Lucien Wolf

“ The nobility both of the ancien régime and the empire stood aloof, and politics were abandoned for the most part to professional adventurers, while the bourgeoisie assumed the form of an omnipotent plutocracy. This naturally attracted to France all the financial adventurers in Europe, and in the train of the immigration came not a few German Jews, alienated from their own country by the agitation of Marr and Stöcker. Thus the bourgeoisie was not only more powerful in France than in other countries, but the obnoxiousness of its Jewish element was accentuated by a tinge of the national enemy. ”

“ Into that class all their strength was thrown, and owing to their ghetto preparation, they rapidly took a leading place in it, politically and socially. When the mid-century revolutions made the bourgeoisie the ruling power in Europe, the semblance of a Hebrew domination presented itself. It was the exaggeration of this apparent domination, not by the bourgeoisie itself, but by its enemies among the vanquished reactionaries on the one hand, and by the extreme Radicals on the other, which created modern anti-Semitism as a political force. ”

“ We need only glance at the leading tenets of the Bolsheviks to realise how stupid all this is—indeed, how impossible it is that Bolshevism should find even an appreciable measure of sympathy in the Jewish community. Lenin, Trotsky, and their associates are not only extreme Communists, but are also avowed Atheists. On the other hand, the great bulk of the Jews of Russia are extremely orthodox members of the Synagogue, who hold in horror every symptom of Atheism. ”

“ The United States welcomes now, as it has welcomed from the foundation of its government, the voluntary immigration of all aliens coming hither under conditions fitting them to become merged in the body-politic of this land. Our laws provide the means for them to become incorporated indistinguishably in the mass of citizens, and prescribe their absolute equality with the native born, guaranteeing to them equal civil rights at home and equal protection abroad. ”

“ There is no treaty of amity and commerce between the United States and Roumania, but this Government is pleased to believe that Roumania follows the precepts of comity in this regard as completely and unreservedly as we ourselves do, and that the American in Roumania is as welcome and as free in matters of sojourn and commerce and legal resorts as the Roumanian is in the United States. We hear no suggestion that any differential treatment of our citizens is there imposed. No religious test is known to bar any American from resorting to Roumania for business or pleasure. ”

“ The ghetto, which had been designed as a sort of quarantine to safeguard Christendom against the Jewish heresy, had in fact proved a storage chamber for a portion of the political and social forces which were destined to sweep away the last traces of feudalism from central Europe. In the ghetto, the pastoral Semite, who had been made a wanderer by the destruction of his nationality, was steadily trained, through centuries, to become an urban European, with all the parasitic activities of urban economics, and all the democratic tendencies of occidental industrialism. ”

“ The Jews are to work with gold and the Press for the subversion of Christianity, and they are to act as a universal disturbing and demoralising instrument, so that in the fulness of time they may establish the Jewish Universal Dominion on the ruins of Christian society. ”

“ Syria and Palestine, in a word, must be taken under European protection and governed in the sense and according to the spirit of European administration. It must ultimately come to this. What a great advantage it would be, nay, how indispensably necessary, when at length the Eastern Question comes to be argued and debated with this new ray of light thrown around it, for the Jews to be ready and prepared to say: "Behold us here all waiting, burning to return to that land which you seek to remould and regenerate. Already we feel ourselves a people. ”

“ Trade Unionism, Socialism, Syndicalism, Bolshevism, Sinn Fein, Indian Nationalism, and their analogues in every part of the globe are outward and visible signs of its sinister activity. That there are social grievances and even evils at the root of this unrest is not denied, but they are as artificial as the unrest itself. ”

“ In short, by the cumulative effect of successive restrictions, the Jews of Roumania have become reduced to a state of wretched misery. Shut out from nearly every avenue of self-support which is open to the poor of other lands, and ground down by poverty as the natural result of their discriminatory treatment, they are rendered incapable of lifting themselves from the enforced degradation they endure. Even were the fields of education open to them, of civil employment and of commerce, as to "Roumanian citizens," their penury would prevent rising by individual effort. ”

“ Its agitation generally, coinciding with the revival of interest in Jewish history, has helped to transfer Jewish solidarity from a religious to a racial basis. The bond of a common race, vitalized by a new pride in Hebrew history and spurred on to resistance by the insults of the anti-Semites, has given a new spirit and a new source of strength to Judaism at a moment when the approximation of ethical systems and the revolt against dogma were sapping its essentially religious foundations. ”

“ Democracy is axiomatic with Marx, the foundation of all his doctrine. Lenin, on the other hand, derides the mere counting of heads. He is, as he would put it, for the supremacy of truth, whatever the number of its disciples. This vital difference affects the systems of the two men at all essential points. Thus, while Marx teaches that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat should be the outcome of a [46] Democratic Republic based on Universal Suffrage, Lenin rejects Universal Suffrage, and bases the Dictatorship on a Guild or Soviet Republic. ”

“ Whether consciously and of purpose, or not, these helpless people, burdened and spurned by their native land, are forced by the sovereign power of Roumania upon the charity of the United States. This Government cannot be a tacit party to such an international wrong. It is constrained to protest against the treatment to which the Jews of Roumania are subjected, not alone because it has unimpeachable ground to remonstrate against the resultant injury to itself, but in the name of humanity. ”

“ The Jews contend that anti-Semitism is a mere atavistic revival of the Jew-hatred of the middle ages. The extreme section of the anti-Semites, who have given the movement its quasi-scientific name, declare that it is a racial struggle—an incident of the eternal conflict between Europe and Asia—and that the anti-Semites are engaged in an effort to prevent what is called the Aryan race from being subjugated by a Semitic immigration, and to save Aryan ideals from being modified by an alien and demoralizing oriental Anschauung. ”

“ To describe Russian Bolshevism as Jewish because one member of Lenin's Council of People's Commissars is an apostate Jew is obviously ludicrous. Lenin might far more justly describe the anti-Bolshevism of Western Europe as Jewish because two years ago the French Cabinet contained one professing Jew and the British two. The other so-called Jewish Commissars are all men of the second and lower ranks of officials belonging exclusively either to the Civil Service or the Soviet analogue of our municipal life. ”

“ Be it known by this our Royal Edict—may God exalt and bless its purport and elevate the same to the high heavens, as he does the sun and moon!—that it is our command, that all Jews residing within our dominions, be the condition in which the Almighty God has placed them whatever it may, shall be treated by our Governors, Administrators, and all other subjects, in manner conformable with the evenly balanced scales of Justice, and that in the administration of the Courts of Law they (the Jews) shall occupy a position of perfect equality with all other people ”

“ All the social and political conditions which produced anti-Semitism in Germany were present in France, but in an aggravated form due primarily to the very republican régime which at first sight seemed to be a guarantee against it. In the monarchical states the dominance of the bourgeoisie was tempered in a measure by the power of the crown and the political activity of the aristocracy, which carried with them a very real restraining influence in the matter of political honour and morality. In France these restraining influences were driven out of public life by the republic. ”

“ Here we see that it is not the Jew Socialist who works to destroy the established political order of things, but the Gentile Anarchist. This point may be still further illustrated by Syndicalism and Bolshevism, which are both far more destructive than Socialism and are both revolts against Marx. It is true that Lenin pretends to be a strict Marxist, but his orthodoxy is vehemently contested by all the leading Marxists in England, France, and Germany, and by the whole body of Russian Mensheviks, among whom are many Jews. ”

“ Its racial doctrine is at best a crude hypothesis: its nationalist theory has only served to throw into striking relief the essentially economic bases of modern society, while its political activity has revealed the vulgarity and ignorance which constitute its main sources of strength. So far from injuring the Jews, it has really given Jewish racial separatism a new lease of life. Its extravagant accusations, as in the Tisza Eszlar and Dreyfus cases, have resulted in the vindication of the Jewish character. ”

“ The sentiment has gone forth amongst us and has been agitated and has become to us a second nature; that Palestine demands back again her sons. We only ask a summons from these Powers on whose counsels the fate of the East depends to enter upon the glorious task of rescuing our beloved country from the withering influence of centuries of desolation and of crowning her plains and valleys and mountain-tops once more, with all the beauty and freshness and abundance of her pristine greatness." I say it is for the Jews to be ready against such a crisis in diplomacy. ”

“ Though anti-Semitism has been unmasked and discredited, it is to be feared that its history is not yet at an end. While there remain in Russia and Rumania over six millions of Jews who are being systematically degraded, and who periodically overflow the western frontier, there must continue to be a Jewish question in Europe; and while there are weak governments, and ignorant and superstitious elements in the enfranchized classes of the countries affected, that question will seek to play a part in politics. ”

“ Thus, with the evident promotion of the Russian revolution by the Jews of all countries, in one form or another, to a larger or smaller extent, providing it above all with intelligent leaders, arms and pecuniary means, the so-to-say international side of our revolutionary movement becomes perfectly clear, and at the same time reveals those forces which the Imperial Government must combat, as well as the factors of State and public life abroad, on which it must rely in this struggle. ”

“ Again, Marx stands for Revolution by Law in all Democratic States, while Lenin stands for Revolution by Force, whatever the constitution of the State. Nor does this apply only to revolutions, for while Marx holds that the authority of the State must, whenever possible, be exercised by peaceful means, Lenin teaches that Force is inherent in the State and its exercise unavoidable. ”

“ By confining the Jews to the towns at the very moment that Count Witte’s policy of protection was creating an enormous industrial proletariat they placed at the disposal of the disaffected masses an ally powerful in numbers and intelligence, and especially in its bitter sense of wrong, its reckless despair and its cosmopolitan outlook and connexions. As early as 1885 the Jewish workmen assisted by Jewish university students led the way in the formation of trades unions. ”

“ It was, however, in Germany that the bogey was adapted for consumption in Western Europe. The old Junker anti-Semitism received a great impulse from the collapse of thrones which followed the Armistice of 1918. All the revolutionary movements were at once attributed by them to the Jews, and, by way of showing the victorious Allies the danger they were courting by tolerating them, bloodcurdling pictures of Russian Bolshevism as the first fruits of an international Jewish conspiracy were issued from the presses of the anti-Semitic society known as Deutschland's Erneuerung, in Munich. ”

“ It is not only that the edifice of Religious Liberty in Europe has to be completed, but also that some six millions of human beings have to be freed from political and civil disabilities and social and economic restrictions which for calculated cruelty have no parallels outside the Dark Ages. The Peace Conference will have accomplished relatively little if a shred of this blackest of all European scandals is allowed to survive its deliberations. ”

“ There has always been at the back of the anti-Semitic mind an uneasy feeling that the Jews are, as the old law books say, perpetui inimici Regis et Religionis. Their participation in the bourgeois Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 gave political point to this superstition, and ever since it has been a favourite theory of the more fanatical reactionaries that the whole Democratic movement in Europe is a Jewish conspiracy for the subversion of Christianity and Christian society. In this respect the Morning Post theory is, as has already been shown, not new. ”

“ At any rate, according to an observation by the Deutsche Tageszeitung, which has made it its special aim to organise the fight against the impending general European revolution, the more candid publicists of Social-Revolutionary tendencies are already expressing unceremoniously their hope that the Russian movement of hostility to the Government only presents a prelude to that general European upheaval which, among other things, is to destroy utterly the monarchical order of contemporary Europe. ”

“ Marx, indeed, was an intellectual product of the essentially Gentile teachings of Hegel and Feuerbach. Perhaps the best test of the Gentilism of his outlook is that, while his Jewish disciples were comparatively few, his Christian converts are numbered in millions. In the second place, if Marx was the chief instrument of a Jewish plot to subvert Christian society, he must have proved something of a disappointment to his secret employers. Among the forces which are making for World Unrest to-day he is a relatively conservative element. The Morning Post itself supplies the proof of this. ”

“ The principal aim of the "Alliance Israélite Universelle"—the all-round triumph of anti-Christian and anti-monarchist Jewry (which has already taken practical possession of France) by means of Socialism which is to serve as a bait for the ignorant masses—could not but find the State system of Russia—a land of peasants, Orthodoxy and monarchism—an obstacle in its path. ”

“ This is most strikingly exemplified by their career in the Russian Revolution. Human nature being what it is, it would not have been surprising if all the Jews in Russia had become fanatical Bolsheviks. The extravagances of Bolshevism are the natural reaction [53] against the cruelties of Tsarism, and the Jews suffered more bitterly from those cruelties than any other section of the sorely tried Russian people. ”

“ Putting together the facts now painfully brought home to this Government during the past few years: that many of the inhabitants of Roumania are being forced, by artificially adverse discriminations, to quit their native country; that the hospitable asylum offered by this country is almost the only refuge left to them; that they come hither unfitted by the conditions of their exile to take part in the new life of this land under circumstances either profitable to themselves or beneficial to the community ”

“ If Jews have reluctantly turned towards [52] Bolshevism, it is because they have been forced into it by the anti-Bolsheviks. They cannot but be alarmed by the persistency and passion with which the charge of Bolshevism is levelled at them, and the threats which come from all sides to avenge in their persons the sins of Lenin and Trotsky. ”

“ Even if it were true that the constitutions of all the five contracting States assure civil and religious liberty to their inhabitants without distinction of religion—Roumania herself is a flagrant exception—it would not afford as permanent a guarantee as an international obligation. ”

“ The Plenipotentiaries of the three Allied Courts being desirous moreover of giving to Greece a new proof of the benevolent anxiety of their Sovereigns respecting it, and of preserving that country from the calamities which the rivalry of the religions therein professed might excite, agreed that all the subjects of the new State, whatever may be their religion, shall be admissable to all public employments, functions, and honours, and be treated on the footing of a perfect equality, without regard to difference of creed in all their relations, religious, civil or political. ”