigrés_ residing in New York. They are
monarchists and reactionaries, their hope being the restoration of
tsarism. Like most of their kind, they are bitter Jew-baiters. Their
pamphlet is entirely typical of Russian anti-Semitism, particularly in
its reckless disregard of truth. I find here reproduced the charge
that "the Soviet bureaucracy is almost entirely controlled by Jews and
Jewesses." Not only so, but it is charged that the non-Bolshevist
Socialist parties are mainly composed of Jews. The pamphlet ends with
the statement, "the Russian state is actually dominated by the Jewish
nation." There is no argument in the pamphlet, which consists of
alleged lists of officials classified according to nationality and
race.
That some of these lists are deliberate inventions of the anonymous
compiler or compilers is quite certain, for the most complete files of
Bolshevist publications in this country do not contain either the
lists or the data from which it might be possible to compile them.
Other lists represent the most reckless lying. For example, on page 5
I find what purports to be a list of the members of the Council of the
People's Commissars. The actual list, copied from Bolshevist official
sources, I have reproduced on an earlier page. This fraudulent list
contains twenty-two names, of which number seventeen are alleged to be
Jews, three Russians, and two Armenians. Looking over the list, I find
that it omits well-known and important commissars such as the
following: Raskolnikov (Navy), Petrovsky (Interior), Krestinsky
(Finance), Krassin (Industry and Commerce and Transportation), Sereda
(Agriculture), Kolontai (Public Welfare), Rykov (Supreme Economic
Council), Bruchanov (Supply), Smidt (Labor), Semashko (Public Health),
and Bonch-Brouyevich (Secretary). All these are Russians; there is not
a Jew among them. The list contains, on the other hand, the names of a
number of Bolsheviki who are not, and who never have been, members of
the Council of the People's Commissars. Some of them may hold
positions of minor importance in the Soviet regime or in the Communist
party. The inclusion of their names in this list as members of the
central government is an impudent imposture.
The fact that the pamphlet is printed in Russian and English is
calculated to impress and deceive the reader. No one who knows the
situation will believe that the use of Russian had any other purpose
or that it was intended for propaganda among Russians. Such a
document, partly printed in Russian and purporting to be issued by
Russians, is relied upon to convince Americans that the compiler or
compilers--who prefer to remain anonymous--know what they are talking
about. Not many will take the pains to scrutinize the various lists
closely. Consequently, even where one page contradicts another, the
fact goes undetected. A few examples will show how stupid these
Jew-baiters are. On page 9 Latsis, of the Extraordinary Commission, is
accurately described as a Lett, but on page 23 he becomes a Jew.
Fritchie is a Lett on page 10 and a Jew on page 22--and neither
description is correct.
On page 25 Kerensky is described as a Jew, and it is said that his
real name is Kirbis. This legend has been published before and
thoroughly exposed. The fact is that Kerensky is not a Jew and never
was known by the name of Kirbis or any other name than Kerensky. He
never participated in the "underground" work of the revolutionary
movement and therefore had no need of an alias. Alexander Fedorovich
Kerensky comes from an old Russian family thoroughly orthodox and
respectable. His history has been completely explored. No. The
anonymous Jew-baiters have simply reproduced a silly legend that
appeared in the reactionary anti-Semitic sheet, _Novoye Vremia_, of
Petrograd, shortly before the revolution of March, 1917, and was
immediately exposed and ridiculed.
In an examination of the various lists of names given I find at least
twenty-five instances of non-Jews, principally Russians, being
described as Jews. I find, also, many Jewish names purporting to be
the names of Bolshevist officials of some importance, though it is
safe to say that they were never heard of by any student of
contemporary Russian affairs. I do not say that no such persons exist,
but I do assert that if they exist they do not hold the positions
attributed to them, and that even their names are not to be found in
the Bolshevist journals from which this pamphlet is said to have been
compiled. Perhaps some of the members of the pathetic little group of
Russian monarchist _emigrés_ who meet weekly in the basement of a
certain church to pray for the restoration of tsarism will condescend
to tell us how the names were chosen.
How stupid these pious humbugs are in their forgeries! Here is a list
of names alleged to be a complete list of members of the Central
Committee of the Social Democratic Party Mensheviki. Of course all are
Jews. I look over the list and see at once that three of those named
are not even members of that party, let alone of its supreme
authority. Ratner, Rappoport, and Gotz do not belong to that party,
but are prominent as leaders in the Socialists-Revolutionists party.
Perhaps there are other mistakes in this list--but what is the use of
wasting time in checking it further? Here is another list, even more
defective, which is offered as a list of the members of the Central
Committee of the party of Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right. It
contains fifteen names, of which fourteen are Jews and only one, that
of Tchaykovsky, is a Russian. But Tchaykovsky is not a member of this
party at all and, therefore, not of its Central Committee. He belongs
to the party of People's Socialists. In the list I find the names of
Lvovitch and Berlinrout, who likewise do not belong to this party and
are not members of the committee in question. They are well-known
leaders of the Zionists-Socialists. Abramovitch and Khintchouk are
included in this utterly worthless list, though they do not belong to
the party of Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right, but to the Social
Democratic party.
I do not suppose that many of my readers will care very much about the
party affiliations of these men or about the factional divisions of
Russian Socialism. The fact that this latest addition to the pamphlet
literature of anti-Semitism emanates from Russian sources and is
printed partly in Russian gives it an appearance of authority that is
wholly unjustified by its content. It has seemed to me worth while,
therefore, to call attention to its clumsy misrepresentations, its
self-contradictions, its stupid blunders, and its stupendous
effrontery. This precious example of Russian monarchistic anti-Semitic
literature is just about fit to be placed alongside the _Dearborn
Independent_.
THE END
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