Two or three millions of Jews in Palestine would, however, develop a national sentiment and idea that would soon nourish a spirit of patriotism capable of defending them from possible Arab aggression. The Jews of the world would be their foreign friends and allies, while the civilised nations inhabited by the scattered Hebrews could not in reason neglect to take a sympathetic interest in the protection and welfare of one of the oldest peoples in the world, restored again to the Promised Land of Israel.
Russia’s diplomatic common sense should see in the Zionist movement a noble racial effort, worthy of assistance on its merits, but especially calling for Russian help and encouragement. The creators of the Pale of Settlement, and those responsible for the poverty and suffering which are alone due to this cause, owe some reparation to the people who have been thus treated. No ten million pounds which Russia could spend on her army and navy would render her empire a better or more lasting service than what would follow to her domestic peace if a sum of that amount, or more if necessary, were devoted to the carrying out of the great work of the Zionist leaders. If Russia will only trust and obey her better instincts in adopting a humane policy of this kind, coupled with a stern moral warfare against the propagation of the blood-accusation legend inside the Empire, she will cure the “Semitic malady,” which will otherwise grow to be an increasing and more dangerous evil within her borders.
The Russian Jew as an emigrant to the United States is a subject which will demand serious consideration after public interest in the Kishineff horrors subsides. All who can find means to go will leave Bessarabia, unless the Tsar is inclined, or induced, to speak words which will be an Imperial guarantee against further violence. No such words have yet been uttered. This is much to be regretted by all who believe in the humanity of the Emperor’s personal disposition. It tends to create the possibly erroneous and unjust suspicion that the terror created by the massacres in April is to be used by the Tsar’s advisers “pour encourager les autres,” to lessen the extent of the “Semitic malady” by emigrating from Russia. But, in any case, large numbers of Jews will endeavour to quit the Pale, and their relatives and friends who fled in 1891, and who have prospered in America, may be counted upon to lend assistance to the new aspirants for United States citizenship and protection.
It is the proletarian Jew and the members of the small huckstering class who are the chief undesirables in Russia now. They are three-fourths of the Semitic population of the Pale, and their numbers are increasing.
I saw thousands of these in the cities and towns, from Odessa to Warsaw. They are not a drunken nor an abnormally immoral class. Russian officials have testified to their general good conduct, on the whole; when due allowance is made for the precarious nature of their employments and the poverty of their lives. I observed how uniform were the healthy looks of their children, even amidst some of the most wretched surroundings. This is a good testimony to personal character and civic qualities. In England the children of the lowest classes are neglected and underfed by parents who expend in gin and beer what would provide more nourishment for their offspring. There is no corresponding bad trait in the average proletarian Jew of the Pale.
There are, as a matter of course, traits of low cunning, of shady subterfuge, and of other obnoxious qualities found among a people who have been hunted and ground down for generations. It would amount to a miracle of racial morality if such results did not follow from the treatment and experiences of the Russian Jew. They are also sufferers from the indifferent sanitary system of towns like Kishineff, where there is an abundance of water badly utilised in municipal management for the health and cleanliness of the poorer quarters and suburbs of the city.
Their poverty and persecution, along with the habits peculiar to the lowest grade of Hebrew humanity in Eastern Europe, render them singularly objectionable in appearance; carrying with them, as they do, all the traces of social degradation which cling to a pariah people as a physical certificate of the wrongs and hardships they have had to endure.
No country, be it ever so free, hospitable, or humane, could in reason be expected to open its ports to such a class of emigrant in order to relieve the Russian Government and nation of these wronged and unfortunate undesirables. They must first be improved in the land of their birth by more liberty and better treatment, or be sent for change—for better conditions of industrial life and hopes—to Palestine, where land labour could be provided for them. Transplantation would be an effective remedy, if carried out under careful supervision. The root qualities of the Jew—his intelligence, his faith, his intense ambition to possess money—would, under a more favourable environment, reclaim him from the induced vices which have naturally grown out of the congenial surroundings of poverty, suffering, and injustice. The human being who can succeed in living at all the semblance of a civilised existence, under the depressing conditions obtaining for the Jew within the towns of the Pale, could not fail in winning a better livelihood where rural industries and petit culture, such as the soil and situation of Palestine will encourage, would be open to his intelligence, ambition, and energies. Such a Jew has no hope in Russia. He could not possibly meet a worse fate in Palestine. No other country can be expected to give him the privilege of its citizenship. Therefore, if he is not to be improved off the face of the earth by a corroding poverty, or by periodical outbreaks like that of Kishineff, he should be taken by the Zionist movement to where there are both the promise and inspiration of a new life.
The Polish proletarian Jew has more virility than the Hebrew of the same class within the Pale. He is no more prepossessing in appearance, while it is not wronging him to say that he is less desirable, in some other respects, as a citizen of another country. The Jews are sufficiently numerous in Poland to enlist the co-operation of Socialist revolutionary forces there, and thereby to obtain, by some means, a right to live. They are not so powerless as those within the Pale, and Russia may soon find it a wise and necessary policy to allow them to have a freer access than they now enjoy to the resources of the country, in order to lessen their growing numbers in the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Poland. There are over a quarter of a million of them in Warsaw. They would be a dangerous element there if driven to extremities, or in the event of any complications arising between the Russian Empire and Germany. In any case, the Polish Jew will work out his own destiny. He has lived in Poland for over seven hundred years, and this long experience of varied forms of fortune and of oppression gives him a tenure and a hope which may yet win him back some of the rights and privileges he once enjoyed before he lost the tolerant protection of the Polish people in becoming the agent and tool of the Polish landed aristocracy.
Since the foregoing parts of this book were prepared for the press, it has been announced from Russia that Vice-Governor Ostrogoff has been transferred from Kishineff to Stavropol, in the Caucasus. This action marks the severe condemnation of this official’s conduct by the Russian Government.