The example set in Moscow was followed in Kiev and other cities, and encouraged police and mobs elsewhere to emulate the inhuman work of hunting the hated race from villages and towns. Throughout the year 1891 outrages were perpetrated in various provinces, despite some apparently earnest efforts on the part of the Government to stop the more violent outbreaks which had been provoked by its own orders. Several villages where Jews resided were burned down. Fully 70,000 Jews emigrated during the year; this fact confirming, in part only, a saying attributed to a conspicuous personality in the Tsar’s confidence, that the Russian Jewish question would be ultimately solved by the action of the “May Laws” as these would force one-third of the Jews to emigrate; one-third more would become converted to the Orthodox Church; while the other third would perish of hunger!
Whatever may be the desire of the more violent anti-Semitic Russians to see such an unparalleled programme realised in results, there can be no doubt as to the efficiency of the anti-Jewish code of Russian laws to work out such a solution, if it were a task legally possible of accomplishment.
Allusion has already been briefly made to the tangle of contradictory laws which the ukases, decrees, promulgations, and provisions relating to the Russian Jew have created. Many of these measures appear to have been adopted under the pressure of unreflecting prejudice or apprehension. Some bear the impress of wise and humane intentions, born, however, in the minds of Ministers or Monarchs too weak to carry out the enlightened impulse which gave them birth. But the vast proportion of these repressive and oppressive laws are frankly tyrannical in inspiration and purpose, and the spirit that could suggest measures which are a deliberate violation of the fundamental principles and rights of civilised existence would be a feeling worthy to animate the task of carrying the above programme into execution.
CHAPTER IV
A MURDER-MAKING LEGEND
M. DE PLEHVE and the Tsar can accomplish one good and blessed work, if so minded, without altering a single anti-Semitic Russian law. The Emperor can destroy, in Russia, the atrocious legend about the annual killing of Christian children by Jews as an alleged part of the Blood Atonement in Hebrew Paschal rites. In this humane and Christian task he is entitled to the co-operation of the Emperor of Austria, the King of Roumania, and the heads of other Balkan States, where this story of ritual murder is constantly circulated, and not infrequently as a part of political propaganda. There ought to be a truly Christian crusade waged against this infamous product of ancient, insensate, sectarian hate. It was the inspiration of the most horrible of the Kishineff murders; the driving of nails through the eyes of a woman, the cutting out of the tongue of a two-year-old child, and of nameless sexual mutilations. Thousands of innocent people have been done to death in the centuries through which these crimes have been the bloody fruit of a monstrous invention, born of a spirit of superstitious savagery, which no age has yet made any honest civilised endeavour to exorcise out of ignorant and fanatical Christian minds.
The Jews of Kishineff believe with all right-minded people everywhere that no one deplores these shocking crimes more than the Emperor. His humanity is beyond question in popular belief, and, should a suitable opportunity be given, or be forthcoming, while the recollection of this great stain on his country’s reputation remains in the public memory, he may be counted upon, it is to be hoped, to place on record his honest condemnation of such abominable deeds.
Let His Majesty the Tsar add this task to other noble duties with which his name is associated. A special ukase, reciting his own disbelief in the ritual-murder legend, and forbidding under severe penalties its circulation anywhere, and, by any means, in Russia; ordering that this ukase shall be read, in the Emperor’s name, in every church in the Empire, a fortnight before Easter each year for the next five years; let this be done, and the good work is virtually accomplished for Christianity, for civilisation, and for Russia, too.
A similar obligation lies upon the governments of Austria and of the Balkan States. Roumania is at present the worst of sinners in this matter. This legend is in constant circulation through the anti-Semitic press there, being used, in fact, as an argument in political campaigns for driving the Jews out of the country.
A few months ago, a Roumanian paper, the Vocea Tutovei of Berlad, openly incited the populace to kill the Jews. In a series of articles, subsequently reprinted in pamphlet form, popular ignorance and passion were appealed to by stories of alleged Hebrew murders of Christian children. One extract from this organ of Roumanian opinion will illustrate at once the savage sentiments of the writer and the culpable conduct of a government which could permit such appeals to assassination to be openly made in a civilised land:
“The recent ritual murders committed by Jews in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Germany, and Russia must still be fresh in everyone’s mind. And how many children have disappeared in our own country! How many mutilated bodies have been found, while the criminals have remained undiscovered! Who are these criminals—these bloodthirsty murderers of our prattling babes? They are the fanatical Jews that infest our land. These monsters are the slayers of our Christian children. They are the criminals—the Jews who have invaded our country like locusts.