There the representatives of the Jews were well organized. Their delegation included men from all the countries likely to be affected by the Treaty; it had a large general commission, a secretariat, committees and sub-committees, and it had an Inner Council. The majority of the French and British Jews—as represented by the Alliance Israelite and the Joint Foreign Committee of the Anglo Jewish Association and the Board of Delegates, which Claude Montefiore and Lucien Wolff headed—felt as did the two hundred and seventy-five American protesters and their adherents, whereas the central European Jews strongly advocated the Nationalistic idea—and when I talked with the delegates from the Philadelphia congress, I discovered that even some of those who were not Zionists supported the aims of the Nationalists.
These men argued that Jewish nationalism in Poland and Roumania would not be the same as it would be in America; that in the United States there would be no state-within-a-state, but that recognition of the Jews as separate nationals was essential to their well-being in central Europe; that even the Germans remaining in Poland would have to be protected as separate nationals. and that the general principle must be formally recognized.
Every man has his master-passion: mine is for democracy. I believe that history’s best effort in democracy is the United States, which has rooted in its Constitution all that any group of its citizens can legitimately desire. Yet here were Americans willing to coöperate with central Europeans who wanted to establish in their own countries a “nation within a nation”—a proposition fundamentally opposed to our American principles.
I pointed this out. I said that, under this plan, a Jew in Poland or Roumania, for example, would soon face conflicting duties, and that any American who advocated such a conflict of allegiance for the Jews of central Europe would perhaps expose the Jews in America to the suspicion of harbouring a similar desire. Minorities everywhere, I maintained, would fare better if they protected their religious rights in the countries where they resided, and then joined their fellow countrymen in bettering for all its inhabitants the land of their common citizenship.
Meanwhile, excesses had occurred in Poland and Jews had suffered cruelly. There was genuine resentment coupled with real fear that the trouble might develop into Kiev or Kishineff disasters. There was the feeling that Poland, who had just emerged from her yoke of tyranny, should be reminded of the world’s expectation that she should grant to her minorities the same privileges which her centuries of oppression had taught her to value for herself.
The Jews emphasized their expectations by holding mass meetings, parades, and demonstrations in the United States and England. In New York, 15,000 Jews packed Madison Square Garden, and many thousands more, including 3,000 in uniform, stood in the surrounding streets. The leading address was delivered by Charles E. Hughes. Resolutions were passed calling upon President Wilson to stop these outbreaks, and to secure permanent protection.
That was in May, 1919. In early June, Hugh Gibson, who had been our Minister at Warsaw for a few weeks only, was asked for a report. He made a necessarily hasty investigation. The conclusions he arrived at in his report were greatly resented by some Jews, who charged him with unduly favouring the Poles. Gibson came to Paris, and was joined by Herbert Hoover, then managing the American Relief Work in Poland, and by Paderewski representing Poland at the Peace Conference, to urge President Wilson to appoint an investigating commission to ascertain the truth. The President designated a commission composed of Colonel Warwick Greene, Homer H. Johnson, and myself. As Colonel Greene declined, General Edgar Jadwin was appointed in his place.
My reluctance to serve was great, my position difficult, and the American members of the Jewish delegation did not attempt to diminish the one or ease the other. My announced opposition to the Nationalist theory and my attitude toward Zionism were against me; they unanimously disapproved of my acceptance; and the arguments they presented to me were forcible. In one breath, they said that they wanted a Zionist on the Commission; in the next, they told me that it should include no Jew; in the third, they would express the conviction that nobody could be successful: a report in favour of one side was sure to displease the other.
On my part, I felt that I must give some consideration to these men who had devoted so much of their lives to the Jewish question and to administering so many of the relief activities in America. Until this period, I had always heartily coöperated with them, yet I realized the absolute need of a fearless, impartial investigation and that, preferably, with the participation therein of a Jew.
My hesitation is shown in the following message from the Secretary-General of the American Peace Delegation to the Under-Secretary of State at Washington: