Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

In France the power of the Jews since the establishment of the Third Republic increased steadily, and their number was to some extent swelled by the arrival of brethren driven by anti-Semitism out of Germany. Yet, as late as 1881 a writer felt justified in stating that “the effervescence of a certain feeling against the Jews is apparent in almost all the large states of the world with the single exception perhaps of France.”[242] This comparative immunity from the general delirium, however, was not to last much longer. Nationalism, clericalism, and economic jealousy in France, as elsewhere, were at work, and demagogues ready to make use of these forces were not wanting.

Ernest Renan, in 1882, aimed some of his delicately-pointed shafts of irony at “the modern Israelite with whom our great commercial towns of Europe have become acquainted during the last fifty years.... How careless he shows himself of a paradise mankind has accepted upon his word; with what ease he accommodates himself to all the folds of modern civilisation; how quickly he is freed from all dynastic and feudal prejudice; and how can he enjoy a world he has not made, gather the fruits of a field he has not tilled, supplant the blockhead who persecutes him, or make himself necessary to the fool who despises him. It is for him, you would think, that Clovis and his Franks fought, that the race of Capet unfolded its policy of a thousand years, that Philip Augustus conquered at Bouvines and Condé at Rocroi!... He who overturned the world by his faith in the kingdom of God believes now in wealth only.”[243] That Renan, the high-priest of Idealism, should feel aggrieved at the materialism of the modern representative of his beloved Semitic race is not surprising. It is, however, surprising that the Jew, who has so often been persecuted for his obstinate adherence to his traditions and for his detachment from his surroundings, should be taken to task by Renan for the ease with which “he accommodates himself to all the folds of modern civilisation.” Either Renan is right or the anti-Semites. One and the same body of men cannot very well be both obdurate and accommodating. It is, however, the Jew’s special privilege to be denounced by one half of the world for the possession of a certain quality, and by the other half for the lack of it. Consistency has never been a marked characteristic of Jew-haters, and, perhaps, it is not reasonable to expect it from men under the spell of so engrossing a pastime as the excommunication of their fellows.

Of course, Renan himself, his mellifluous mockery notwithstanding, was the very antithesis of a Jew-hater. Nationalism had no greater enemy and Liberalism no warmer champion than Renan. He never tired of asserting that ethnographical facts possessed only a scientific importance, and were devoid of all political significance.[244] So far as the Jews were concerned, he proclaimed with enthusiasm the services rendered by them to the cause of civilisation and progress in the past, and emphatically expressed his conviction that they were destined to render equally brilliant services in the future: “Every Jew,” he said, “is essentially a Liberal, while the enemies of Judaism, examined closely, will be found to be, in general, the enemies of the modern spirit. This,” he added, “applies especially to the French Jews, such as they have been made by the Revolution; but I am persuaded that every country which will repeat the experiment, renounce State religion, secularise the civil life, and establish the equality of all the citizens before the law, will arrive at the same result and will find as excellent patriots in the Jewish creed as in other creeds.” “The work of the nineteenth century,” he declared on another occasion, “is to demolish all the ghettos, and I do not congratulate those who elsewhere seek to rebuild them.”[245]

But at the very moment, when Renan was giving utterance to these noble sentiments, there was preparing in his own country an agitation precisely similar to that which had “elsewhere sought to rebuild the ghettos.”

The slumbering prejudice against the Jew was in France first awakened by the Panama scandals, and immediately afterwards there was formed in Paris a union with the object of freeing the country from the financial tyranny of Jews and other non-Catholics and foreigners. The Vatican, ever on the alert, saw in the movement an opportunity of strengthening the clerical interest in a state which had so sadly neglected its traditional rôle of the Pope’s champion, and from an eldest daughter of the Church had turned into its bitterest enemy. The Pope, therefore, bestowed upon the union his blessing. ♦1882♦ But the institution after a brief career ended in a bankruptcy from which not even Papal prayers could save it. Like Julius Caesar’s spirit, however, the union even after its dissolution continued to harass its rivals. Its failure, attributed to the machinations of the Jews, put fresh life into the anti-Semitic agitation. Publicists interpreted the popular feeling and gratified the national amour propre by describing in sombre colours the pernicious influence of the Jewish plutocracy on the life of France, and by tracing to that influence the undeniable immorality of French society.[246] The discomfiture of that brilliant and weak adventurer, Boulanger, brought about, as it was, chiefly by the efforts of a Jewish journalist of German extraction and connections, drew down upon the Jews, and especially upon foreign Jews, the wrath of General Boulanger’s supporters. An anti-Semitic League was founded in Paris, with branches in the provinces. The Royalists and the Nationalists, the warriors of the Church and the warriors of the army, the desperate defenders of lost causes, who had nothing more to lose, and the zealots for new causes, who had as yet everything to win, all rallied round the standard of anti-Semitism, which derived additional popularity and glory from the alliance of France with Russia, the persecutrix of Israel. ♦1892♦ Soon after an anti-Semitic journal made its appearance in Paris, and its columns were filled with scandals, scented out with truly inquisitorial diligence, and with attacks on Jewish officers. Anti-Jewish feeling daily grew in bitterness, the term “Juif” came to be accepted as a synonym for variety of villainy, and the position of the Jewish officers in the French army became intolerable, till the ferment culminated in the arrest and conviction of Captain Dreyfus. ♦1894♦

All the prejudices and passions of the past and all the conflicting interests of the present were now gathered up into a storm almost unparalleled in the history of contemporary Europe. The most popular newspapers vied with each other in pandering to the lowest feelings and most ignorant prejudices of the vulgarest classes of the French nation. From one end of France to the other nothing was heard but execrations of the Jewish traitor. The modern Frenchman was not unwilling to forgive the Jew his supposed enmity to Christianity, but what patriot could forgive him his supposed treachery to the French army? The hatred of the race, expressed with eloquent virulence in Parliament and in the press, found even more vigorous expression with dynamite, ♦1895♦ and an attempt was made to blow up the Rothschild Bank in Paris. Meanwhile the Captain’s friends worked with untiring earnestness, patience, and ability to establish his innocence. A series of disclosures ensued; the public, led by the late M. Zola, Colonel Picquart, and other advocates of justice, began to feel qualms on the subject, and the demand for a revision of the trial grew daily louder. By this time the Dreyfus affair had been drawn into the mad vortex of party politics, and this accounts for the extent and depth of an agitation hardly intelligible when viewed in relation to the comparatively small number of French Jews.[247] To be or not to be revised, that was the question, and upon the answer the rival parties staked their reputations and their political ideals. The Liberals defended Dreyfus not so much because they believed him to be innocent, as because he was attacked by the Clericals. The Clericals, on the other hand, denounced the Dreyfusards as enemies of their country and of its army—the Christian Faith was tactfully kept in the background—a distinguished Academician wrote a book on Nationalism in which he analysed Zola’s genius and character, and proved to his own satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of thousands of readers, that Zola was not a Frenchman.

But in the midst of all this clamour, riot, vilification and assault, the demand for a revision continued persistently to gain ground, and the Liberals, representing the sanest and healthiest element in the Republic, finally prevailed. ♦1898♦ The new trial at Rennes brought to light the forgeries and perjuries by which the conviction of the Jewish captain had been secured. None the less, the sentence was not revoked. The verdict of the new court-martial was an attempt to save judicial appearances by finding the prisoner guilty, and to save justice by recommending him to mercy. Dreyfus was restored to his family, but not to his honour. However, public opinion both in France and abroad had forestalled the verdict of the Court by acquitting the prisoner of the crime and by pitying in him the victim of a foul conspiracy. Nationalism, Clericalism, Royalism, and all the legions of anti-Semitism received a severe blow by the triumph of the Dreyfusards; but, though their star was no longer at its zenith, it had not yet set. The agitation in favour of a complete reversal of Captain Dreyfus’ sentence continued, and the demand for a new revision of the case was pronounced by the Nationalists as a fresh development of the “anti-national” policy of the Liberals, and as a conspiracy on their part for the purpose of inflicting a new humiliation on the Army by constraining it to proclaim the innocence of a man it had twice condemned as a traitor. A joint manifesto, bearing the signatures of the Patriotic League, the National Anti-Semitic Federation, and the French Socialist Party, was issued appealing to the French public “to frustrate the efforts of the occult Sectarians, Internationalists, and financial powers.”[248]

At the same time anti-Semitic sentiments found applauding audiences in the French theatres, as was shown in December, 1903, by the success at the Paris Gymnase of Le Retour de Jérusalem—a play which flattered the feelings of the audience by dwelling on the familiar points of the anti-Semitic creed: the Jews’ clannishness, their readiness to help their own co-religionists, their sans patrie; and justified its prejudices by emphasising that natural incompatibility of temperament which is supposed to doom Jew and Gentile to everlasting alienation. Nevertheless, the wiser section of the French people carried the day in the end. ♦1906 July 12–13♦ The Court of Cassation, the highest tribunal in France, after two years’ examination, quashed the verdict of the Rennes court-martial, declaring that there never was any foundation for any of the charges brought against Captain Dreyfus. The French Government thereupon submitted to Parliament a Bill providing for the complete rehabilitation of all the victims of the conspiracy. The Bill was passed by an overwhelming majority. Captain Dreyfus was promoted to the rank of Major and presented with the Cross of the Legion of Honour, Col. Picquart was made a Brigadier-General, the remains of M. Zola were transferred to the Pantheon, and in the gallery of the Senate were erected busts of the two Senators who first stood out in favour of the innocence of Dreyfus. Thus France wiped out the stain on its national character, and the drama which had agitated the world for twelve years came to a happy end. This end, however, satisfactory as it is, must be regarded as a victory of justice due to special political causes rather than as a proof of a revolution of the popular attitude towards the Jews, or as a guarantee against a recrudescence of French anti-Semitism in the future. The “Jewish Peril” is one of those evil spirits which are in the habit of vanishing and re-appearing from time to time, always with a fresh face and changed garb, but always the same.

The Jewish Question from France passed to the French colony of Algeria. In 1870 an Act, known as the Crémieux Decree, enfranchised the Jewish inhabitants of the colony en masse. For twenty-five years the measure excited little or no protest. But, as a result of the anti-Jewish agitation in the mother country, it suddenly became the subject on which elections were passionately fought and the barrier that divided local politicians into two opposite parties: Judaisants and Anti-Juifs. A Commission appointed to inquire into this sudden revulsion of feeling, reported that the alleged reasons were “usury” and the unwillingness of the Jews to assimilate themselves to the French. Usury, it was recognised by sensible Frenchmen, is inevitable in a country still in the Algerian stage of economic development. Moreover, the official inquiry proved that all the Jews are not usurers, and that all the usurers are not Jews; that, in fact, the mass of the Jewish inhabitants of Algeria are very poor.[249] None the less, these allegations bring into vivid relief the essential antiquity of modern anti-Semitism.

The modern version of Jew-hatred, as was only natural, was welcomed in both Roumania and Russia. Both countries are still mediaeval in most respects; but the foreign doctrine of Nationalism, concealing, as it does, a very old instinct under a new euphemistic name, presented nothing incongruous with indigenous bigotry. Economic considerations deepened the bitter feeling against the Jew, as has been narrated.