The betrayal of the pact: How citizenship fails persecuted minorities

“ It is hard to give a definition of loyalty, but perhaps we come near it if we call it the thing which operates where an obligation is felt to be unlimited. And the minimum of duty or even decency asked of a patriot is the maximum that is asked by the most miraculous view of marriage. The recognized reality of patriotism is not mere citizenship. ”

“ No nation, no party, no man can live long and flourish on falsehood, deceit, injustice, and broken pledges.
Loyalty will perish where protection and good faith are denied and withheld, and nothing other than this should be expected, either by a party, a man, or by a government. ”

“ This is merely one case in thousands which prove to us the horrors of the situation in which Jewish soldiers and their families are placed because of their deprivation of civic rights. Those families whose members have shed their blood for Russia are ruined by the invasion of the enemy. They arrive here to find a refuge from starvation and death, from ruin and violation. We must remember that nearly a half million Jews are fighting side by side with our brave warriors against the common enemy. As to the civilian Jews, they have no less patriotism or enthusiasm than the other inhabitants.... ”

“ At the same time the Jewish population is even at this exceptional time artificially confined to the cities of Poland and the western provinces by force of existing legal limitations which increases the hardships of war for them. If in time of peace these restrictions, which are economically harmful and morally degrading, are recognized as a relic of barbarism that must be abolished, it [81] is all the more difficult to reconcile ourselves with them at the present time, when hundreds and thousands of Jews serve under the Russian banners on the battlefield. ”

“ Hundreds of Jewish soldiers have been decorated on the field of battle, and many were given officers’ commissions.
GALICIA
It was the million Jews of Galicia who were made to feel the full burden of the war. Although their economic condition before the war was greatly inferior to that of the general population, their political condition was one of equality. But the Russian invasion of Galicia, in September, 1914, changed their status overnight. [85] The Russian Governor-General, Count Bobrinski, a notorious anti-Semite, found the political status of the Jews in Galicia most abhorrent to him. ”

“ Every advantage was taken of the exigencies of war. Isolated cases of espionage, likely to occur among the border populations of all nations, were seized upon as a basis for universal accusations and furnished the occasion for the invention of incredible myths and rumors circulated exclusively to the injury of the Jews.... The Jews have been held collectively responsible for the acts of individuals among them—a policy which outrages the most elementary sense of justice, a policy which is no longer sanctioned by the laws of any civilized land, a monstrous survival of the remote past.... ”

“ Neither material prosperity nor orderly government wins the hearts or permanently changes the habits of peoples whose traditions have been interfered with and whose imaginative and fickle natures have not been taken into account. A foreign government remains forever foreign to a people whose love has not been gained, and who are made to feel that they are inferior and never to be on terms of full equality with their masters. ”

“ But citizenship itself should be held aloft, portrayed to them as a priceless boon, to be won only as a reward of long and patient effort, and a complete demonstration of their fitness. If this results in discouraging some foreigners from coming to this country, no harm will be done. If it results in increasing the proportion of residents who do not share in the government, and if this is in itself an evil, the remedy is to be applied at the ports of entry, and not in the naturalization courts. ”

“ Think what American citizenship confers; see what it assures! Equal part and membership in this mighty empire—the equal advantage in its unsurpassed opportunities—the unqualified privileges of its unequaled freedom. No standing armies here to be moved at a monarch’s caprice, weighing down and oppressing the nation’s energies, draining it of its life blood, sapping its vitality, and, worst evil of all, menacing the peace of the world. No armed ‘constabulary’ to terrorize over a peasant population and enforce the heartless edict of brutal landlords. ”

“ So the citizen who refuses to obey the law himself in the first place, and makes no efforts to assist others in its enforcement, is not loyal to his country. When he has ceased to be loyal he becomes disloyal, and disloyalty is treason.
The true American, therefore, is loyal and has the courage to prove that loyalty whenever occasion arises.
One need not put on a uniform and fight battles [Pg 330] against a foreign enemy to prove his patriotism. The patriot—the truly loyal citizen serves his country well by exercising that loyalty at home. ”

“ To that argument, however, which assumes that business men can afford no time for jury service there can be but one answer, No government can long endure unless its citizens are willing to make some sacrifice for its existence.
In this, our land, we are called upon to give but little in return for the advantages which we receive. Shall we give that little grudgingly? Our definition of patriotism is often too narrow.
Shall the lover of his country measure his loyalty only by his service as a soldier? No! ”

“ Why, indeed, should I owe loyalty and allegiance to a Government that stamps my brow with the badge of servility and inferiority?
Our human interests are identical—yours and mine; our paths not far apart; we have the same loves, the same hates, the same hopes, the same desires; a common origin, a common need, a common destiny. Our moral responsibilities are equal, our civil liabilities not less than yours, our social and industrial exactions equally as stringent as yours, and yet—O, crowning shame of the nineteenth century!—we are denied the garb of citizenship. Gentlemen, is this justice? ”

“ But if there are any such persons, their wishes are not to override the interests of the Republic. It is their misfortune to reside in States that have revolted; and all their losses, pecuniary and political, are chargeable to those States, and not to the Federal Government. If they are so blind as to suppose that their losses will be increased by emancipation, that, also, will be chargeable to the rebellion of those States. Their loyalty does not save those States from being treated as enemies; it does not prevent their own condition from being determined by that of their States. ”

“ Considering the ordinary chances of human life, a denial of citizenship under a residence of fourteen years is a denial to a great proportion of those who ask it, and controls a policy pursued from their first settlement by many of these States, and still believed of consequence to their prosperity; and shall we refuse to the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe? ”

“ Hereafter a Jew may live in Kaluga, but is excluded from Tashkent; in Yekaterinodar he may not live; in Nizhni he may. It is very hard to find any sense in such distinctions, even from the point of view of the Black Hundreds. If you should ask Markov 2d [the leader of the Black Hundreds.—Tr.] into what cities we ought to admit Jews—whether into Nizhni, or into Tashkent, he would answer at first, of course, that we ought not to admit them into either; but confronted with ‘dire necessity’ he would [26] hardly give preference to Tashkent, already full of alien nationalities. ”

“ Loyalty to the Nation no less demands that we make our people understand the lasting harm done by our failure to prepare during the two and a half years before the war broke out and the grave damage now caused by needless delay, by irresolution, by the appointment or retention of inefficient men, and by any and all types of half-heartedness in waging the war. ”

“ In either case, when once loyalty to a class had been substituted for loyalty to the republic, the end of the republic was at hand. There is no greater need to-day than the need to keep ever in mind the fact that the cleavage between right and wrong, between good citizenship and bad citizenship, runs at right angles to, and not parallel with, the lines of cleavage between class and class, between occupation and occupation. ”

“ At the beginning of the war the military censors assumed command of the entire press of Russia. That they used their power with the utmost unfairness against the Jewish press was charged without contradiction in the Duma by Professor Milyukov, Deputies Bomash, Suchanov and others, who pointed out that if the aim of the censor was to suppress every truth and encourage every lie against the Jews, they could not possibly have pursued a more consistent policy. ”

“ Even the most reactionary Russians foresaw danger to Russia in the Polish campaign of vilification against the Jews. Thus the “True Russian” (anti-Semitic) leader, Orloff, after a visit to Poland, declared: “I have seen nothing bad on the part of the Jews, although the Poles made up all sorts of accusations against them. But in these Polish reports you feel prejudice, vindictiveness, hatred, nothing else.... The Jews are loyal and brave, and it is most inadvisable to pursue a policy which might convert six million subjects into enemies.” ”

“ But a new kind of loyalty seems to be required of us, a loyalty to parliament; a loyalty, that is to extend, it is said, to a surrender of all our properties, whenever a house of commons, in which there is not a single member of our chusing, shall think fit to grant them away without our consent, and to a patient suffering the loss of our privileges as Englishmen, if we cannot submit to make such surrender. We were separated too far from Britain by the ocean, but we were united to it by respect and love ”

“ I believe that I understand Anti-Semitism, which is really a highly complex movement. I consider it from a Jewish standpoint, yet without fear or hatred. I believe that I can see what elements there are in it of vulgar sport, of common trade jealousy, of inherited prejudice, of religious intolerance, and also of pretended self-defence. I think the Jewish [76] question is no more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes takes these and other forms. ”

“ Why incur a heavy expense to engage foreigners who will not care for a country which they must leave to-morrow? Hast thou not still at thy command the same brave Netherlanders to whom thy father entrusted the republic in far more troubled times? Why shouldest thou now doubt their loyalty, which, to thy ancestors, they have preserved for so many centuries inviolate? Will not they be sufficient to sustain the war long enough to give time to thy confederates to join their banners, or to thyself to send succor from the neighboring country? ”

“ For loyalty which fails is punished by no man unless he be lacking in understanding. But what has happened to you that you are in terror of being besieged by the enemy, you who have no lack of provisions, have not been deprived by blockade of any of the necessities of life, and hence may sit at home, confident in the fortifications and in your garrison here? ”

“ The foreigner is represented as inferior in civilization, unreasonable, crafty, violent, and in consequence dangerous. The instructions of the court are accordingly to lecture him fraternally or magisterially, and by this means it is hoped to keep in hand his perpetual tendency to encroach and intrude. ”

“ The most common difficulties arise practically, however, from the fact that under the terms of his declaration to become a citizen of the United States, the alien repudiates his allegiance to his fatherland and its sovereignty, but does not gain, and cannot gain, for at least two years in any circumstances, a new citizenship. ”

“ We recommend in accordance with ordinary practice that any citizen who has not obtained his citizenship by birth or descent should be liable to be deprived of his citizenship if he is also a citizen of another country and he has shown himself by act or speech to be disloyal or disaffected towards the Federation, or has been imprisoned for not less than two years within five years after naturalisation, or has traded with the enemy in any war. ”

“ Persons are deprived of citizenship if they leave the country unlawfully, leave lawfully but fail to return within a reasonable time after their visas expire, go abroad to avoid military service, acquire foreign citizenship in a manner not specified in Bulgarian law, or if they conduct themselves abroad in ways that are contrary to Bulgaria's interests or that are unworthy of a Bulgarian citizen. ”

“ This same individual who has so completely sacrificed his own free will, has no natural propensity to obedience; he cowers, it is true, before the pettiest officer; but he braves the law with the spirit of a conquered foe as soon as its superior force is removed: his oscillations between servitude and licence are perpetual. When a nation has arrived at this state, it must either change its customs and its laws, or perish: the source of public virtue is dry; and though it may contain subjects, the race of citizens is extinct. Such communities are a natural prey to foreign conquest ”