Within the Pale: The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecution in Russia

W I T H I N T H E P A L E
The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecution in Russia
BY M I C H A E L D A V I T T AUTHOR OF “LEAVES FROM A PRISON DIARY,” “LIFE AND PROGRESS IN AUSTRALASIA,” “THE BOER FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,” ETC. SPECIAL EDITION Philadelphia THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA NEW YORK A. S. BARNES & CO. 1903
Copyright, 1903, By A. S. BARNES & CO., Published, October.
It is deemed necessary, for the twofold aim of this book,—to arouse public feeling against a murder-making legend, and to put forward a plea for the objects of the Zionist movement,—to tell the story of the Russian Jew, apropos of recent massacres. This task could only be partially done in my despatches from Kishineff to Mr. William R. Hearst’s American papers. Moreover, all the despatches were not published, for reasons which govern the exigencies of journals that are concerned much more with a record of daily events in the United States than with history.
While in Russia I tried to find both sides of the anti-Semitic Question, so as to give expression to all views which could throw light upon crimes that had shocked the public mind in America and in Europe no more than they had pained and scandalised all right-thinking Russians.
To several of the minor representatives of the Tsar’s Government I owe an acknowledgment for uniform courtesies, and for valuable assistance in my investigations, and I endeavour, in the chapter on “Russia’s Attitude,” to let the voice of such exponents of official Russian ideas and purposes be heard alongside of counter Jewish accusations.
The unwarranted attempts that have been made in some quarters to use the Kishineff crimes as means of creating an unfriendly feeling between the two greatest powers in the world to-day—the United States Republic and the Empire of Russia—are reprehensible. There are very unworthy motives behind this mischievous endeavour that are not calculated to serve the cause of the Russian Jew. The writer of these pages can have no sympathy with nor lend encouragement of any kind to these sinister efforts.