Part 10
Beyond the immediate measures for relief we can for the present do nothing. We must act from day to day. As the war goes on we must simply keep on trying to relieve the distress. As to what is in store after the war, I am unable to form a picture, at least so far as Russia is concerned. The hope is expressed that when peace is restored Russia will do better than heretofore for her large Jewish population. But we have been disappointed so often by Russia's promises that we should believe this only when actually done and not before. I have little confidence at all in the assertion that Russia will mend her way in the future.
"_There Is Only One Way to Solve the Jewish Problem in Russia_"
There is only one way to solve the Jewish problem in Russia and that is nothing less than the entire removal of the Pale. We must ever demand this and accept nothing else. When the Jew can go where he pleases, and trade where he pleases, and live where he pleases, the Jewish question in Russia will be solved. It is the government, the governing classes, in Russia that create the enmity towards the Jews. I believe there is no people anywhere who have at present or ever had less anti-Jewish feeling than the mass of Russian people. When once the pressure brought by the bureaucracy is removed and the Jews are permitted to have normal relations with the mass of the Russian population all over the country, the Jewish question will be a thing of the past.
The situation is different in Poland and Roumania, where the people themselves are anti-Semitic. It may appear strange at first that there should be such a difference between the Polish people and the Russian people in their attitude towards the Jews in their midst. But it may be easily explained. People who are oppressed generally become narrow by the oppression. The Poles and the Roumanians have had long to suffer from oppression to a great extent, the Poles from Russia and the Roumanians for many years from Turkey, from whose yoke they were freed only a few decades ago. It is generally a fact that when the servant becomes a master he makes the most intolerant master. Even if a Polish autonomous kingdom should be created, it could not be much worse for the Jewish population than it is now. But the Russian people have been happy. They have gotten used to their despotic government and do not feel it in particular, and they have little prejudice against their still greater oppressed Jewish neighbors.
The great numbers of Jews who have gone into the war and are fighting heroically will, I have no doubt, make a convincing demonstration of Jewish patriotism in every country, and that should make for an improvement of Jewish conditions all over, except possibly in Russia.
"_I Am Afraid England Has Been Contaminated By Her Alliance With Russia_"
But I am afraid that England too has been contaminated by her alliance with Russia, because England doesn't want to do anything that is displeasing to her ally, more through fear to offend her than through respect for her. So far, at least, it has not come true, as it was hoped in certain quarters, that England might apply pressure upon Russia to obtain an improvement in the condition of the Jews. And unfortunately the conditions in England itself affecting the Jews are certainly not as good now as they have been formerly. England has always been our great friend. In England there existed no such thing as anti-Semitism. But now there are, I fear, signs of a change.
In Germany the Jews do not suffer. They have a high standing and occupy many high positions. There has, it is true, always been a certain anti-Semitic tendency in Germany. But I think this war will crush out most of that, in fact all class differences. I am quite convinced that anti-Semitism in Germany is a thing of the past.
"_When Peace Negotiations Begin, We Should Take United Action_"
What part America and the American Jews should play in the efforts to bring about a permanent betterment of Jewish conditions elsewhere, it is hard to say. America has already gone pretty far by breaking off commercial treaty relations with Russia. Whether the United States could or should go further is difficult to judge at this time. It is certainly clear that the solution of the Jewish problem in Russia along the lines already suggested would solve the passport problem and would pave the way for the resumption of regular treaty and commercial relations between the two countries.
I do not think there is anything to do now for the Jews and for Jewish bodies in America except to work harmoniously together in the raising of relief funds. Of course, we must always be on the alert and ready to take a definite position whenever the proper time arrives. But not now. When peace negotiations begin to be talked about, I think it will be well for such bodies as the American Jewish Committee, possibly the B'nai B'rith and other organizations, to take united action. What action they should take it is hard to say. It is a very difficult question to decide at this moment whether or not it would be advisable to have special Jewish representatives present at the peace negotiations to look after the specific Jewish interests. Whatever influence should be brought to bear at the proper time should originate with the American Jewish Committee, which is the most suitable unifying Jewish agent in America to-day.
"_Arouse the Jews of America From Their Apathy_"
For the present, however, I repeat, what we need is to raise relief funds to a much larger extent than we have done so far. There has been too much apathy among the American Jews. They have done much less than at the time of the Kishineff massacres, when almost a million and a half was raised. Now, with conditions infinitely worse, we have thus far not been able to raise half as much as was readily given then. Unfortunately we have become used to horrors and they do not touch us any more as deeply as they should. Moreover, we have weighty and costly problems of our own at home. We have to expend such enormous sums for home problems that American Jewry seems unable to bear much more. But notwithstanding this more must be forthcoming. We Jews must give until it hurts, until it really becomes self-sacrifice; we must stir up our people to the terrible condition of our brethren abroad. And the Menorah Societies, which represent the most intelligent and idealistic Jewish youth of the land, should do their share in making known the tragic conditions and in arousing the Jews of America from their apathy.
[Illustration: Signature: Jacob H. Schiff]
Nationality and the Hyphenated American
BY HORACE M. KALLEN
[Illustration: _HORACE MEYER KALLEN (born in Silesia, Germany, in 1882, came to America in 1887), studied at Harvard (A. B., Ph.D.), Princeton, Oxford, and Paris. He has been assistant and lecturer in philosophy at Harvard, instructor in logic at Clark University, and since 1911 of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. At the request of the late William James, he edited his unfinished book on "Some Problems of Modern Philosophy." Besides contributing to philosophical and general periodicals, Dr. Kallen is the author of a recently published book on "William James and Henri Bergson." Dr. Kallen was one of the founders of the Harvard Menorah Society, and has rendered signal service, both by tongue and pen, to the Menorah movement._]
The United States of America are at peace with all the world. Our government is not taking sides in the great war; officially we are the friends of all the embattled powers. And yet--we have but to take up any newspaper, anywhere in America, to find violent praise of one side, violent blame of the other. The sentiment of our country is divided. On all sides, our diverse populations are emphasizing afresh their European origins and background. The German in German-American, the Slav in Slavic-American, the Briton in British-American, have awakened, have become demonstrative and emphatic. The President, observing this, has declared his official and personal boredom with the "hyphenated American," and the conception expressed in this phrase has become an issue in the written and spoken discourse of our country.
Why, in an officially neutral country, has this come to pass? When we look closely to the ground and principle of the division of sentiment in our population, we discover this significant fact: the division is not truly determined by the merits of the European issue; it is determined by the lines of our population's European origin and ancestral allegiance. The Americans of German and Austrian and Magyar ancestry are pro-German; those of French or British or Russian ancestry favor the Allies. Only the Jews seem to be an exception to this rule. Being mainly from Russia, their favor should go to the Russians, but their newspapers, almost without exception, favor the Germans. The case of the Jews, however, is an exception that proves the rule. Although the majority of them came from Russia, they have had no part in the Russian polity; they have been oppressed, persecuted, terrorized, as their brethren still are in Russian territory. As Americans, what portion and what hope have they in Russia that they should desire Russian victory? None. But they are not for this reason in favor of Germany. The headlines of their newspapers do not celebrate German victories, but Russian defeats. The Ghetto's partiality to Germany is a consequence of its loyalty to Jewry. Kinship of blood and race, ancestral allegiance, determine with the Jewish masses in America also, what side they take in this war. Although they have no political background in Europe, and their civil allegiance is absolutely American, they too are hyphenated in sentiment--Jewish-Americans.
Such is the fact. Its significance lies in what it reveals, and what it reveals is a force much deeper and more radical, distinctly more primitive and original, than anything else in the structure of society. It hyphenates English and Germans and Austrians and Russians and Turks no less than it hyphenates Americans, and, in the failure of the external socio-political organization of Europe to give it free play, it is the chief, almost the only, cause of the present unendurable European tragedy. Its name is nationality.
_Two Mosaics of Nationalities: A Contrast_
Nationality is not nationhood, although it is the most important constituent of nationhood. Many nationalities may compose a nation (such is the case of the British, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Empires, of the Swiss Republic, of our own Union), and then the relation between the nationalities will determine the strength or the weakness of the nation. Again, a single nationality may be divided among many nations (such is the case of the Poles, of the Serbs and other Slavs, of the Jews), and then the stability of the nations will be largely determined by their effect on the nationalities divided among them.
The Swiss Republic, for example, is a nation composed of three nationalities, two of which belong to powers at war with each other. These are the French and the German; the third is the Italian. Yet the nationhood of Switzerland is the most integral and unified in Europe to-day, because Switzerland is as complete and thorough a democracy as exists in the civilized world, and the efficacious safeguard of nationhood is democracy not only of individuals but of nationalities. The German, French and Italian citizens of the Swiss Republic are to-day under arms to defend the neutrality of their nation from possible violation by German, French or Italian belligerents, and in defending their nation, they are defending also the autonomy of each other's nationality. In Switzerland, nationhood, being democratic, is the safeguard and insurance of nationality.
Contrast Swiss nationhood with Austro-Hungarian nationhood. Austria-Hungary is the immediate and direct occasion of the great war by reason of the fact that, although she is a mosaic of nationalities like Switzerland, her government, instead of being a democracy, has in the long run been directed toward the control and exploitation of many nationalities by one or two. Hungary contains a population of seven million Magyars among twelve million Slavs; yet the Hungarians, having the economic and political upper hand, have sought to Magyarize by force and trickery this almost doubly greater and culturally equal population. They have tried to compel Magyar forms and standards in language, in literature, in history, the arts, the sciences, religion, law, in every intimate or remote concern of the daily life and national genius of their Slavic subjects. The result has been the steady disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian mosaic, the increasing use of force to hold it together, the corresponding increase of restlessness among the subject-peoples, plot and counterplot, the assassination of the Archduke, and the attack on Serbia, which precipitated the war. In this war Austria has come off worst of all the combatants, and for the same reason: the attempt to maintain the unity of a nation of nationalities by the force of one of them instead of by the democratic coöperation of all. In Austria-Hungary, nationality, having been exploited and suppressed, has been the enemy and destroyer of nationhood.
_America A Commonwealth of Nationalities_
In this country the whole spirit of those institutions which constitute American nationhood makes for the liberation and harmonious coöperation of nationalities. This spirit is also a part of the Hebraic spirit, a part of the explicit program of our prophets, those champions and vindicators of social justice and international righteousness and peace; and this, significantly, is the spirit that literally inspired the democracy of our America.
For the democracy of America had its first articulate voicing in the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans of New England. These men and women, devoted to the literature of the Old Testament, and upheld by the ancestral memories of the Jews, were moved to undertake their great American adventure by the ideal of nationality. It was not because of an overwhelming oppression of body and soul that the Pilgrims adventured to America. It was not "freedom to worship God" that they sought. They had that in Holland. They sought freedom to be themselves, to realize their national genius in their own individual way. Their English manners, English speech, English history, and English loyalty were, in fact, more important to them than their Hebrew Bible. They used that as the spiritual pabulum which nourished their English corporate life. Their Calvinism was a reinterpretation of its prophetic nationalism expressed in the doctrine of the "chosen people"; their political institutions were a modification of the ideal political order it was supposed to reveal. As Cotton Mather narrates, his grandfather, John Cotton, found, on his arrival in New England, that the population was much exercised over the framing of a "civil constitution." They turned to him for help, begging "that he would, from the laws wherewith God governed his ancient people, form an abstract of such as were of a moral and lasting equity." So "he propounded unto them an endeavor after a theocracy, as near as might be to that which was the glory of Israel." Out of this beginning the democratic mood of America surges; in such conceptions the ideals which express the mood have their origins. These ideals are the conservation of nationality, and the equality of men before the inconceivable supremacy of their God. Hebraism and English nationality--these are the spiritual background of the American commonwealth.
Political freedom in America has tended to generate self-expression of each national group, and our country is to-day, broadly speaking, a great coöperative commonwealth of nationalities, British, French, German, Slavic, Jewish, each freely developing, in so far as it is self-conscious, its national genius, its language, literature and art in its own characteristic way as its best contribution to the civilization of America as a whole,[C] realizing in this way the ideal of the democracy of nationalities, of international comity and coöperation which our prophets were the first to formulate.
American nationhood, thus, is in the way of becoming what Swiss nationhood fully is, the liberator and protector of nationality; its democracy is its strength, and its democracy is "hyphenation." "Hyphenation" may, it is true, become perverse. As an expression of the coöperation of nationality with nationality in the life of the State, it is inevitable and good; as an attempt to subordinate all nationalities to one, to use all for the advantage of one, it is partial, undemocratic, disloyal. Our nation is a democracy of nationalities having for its aim the equal growth and free development of all. It can take no sides. To require it to take sides, German or Anglo-Saxon, Slavic or Jewish, is to be untrue to its spirit and to pervert its ideal.
_The Renaissance of Nationality in the Past Century_
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]