The Russian Jew is docile, domestically inclined, and peace-loving naturally, but when exasperated beyond endurance he becomes a daring antagonist. Surely it is no reflection against the Jewish race that the stronger men and women resent the endless insults that Russia heaps upon them. Even the passport of a Jew is differentiated. Fifteen thousand Jews gave up their lives in Manchuria during the course of the late inglorious war, in which they had no interest and for which they had no sympathy. Fifteen thousand more were wounded in the same ignominious cause. And yet Manchuria remains closed to the Jews as a place of settlement. Thirty thousand Jewish victims in one war! Yet no Jew may
Cossacks on patrol duty
Victims of a Cossack pogrom
be an officer in the army or navy. It is characteristic that Jewish doctors should be called upon to combat epidemics of plague—and then are expelled from the district after the conquering of the disease. No Jew may take an active interest in any mining enterprise in Russia, nor may he engage in the oil trade—which in the Caucasus offers large possibilities. No Jew may buy or rent land. Only a very small proportion—three to five per cent.—of the children in the middle schools and universities may be Jews. The complete list of “exceptional” laws designed to curb the Jews extends to extraordinary length, and when they have been all gone through with and applied the Jew still has the yet more terrible situation to face in the spirit of his civil governors, who seek in every petty way to annoy him, to terrorize him, and every now and again to impress all of the Jews with the stubborn fact that they are Jews, and as such, liable to slaughter without further notice. These are some of the reasons why the younger and braver Jews have a personal interest in the Russian revolution, and why the older ones hail America as a promised land.
The revolutionary movement is becoming less and less Jewish, not because the Jews are becoming subdued as a result of their continual persecution, but because the Russian population is increasing so much faster than the Jewish. It is no class or party struggle, the revolution. It is a dynastic revolt. The great mass of the Russian people are done with the house of Romanoff, and they want a new régime. Each different section of people has its own reasons, but none are more potent than the reason of the Jews.