IT is the attempt of one nationality to dominate and to impose its character, culture and ideals upon others that has been the basis of all the great wars in Europe, of all international injustice from the beginning of history.
The movement in modern history which we call progressive has been a movement toward democracy in both the internal affairs and external relationships of nations. Men did not realize its entire significance until the nineteenth century; only then did it come to full consciousness in fact and idea, urged equally in Greece, in Germany, in Ireland, in Italy. Its great voice is the Italian thinker and patriot, Mazzini. In a marvelous essay entitled "Europe, Its Condition and Its Prospects," he wrote, at a time when the hope of social and international democracy seemed extinguished: "They struggled, they still struggle, for country and liberty; for a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live, think, love and labor for the benefit of all. They speak the same language, they bear about them the impress of consanguinity, they kneel beside the same tombs, they glory in the same tradition; and they demand to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their stone also to the great pyramid of history. It is something moral which they are seeking; and this moral something is in fact, politically speaking, the most important question in the present state of things. It is the organization of the European task. In principle, nationality ought to be to humanity that which division of labor is in a workshop—the recognized symbol of association; the assertion of the individuality of a human group called by its geographical position, its traditions and its language, to fulfill a special function in the European work of civilization."
Modern Europe saw the overthrow of the Holy Roman Empire, of the imperial aspirations of Louis XIV, and of Napoleon before it realized the natural fact and moral principle which underlay these overthrows, and which finally so successfully asserted themselves as to unify Italy and cast off the Austrian dominion, to liberate Greece, Bulgaria, Roumania and the other Balkan States from the Turk, to unify and create contemporary Germany. The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the renaissance, often in the face of overwhelming suppression, of the language and cultures of Czechs, Bohemians, Poles, Irish and Jews. It saw the rise of nationalism in the Oriental dependencies of Great Britain. It saw the beginning of an acknowledgment of the full rights of nationalities by both Austria and Great Britain, the grant of local autonomy to the various nationalities in the Austrian Empire, of progressive home rule to India and South Africa and Ireland. The twentieth century seemed to be moving peacefully toward the fulness of democracy—when came the war.
The Present War: Nationality vs. Imperialism
LET no one be deceived into believing that this war is a struggle for the economic domination of the world, springing from commercial rivalry and industrial intrigue. No. Nothing is so international as economic life—we in America know that now to our own cost also—and if commercial interests and capitalistic counsels had had their say, there would have been no war. England was Germany's best customer, France her great creditor, Russia supplied her with unskilled labor. The socialist international was against war, the peace party was against it, the intelligence of the world was against it. When it came, it shattered all these international organizations into national units, it smashed the solidarity of even science and art, which are the most international enterprises in the world. And why? Because its cause was something deeper than economic interest or the other secondary interests. Here is the question that the war is to decide: Is the whole of mankind to be dominated in body and in spirit, without its consent, by a portion of it, and to be compelled "to elaborate and express the idea" of the portion? or is the whole of mankind to be self-governed, in a coöperative commonwealth, each part of which, by elaborating and expressing its own idea, contributes its best to the whole?
This is the issue between the warring powers and each claims that it is defending itself against the aggression of its opponents. Each claims to be fighting for democracy. In the face of these claims, history has the deciding voice. Now, historically, England, more than any other power, has stood for the democratic and coöperative idea. Her colonies have autonomy, her more backward dependencies are encouraged toward autonomy. Since the Boer war, when imperialism passed away, she has moved toward the position of Switzerland. Even Ireland has obtained home rule. "We are a great world-wide, peace-loving partnership," said Mr. Asquith,[D] has reiterated again and again the principle for which all the Allies are fighting: believing that "the preservation of local and national ties, of the genius of a people which has a history of its own, is not only not hostile to or inconsistent with, but on the contrary, fosters and strengthens and stimulates the spirit of a common purpose, of a corporate brotherhood," the Allies seek to defend public right, to find and to keep "room for the independent existence and free development of the smaller nationalities, each with a corporate consciousness of its own . . . and, perhaps, by a slow and gradual process, the substitution for force, for the clash of competing ambitions, for groupings and alliances and a precarious equipoise, of a real European partnership, based on equal right and enforced by a common will."[E]
It is hard to believe that Russia can be fighting for such an end. Fear of Russian barbarism is what brought Germany into the lists, the Germans declare, to defend western ideals and western democracy. Yet Russian government is Prussian in its organization, and it is on the side of the ideal of western democracy that she is explicitly aligned. The contradiction is striking, and it is still more striking when we recall that in her armies are over a quarter of a million of Jews, and that in the other armies there are half as many more. For the Jews the war is more than civil; it is fratricide. On the face of it they have no inevitable personal or political stake in the war's fortune. England has acknowledged their "corporate consciousness" and given them maximal opportunity for "free self-development"; so has France. Russia has oppressed and horribly exploited them; Germany, though infinitely better than Russia, has set them conditions in which "free development" is synonymous with complete Germanization. Austria and Turkey have dealt with them somewhat after the manner of England and France. The contradiction of the Jewish position outdistances that of the Russian. But both contradictions are resolved in the fact that the ideal in question concerns not Russia alone, nor England alone, nor the Jews alone, but the whole of Europe, the whole world. What is at stake is not something local, personal, political, but a universal principle, the goal toward which mankind has been so slowly and deviously crawling from the beginnings of modern history—the principle of democracy in nationality and nationality in democracy.
It is for this that our brethren in the armies are fighting; it is for this that they are undergoing crucifixion in the Pale, for this that our people have suffered and died from the beginnings of our history. Our whole recorded biography is the narrative of a struggle for social justice against the exploitation of class by class within our polity, for nationality against imperialism without. Our statesmen and leaders were the first to formulate the ideal of the coöperative harmony of nationality, and the ideal of international peace.[F] Mr. Asquith is echoing our prophets, and our embattled brethren are engaged in the defence of a principle which is the constituent of the genius of their own nationality.
The Service of Jewish Nationality to Civilization
THE genius of their own nationality! That with all its implications is an issue in the war not only as a principle but as a fact. The Jewish people are the great historic incarnation of the casus belli. In fortune and in disaster, through difficult and terrible centuries, they have cherished their language, their history, their culture, have sustained their "corporate consciousness" and in terms of it have served civilization in all the institutions of civilization. Not freely, not by free development; not because of conditions, but in spite of them. The Bible, whose moral vision inspires the world, we gave the world only as we had or yearned for "independent existence" and "free development." Our best, like the best of every people, has been a function of this "independent existence and free development." We also, scattered among the nations, tortured and oppressed by the mighty and the weak among them, are among "the smaller nationalities" for whose sake the war is being fought. With Serbia, with Belgium, with Poland, we claim our public right and our national security, and we claim it not merely for ourselves, but for the service of all mankind. For as we have had a rôle "in the organization of the European task," so we still have a rôle, and in that division of the labor of civilization in terms of nationality we have our task to accomplish, our service to render. This task, this service, is the expression of the Jewish idea, the flowering and fruitage of the Hebraic spirit, which, rooted in our historic past, planted on our national soil, shall realize in modern terms, in social organization, in religion, in the arts and the sciences, a national future that by its inward excellence will truly make Israel "a light unto the nations."