Leopold Pilichowski. 1918

Lieut.-Col. Sir Mark Sykes, Bart., M.P.

SIR MARK SYKES, BART., M.P.
(A TRIBUTE)

A most tragic event took place on the 16th of February, 1919, when the world lost one of the most valiant champions of Zionism, namely Sir Mark Sykes, Bart., M.P. He fell like a hero in the thick of the fight; he was suddenly extinguished, as it were a torch in full blaze. He stood towering above the crowd of sceptics and grumblers, viewing the promised land as from Pisgah’s height, his clear eye fixed on Zion. He was at once a sage and a warrior, a knight in the service of the sacred spirit of the national idea without fear or reproach, whom nothing could overcome but the doom of sudden and premature death. Sir Mark Sykes was but forty years old, physically a giant, a picture of perfect manhood, full of youthful vigour, a soldier and a poet, a fervid patriot and a kindly and self-sacrificing friend of humanity. He was one of the born representatives of that tradition which for centuries has inseparably united the genius of Great Britain with the Zionist ideal of the Jewish people. In him appeared to be harmoniously united the soaring imagination of Byron, the deep mysticism of Thomas Moore, the religious zeal of Cardinal Manning and the statesmanly and wide outlook of Disraeli.

The germs of Sykes’ Zionism lay latent in him in his earliest years. He was scarcely eight years old when his father took him for the first time to Jerusalem. He often related how when many years later he visited a certain spot in Palestine, an elderly Arab told him that years before an English gentleman had been there with a little boy, leaving behind him kindly memories. His father, a wealthy landowner in Yorkshire, was one of the principal churchbuilders in England of his time. He was a gentleman of the old style, a protector of the poor, fired with religious enthusiasm, who devoted untiring labour to the management of his family estate. Every foot of this extensive family estate with its churches and schools, its country houses and old and new farms and dwellings, with its great collections and its old and valuable library, bears the impress not only of marked diligence and refined taste, but also of an unusual sense of continuity and tradition. Long before the traveller from Hull reaches the estate, a high and slender tower strikes his eye. It is the monument that has been erected in memory of the grandfather, the old squire, an original character about whom Sir Mark was wont to tell so many amusing stories. Long after the introduction of railways he used to ride his steed to London, and on the way often used to stop, take the hammer from the navvies who were breaking road-metal, and perform their work for them for hours at a time. Now his statue is to be seen in a chapel-like recess crowned with a high tower on one of the main roads of the estate. His son, Sir Mark’s father, was not less of an original character. He had nothing of the tradition of feudal lords—the family was descended from an old and very rich shipbuilding family in Hull which flourished in the 16th century, had by the 17th century gained a great reputation, and later had business relations with Peter the Great—but he rather represented the type of a fanciful Maecenas, whose hobby it was constantly to remodel buildings or to erect new ones. His ancestors had built ships, he built houses. That amounted to a passion in him, a noble passion, a desire to build, endow and found. And as he was very religious he built churches. He also travelled widely and gathered large collections in his country house. His religion was nominally High Church, but he must have had strong leanings towards Catholicism. His wife, the mother of Sir Mark, was an ardent Catholic. Sir Mark was attached to his mother, and was brought up in the Catholic faith. On his mother’s side Sir Mark had a decided strain of Irish blood, but the English type was predominant in him. His features, however, were of extraordinary gentleness, his eyes large and clear blue in colour, and a wisp of hair would often fall over his brow. He was an English Catholic and cherished in his heart the memory of the not so far distant time when Catholics were persecuted, and restricted in their civil rights. He was a Catholic in a country where the Catholics constitute a small and weak minority, and often he remarked to me that it was his Catholicism that enabled him to understand the tragedy of the Jewish question, since not so long since Catholics had to suffer much in England. His Catholicism did not make him fanatical; it made him rather cosmopolitan, that is to say, catholic in the pure sense of the word. He received an exceptionally careful education and studied hard in Catholic schools before he took his course at Cambridge. The fact that in his early youth he had Jesuit priests among his teachers was often exploited by those who envied him, in a sense which suggested a leaning in him towards Jesuitism. If the term Jesuitism be taken to mean a zeal for Catholicism, then there can be no doubt that this assertion is correct, since Sir Mark was certainly very religious. But if this expression be taken in the customary sense, namely, as equivalent to clerical intrigue, hypocrisy and spiteful hate of other religions, nothing was more remote from the character, the mental outlook and all other attributes of Sir Mark than such a form of Jesuitism. He was incapable equally of dissembling or of servile conduct; he was proud without being arrogant, and was severe and inflexible when truth was at stake. His soul was an open book; he troubled himself neither of career nor of popularity. He possessed an ideal, and this ideal was the sole test of all his thought and actions. At heart he was pious, a good Christian and a good Catholic: he never prided himself upon his faith, which was a sacred thing to him: religious boast and propaganda were alike foreign to him: his relations with God were an intimate personal matter which concerned no stranger; but his faith was the moving force of his life which afforded him courage to go forward and strength to endure and to deny himself.

When I was with Sir Mark in Hull, where we came to speak at a great Zionist meeting last summer, the member for Hull disappeared from my sight for several hours on one occasion. I presumed that he had gone to the old Catholic cathedral to attend a service as he frequently did. On returning he told me that he had visited his old teachers, the Jesuit fathers, and that he had convinced them that it was the duty of Christians to atone for the crime that humanity has not ceased for many centuries to commit against the Jewish people in withholding their old native country from them. “This was not so difficult,” he added, “as one of these fathers is an avowed friend of the Jewish people. When, some years ago, a protest meeting was held in Hull against the Beilis trial (the trumped-up story of ritual murder that had emanated in Kiev from the Russian anti-Semites), this priest had appeared on the platform to declare in the name of his religion that the persecutions of the Jews that took place in Russia under the old régime were a blot upon civilisation.” The meeting which was to be held that same day was to be attended by Jews and Christians equally. He said with a humorous smile that his success with the fathers made him hope for equal success with the whole Christian audience at that meeting. “Perhaps people find fault with me,” he continued, “that I have neglected their local affairs. A member for Hull who gives all his time to Zionism may be rather a puzzle to the good people of Hull, but I think I shall manage them—will you be responsible for the Jews?” I replied, “Very well, I shall be responsible for the Jews, but only with your help; the Jews are more impressed by an English baronet who is a Christian than by a fellow Jew like me.” “It is to be regretted,” he said somewhat sadly, “that the Jews rather than follow leaders of their own race bow and scrape to Gentiles. How do you explain that?” I answered: “That is the spirit of the Exile, that can be combated only by means of Zionism.”

The meeting was most successful. There never had been such a Zionist triumph in Hull. The enthusiasm was shared by both the Christian representatives and the Jewish population, the latter but recently arrived for the most part from Eastern Europe. There was only one discordant note in the speeches, and that probably escaped the notice of most of those present, and did not detract in the least from the success of the meeting; this was an utterance that offended Sir Mark’s religious sentiment. “It is natural,” someone said, “for Sir Mark to be a friend of the Jews as he is such a good Christian, and must be conscious of the fact that the founder of Christianity belonged to the Jewish race; moreover, Sir Mark as a Catholic venerates the Holy Mother who was as we know a daughter of the Jewish people.” This utterance pained Sir Mark and hurt me very much. I afterwards had long talks with Sir Mark about this tactlessness, which could only have been committed by a quasi-assimilated Jew. The speaker may have meant it well, but a Zionist could never have made such a mistake, for to be a Zionist, means not only to desire immediate emigration to Palestine, but also to maintain the proper practical attitude to the non-Jewish world. This attitude is one neither of servility nor of arrogance, it is one of dignified yet modest and noble self-consciousness, self-respect and respect for others.

In order to understand the attitude of such as Sir Mark and others like him in his own and other nations, towards the Jewish problem, it is necessary to study the problem more closely than is common among the unthinking crowd who bandy about the words anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism, and, upon their superficial observations, condemn one man as an anti-Semite and laud another as a philo-Semite, according as whether they hate or love certain individual Jews. The crowd does not understand that one can be a great friend of the Jewish people and a great admirer of the Jewish genius and yet find such things ridiculous and repulsive as the apeing, the servility, the obtrusiveness, the hollowness and the empty display, the desire to intrude everywhere, the excessive zeal of the neophytes and all the unpleasant traits of some assimilated Jews. On the other hand, one may approve of all these qualities and rejoice that certain Jews have become rich, obtained titles or gained high office in so far as one desires the assimilation of the Jewish people and the extinction of the Jewish spirit.

Anti-Semitism is fractricidal in that it implies hatred and contempt for, and the desire to persecute a whole race. It is organised outrage, because it employs the brutal power of a majority to insult a defenceless minority and to deprive it of human rights. It is consciously calumnious because it instigates malice against the Jewish people or religion and exploits for this purpose actual weaknesses or failings belonging in reality to neither the race nor the religion. It is biassed and sophistical because it generalises from the faults of individuals and because it fixes itself upon the mote in another’s eye without perceiving the beam in its own.

Philo-Semitism in the true sense of the word resembles philhellenism. The latter does not mean simply friendly intercourse with parvenu Greeks, but sympathy for the Hellenic people as such, and with the spirit of Hellenism and an endeavour to aid these and to establish them. Of such a kind was the philo-Semitism of Sir Mark Sykes. I will speak plainly, and do not hesitate to state that he had no liking for the hybrid type of the assimilating Jew. He had no wish to interfere with such people; he emphatically condemned any attempt at suppression of rights or chicanery, but he did not like this type just because he was fond of the Jewish people. What was of the Jewish essence, of the Jewish tradition, was sacred to his religious sense and stimulating to his artistic sense. In this lay the secret, not exactly of our personal success with Sykes (for our cause is of too great an importance in the world’s history to be connected with personalities) but of the wonderful concord of minds which was the natural outcome of his outlook. The opposite poles attracted each other with irresistible force. Truly anglicised Jews could not have had the hundredth part of the same success with him, not because of their not being excellent patriots and capable men (for such many of them incontestably are and Sykes was fond of society and of making acquaintances and was amiable to all), but for him there were real Englishmen enough. Concerning English affairs, national questions and parliamentary matters he would discourse with anglicised Jews on the same footing as English non-Jews, but concerning the spirit of Jewish history, the ethos of Hebraism, the national sufferings and aspirations, that emerge only in national Hebrew literature, in the large centres of Jewish population in Eastern Europe and in the new settlements in Palestine—concerning all these matters he would and could seek information only from the fountain source. These are the things that have succeeded with Sykes and others and that will succeed further, not high diplomacy. There is no lack of this latter at the Foreign Office, which swarms with great diplomats, and it would be carrying coals to Newcastle to seek to add more trained specialists to the crowd of busy politicians in Downing Street. There could be no success with Sykes that way. He was, as it were, born to work with us Hebrews for Zionism.