Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

France, with all the good intentions in the world, could do nothing without Russia’s consent and, therefore, contented herself with the expression of a modest hope that the Roumanian Government might of their own accord decide to fulfil their obligations, seeing that the real sufferer is Roumania itself, and with pointing to the lack of means of enforcing such fulfilment.[224]

In brief, the European Powers considered that they did their duty by expressing their platonic concurrence with that part of the American Note which referred to the obligations of humanity and civilisation generally. But to the more definite appeal to the Treaty of Berlin they refused to pay any attention whatsoever. Nor can we wonder at their refusal. The appeal was not a very happy one; for every party to that contract has conscientiously broken it in turn. Russia, in defiance of its provisions, has fortified Batoum; Turkey has not even attempted to carry out the reforms in the European Provinces of the Empire, ordained by the Treaty; Great Britain has done nothing for the Armenians. Why then should poor Roumania alone be called upon to carry out her share of an agreement, already disregarded with impunity by everyone else concerned?

Such a retort would, of course, have been too candid and too rational for diplomacy. Instead, the Roumanian Government had again recourse to the more correct, if somewhat hackneyed, expedient of an official contradiction of the truth. The Roumanian Minister in London declared that “the idea that any persecution existed was absolutely erroneous.” The Jews were foreigners, and “the disabilities imposed upon foreigners were absolutely necessary for the protection of his countrymen, who had bought their independence with the sword, and had a right to manage their economic affairs according to their requirements, etc., etc.”[225] What the Roumanian conception of such a right is has been very eloquently explained by Roumania’s accomplished Queen. After having drawn a pitiful and, although exaggerated, in the main faithful picture of Roumania’s economic misery, Her Majesty declares that, under such conditions, the civilised world ought not “to require her to harbour and support others, when she herself stands in dire need of assistance.” Those “others” are “foreigners,” that is, Roumanian Jews; their exodus is represented as the voluntary emigration of “a foreign population” due to the instinct which prompts a rat to quit a sinking ship, and their departure is welcome, because they, being traders, drain the country of its wealth. This interesting economic doctrine is expounded by Her Majesty as follows: “It is a fact that no money has ever been introduced into Roumania through any one in trade. Any that such a man may possess goes abroad, first to purchase his stock and outfit, and later for supplies to carry on his business, even such articles as buttons and the commonest kinds of braids not being manufactured here except on the very smallest scale.”[226] Here again the Jewish apologist is more convincing than his Roumanian accuser. Admitting that, on the whole, the Queen’s statements are correct, he asks: “But why is it so? For the reason that the ruling class prohibits ‘foreigners’ to acquire lands in the country, and by means of this and other laws keeps foreign capital from coming in.”[227]

Protests pass away, grievances remain. The well-meant action of Mr. Hay and Lord Lansdowne, far from bettering, really aggravated the condition of the people on whose behalf it was taken. The Roumanian politicians, with characteristic astuteness, perceived that the immediate cause of the complaint was the emigration of the Jews to the United States, England and Canada, and, naturally enough, arrived at the conclusion that the one thing needful was to remove the ground of complaint by stopping emigration. A telegraphic order was sent to all the local authorities, forbidding the issue of passports to the Jews. Those who had already reached the frontier were forcibly turned back, and hundreds of others, who had sold all they possessed in order to raise the funds necessary for the journey, were compelled to return home and perish.[228] Thus an act intended as a blessing proved an unmitigated curse, and modern Roumania by this new measure has outstripped even mediaeval Spain in cruelty. For the Spanish sovereigns, blinded by religious bigotry, had yet given to the Jews the alternatives of conversion or exile. Their Roumanian imitators, infatuated by racial fanaticism, will not baptize the Jews, nor dare they banish them; but, like Pharaoh of old, they virtually bid them stay and be slaves.

CHAPTER XXIII
ANTI-SEMITISM

We have followed the fortunes of the Jewish people from the moment of its first contact with the nations of the West to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. We have seen that this contact was from the beginning marked by mutual antipathy, enfeebled at times, invigorated at others, always present. Some Jewish writers have endeavoured to show that the hatred of the Gentile towards the Jew in the Middle Ages was an artificial creation due entirely to the efforts of the Catholic Church; that it flowed from above, and that the masses of Christendom, when not incited by the classes, were most amicably disposed towards Israel. This view is hardly tenable. It is inconceivable that the Church, or any other authority, could have succeeded so well in kindling the conflagrations which we have witnessed, if the fuel were not ready to be kindled. It is also a view contrary to the recorded facts. We have seen in the earlier Middle Ages popular prejudice spontaneously manifesting itself in the insults and injuries which were heaped upon the Jews, and restrained with difficulty by the princes and prelates of Europe. In the time of the Crusades also it was not St. Bernard who fanned the fury of the mob against the Jews of the Rhine, but an obscure monk. The exhortations of the saint were disregarded; but the harangues of the fanatic found an eager audience, simply because they were in accord with popular feeling. During the same period bishops and burgomasters strove to save the victims, in vain.

Again, the persecution of the Spanish Jews in the fifteenth century would never have attained the dimensions which it did attain, were it not for the deep-rooted animosity which the bulk of the Spanish people nourished against them. Castile was then the home of chivalry and charity. The pretensions of the Pope to interfere in the affairs of the kingdom had met with scornful opposition on the part of the Castilian nobles. Three centuries before an Aragonese monarch had given away his life in defence of the persecuted heretics of Provence. Less than two centuries before Aragon was one of the few countries that refused to comply with the joint request of Philip the Fair of France and Pope Clement V. to persecute the Knights Templars. At the time when the Inquisition was established in Spain both Castile and Aragon were hailing the revival of culture. Under Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as in the subsequent reigns, the Castilians and the Aragonese vigorously resisted an institution so contrary to the principles of freedom dear to them. Nor was in Spain the danger of dissension sufficiently great to justify recourse to so terrible an instrument of concord. The Spaniards less than any other people had reason to sacrifice liberty of conscience for the sake of political conquest. It is, therefore, highly improbable that the Holy Office would ever have gained a firm footing in Spain, but for the fact that its way was paved by the popular prejudice against the Jews and the Moors, and its success assured by the persecution of those races. Though the Spaniards hated the Inquisition bitterly, they hated the Semites more bitterly still; and of the two the Jew more bitterly than the Moor.

We have also seen that neither the Renaissance nor the Reformation, both movements directly or indirectly hostile to the Church, brought any amelioration to the lot of the Jew. In every country Jew-hatred existed as the product of other than ecclesiastical influences. Here and there, under exceptionally favourable conditions, the Jews may have been tolerated; they were not loved. This negative attitude was liable to be at any moment converted into active hostility. All that the Church did was to turn the feeling to account, to intensify and to sanctify it. Lastly, we have seen that the emancipation of the Jews did not come about until the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century—a period no longer of protest against the Church, but one of rebellion against all the prejudices of all the ages. It was not until the gospel of humanity, in its broadest sense, was accepted that the secular clamour against the Jewish portion of the human race was silenced; and even then not without difficulty. But, though the plant of anti-Judaism was cut at the root, the root remained, and it was destined in our own day to put forth a new shoot.

Writers have expended much ingenuity in defining the origin and the nature of modern anti-Semitism. Some regard it as a resuscitation of mediaeval religious bigotry; others as the latest manifestation of the old struggle between Europe and Asia; a third school, rejecting both those theories, interprets it as a purely political question arising from the social and economic conditions created by the emancipation of the Jews; while a fourth sect have attempted to show that the modern revival is “the fruit of a great ethnographical and political error.” Those who see in anti-Semitism nothing but a revival of mediaeval religious rancour ignore the conflict between Jew and Gentile before the rise of the Mediaeval Church, or even before the rise of Christianity. Those who explain it as a purely racial struggle forget the Crusades and the Inquisition and the superstitious horror of usury. Those who interpret it simply as a question of modern European politics disregard both those periods of history. Finally, whatever may be said of crude ethnographical theories and of nebulous nationalist creeds, it would be doing them too much honour to suppose that they are the real causes of anti-Semitism. Men do not slaughter their fellow-men for the mere sake of an abstract hypothesis, though priests may. All these things do nothing but give a name and a watchword to a movement born of far less ethereal parents. In our day the political activity which has used anti-Semitism as an instrument has only done what clerical activity had done in the past. It has availed itself of a force not of its own creation. The fact is that every human action is the result of manifold motives. The complexity of the motives is not diminished by the multitude of the actors. There is a strong temptation to simplify matters by singling out one of those motives and ignoring the rest. But, though truth is always simple, simplicity need not always be true. There may be new things under the sun. Anti-Semitism, however, is not one of them. Its roots lie deep in the past.

Viewed, then, in the light of two thousand years’ recorded experience, modern anti-Semitism appears to be neither religious, nor racial, nor economical in its origin and character. It is all three, and something more. We find in it all the motives which led to the persecution of the Jews in the past. In antiquity the struggle was chiefly due to racial antagonism, in the Middle Ages chiefly to religious antagonism, in the nineteenth century we might expect it to assume chiefly a nationalist garb. But, as in antiquity religious antipathy was blended with racial hatred, as in the Middle Ages economic rivalry accentuated religious bigotry, so in our time religious, racial, and economic reasons have contributed to the movement in various degrees according to the peculiar conditions, material and moral, prevailing in each country where anti-Semitism has found an echo. If it were possible to unite all these causes in one general principle, it would be this: every age has its own fashionable cult, which for the time being overshadows all other cults, gives a name to the age, explains its achievements, and extenuates its crimes. Every age has found in the Jew an uncompromising dissenter and a sacrificial victim. The cult par excellence of the nineteenth century is Nationalism.