FOOTNOTE:

[B] In the last number of The Menorah Journal, Mr. Jacob H. Schiff ventured to suggest the reverse influence, and to intimate that the association of England with Russia was having an adverse effect upon the Jews in England. While Mr. Schiff does not tell us upon what evidence he bases his views, I venture to guess that it consists largely of the mistrust and ill-will caused in England by a small coterie of German-born bankers and their following. But Mr. Schiff must know that this ill-will is in no way connected with the fact that the men referred to are members of the Jewish race. Most of them have never taken the least interest in Jewish affairs, some even have ostentatiously kept themselves quite apart from any connection with them. And what is more, the feeling against them is shared by Jews as well as by non-Jews in England.

Perhaps more serious still is Mr. Schiff's presentment concerning German anti-Semitism. To speak simply of "a certain anti-Semitic tendency in Germany" is to coat the truth with so much honey as almost to reverse its meaning. Anti-Semitism in Germany, and especially in Prussia, has kept the Jews far from any positions of importance in university life, on the bench, and in all state and military affairs. And to add that the war "will crush out most of this anti-Semitic tendency" is to fly in the very face of well-ascertained and authenticated facts of very recent occurrence. In Harper's Weekly for February 6th of this year (p. 122), a series of such facts is adduced. Nor can Mr. Schiff forget that forced conversion away from the Jewish faith and communion has nowhere taken on the dangerous proportions it has in the Fatherland. Russia, it is true, has martyred many Jewish bodies; German "Kultur" has quenched too many Jewish souls. History will have to decide which has done the greater hurt to the Jewish cause.

O Sweet Anemones

By Jessie E. Sampter

This Song is one of a series put into the mouth of a nationalist Pharisee of Jerusalem living through the times of the coming of Jesus to Jerusalem and the later development or perversion of Jesus' ideals by Paul.

O sweet anemones on Sharon's plain,
Light dancing seraphim of sun and rain,
Was he not one of us, was he not ours?
And yet he saved not us, O crimson flowers!

As stars that bloom in heaven, full-bloom and still,
As native stags that leap from hill to hill,
As you, dear blossom-stars, on native plains,
So planted here, with God, our home remains.

I, too, would perish here, where he has died,
But felled by horse and spear, not crucified;
I, man of peace, would pour, O Rock of God,
My freedom or my blood on Zion's sod.

When pagans sweep thy fields with withering blast,
My heart is sanctified to death at last;
Its taste is honey-sweet within my mouth,
For we that drink with God can dread no drouth.

O sweet anemones on Sharon's plain,
A spring shall come for us, to bloom again,—
To God a day, to us a thousand years,—
Who still remembers, lives, refreshed with tears.