There were about twenty Jewish officers of various ranks in the Navy during this war, and almost all of them were graduates from the United States Naval Academy of Annapolis, Md. One of them, Simon Cook (b. in Illinois, 1856; d. in St. Louis, Mo., 1907), who was appointed to Annapolis from the old Third Congressional District of Missouri in 1873 and graduated in 1877, served with distinction in the Philippines; and a disease which he contracted there forced his retirement, with the rank of Commander, before he reached the age limit of retirement. Another Jewish officer of the Navy during the war, Lieutenant Joseph Strauss, is still in the active service with the rank of Commander (which is equivalent to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army). A third officer of Jewish descent attained to a higher rank. Edward David Taussig (b. in St. Louis, 1847) entered the Naval Academy in 1863 and graduated in 1867, and was a Lieutenant-Commander (since 1892) at the time of the outbreak of the war. He served on the Pacific and European Stations and in the coast survey until 1893, when he was made commander of the “Bennington.” He took possession of Wake Island (Oceanica) for the United States, and was placed in charge of Guam when that island was ceded by Spain on February 1, 1899. In 1902 he became a Captain (which is equal to the rank of Colonel in the Army); in 1903 he was appointed commander of the Navy Yard at Pensacola, Fla. He was retired with the rank of Rear-Admiral (the equivalent of Brigadier-General) in 1909.
The most conspicuous part played by a Jew in the events which led to the war with Spain, if not in the war itself, fell to the lot of Lieutenant-Commander (now Rear-Admiral, retired) Adolph Marix (b. in Germany, probably of Russian parents, 1848), who came to America in his boyhood, and entered the Naval Academy in 1864, graduating four years later. He advanced step by step, becoming an ensign in 1869, a master in 1870, a lieutenant in 1872, after which he was assigned to special service in the Judge Advocate-General’s office, where he gained valuable experience and became an expert in naval and maritime law. In 1893 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander, and in September, 1895, he was transferred from the command of the receiving ship “Minnesota” to be the first commander of the ill-fated battleship “Maine,” which was then put in commission. He was transferred to the “Scorpion” in January, 1898, several weeks before the “Maine” arrived in the harbor of Havana, where she was destroyed by an explosion on February 15 of the same year.
Lieutenant-Commander Marix was chosen secretary or recorder of the Court of Inquiry which investigated the blowing up of the “Maine,” and he prepared the report, which was one of the contributing causes of the war. He himself laid the ominous document before President McKinley on March 26, 1898, and soon returned to engage in the war which was to terminate Spanish dominion in the New World. In the same month he was advanced to the rank of Commander and was later advanced, by act of Congress, two numbers for “eminent and conspicuous conduct in battle in two engagements at Manzanillo (Cuba), July 1 and July 18, 1898.” When President Taft was Governor-General of the Philippines, Commander Marix was a naval attaché in the islands. He later rose to the rank of Rear-Admiral, and having attained the age-limit (62), he was retired in April, 1910, after forty-six years of service. He now resides in New York City.
By the time the Spanish War was over and Spain was stripped of the last vestige of advantage which she gained by the discovery of America, the attention of the civilized world was concentrated on the celebrated Dreyfus Case. The last desperate effort of the forces of reaction to foist an anti-Jewish policy on a great progressive nation served only to prove in the end that the world has advanced beyond such tactics, and that the voice of Justice cannot be stifled in a civilized community, where the people ultimately decide all-important questions. Not only was France shaken to its foundations and the existence of the Government itself endangered on account of the grievous wrong which was done to the Jewish army officer, but the entire civilized world was aroused by the incident as it probably never was before by the fate of one insignificant individual. It was the first and only attempt of a real “Judenhetze” in a modern free country, and so much depended on the outcome, that not only the Jews everywhere were intensely interested, but also their friends and their enemies felt the full importance of the “affaire” and the bearing which the issue must have on Jewish conditions everywhere. Had anti-Semitism triumphed in France, it would mean that even political liberty, universal suffrage and government by the people could not solve the Jewish problem; that Western Culture could not effect the true emancipation which was expected of it, and that other means than those suggested by the principles of the great liberal movement of the last century—adjustment to surroundings, adoption of the speech and mode of life of the nations among whom they live—must be sought to deliver Israel from his ancient suffering even in the most highly civilized countries.
Fortunately for France, for civilization and for the Jews, anti-Semitism was utterly defeated in the open political combat for the first time in modern history. The barrier erected by Liberty proved sufficiently strong to stem the tide of raging injustice; the very excitement caused by the wrong was the best warning against the danger which the revival of medieval bigotry brings to an enlightened country. Persecution and discrimination were again forced back and confined to the more shady corners of the earth, to the countries where the masses of the people are still oppressed by tyranny and handicapped by ignorance. It was in these countries that the Dreyfus agitation was seized upon by the enemies of the Jews and exploited to the utmost extent, and it was there that many Jews began to despair. If France could become anti-Semitic at the end of the nineteenth century, what hope was there for the Jew in the backward countries, in political progress and cultural development? The full force of the victory over the French reactionaries was known and felt only in the free countries; elsewhere the impression remained that the Jews of France remained in a lamentable position, and that the future looked as gloomy to them as is usually the case in Russia after a new outbreak of anti-Jewish riots.
The result of this new hopeless view of the Jewish situation was the sudden spread of the new Zionist movement, which was inaugurated about that time on the Continent by Dr. Theodore Herzl (1860–1904). He and his first supporters were Austrians, they obtained their largest following in Russia and Galicia, and in the large cities in other countries where there were numbers of Jewish Immigrants from slavic countries. When the movement began to show signs of life in the English speaking countries, native or assimilated Jews joined it and became its leaders. And so it came to pass that although the American press, with few and unimportant exceptions, was as strongly pro-Dreyfus as the Jewish press itself, and the victory of Justice and liberalism was as much emphasized here as in Paris, a limited field was prepared here for the Zionist movement, as well as in Russia, Austria and Roumania. The old “Chowewe Zion,” or believers in the colonization of Palestine, joined the new political movement here, as they did abroad, and the “Maskilim,” or Germanized Hebrew scholars, who were forced to the background by the advent of the popular radical leaders of the new period of immigration, were also attracted by the new movement which helped to restore the equilibrium among the intellectual Jewish classes. The first Zionist societies of New York consisted almost entirely of immigrants. But when the “Federation of Zionist Societies of Greater New York and Vicinity” (organized 1897) expanded by absorbing societies outside of New York, and became, at a convention held in New York in July, 1898, the “Federation of American Zionists,” American Jews were placed at the head of the movement.
Professor Richard J. H. Gottheil was elected President of the Federation, and held the position for six years, when he was succeeded, in 1904, by Dr. Harry Friedenwald (b. in Baltimore, 1864), whose father, Dr. Aaron Friedenwald (b. in Baltimore, 1836; d. there 1902), was one of the first Vice-Presidents of the Federation. The first Secretary was Rev. Stephen S. Wise (b. in Budapest, Hungary, 1872), who was brought to this country in his childhood, and is now the minister of the Free Synagogue in New York. His successors were Isidore D. Morrison, Jacob de Haas, Rev. Dr. Judah L. Magnes (b. in San Francisco, Cal., 1877) and Miss Henrietta Szold. The Federation consisted of about twenty-five societies, having a membership of about one thousand when it was first organized. At the Thirteenth Annual Convention, which was held in Pittsburg in July, 1910, it was reported that the number of societies was 215, and of Shekel payers 14,000.
The Order Knights of Zion, which has its headquarters in Chicago, is considered as an independent Western Federation of Zionists.