Israel Zangwill

“ Once America slams her doors, the crucible will roar like a closed furnace.
Heaven forbid, however, that the doors shall be slammed for centuries yet. The notion that the few millions of people in America have a moral right to exclude others is monstrous. Exclusiveness may have some justification in countries, especially when old and well-populated; but for continents like the United States—or for the matter of that Canada and Australia—to mistake themselves for mere countries is an intolerable injustice to the rest of the human race. ”

“ You, the Spirit of the Settlement!
[He rises and crosses to her and leans over the table, facing her.]
Not understand that America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand
[Graphically illustrating it on the table]
in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. ”

“ Quincy Davenport.
MENDEL [Struck of a heap]
Mr. Quincy Davenport! How strange!
VERA
What is strange?
MENDEL
David just mentioned Mr. Davenport's name—said they travelled to New York on the same boat.
QUINCY
Impossible! Always travel on my own yacht. Slow but select. Must have been another man of the same name—my dad. Ha! Ha! Ha!
MENDEL
Ah, of course. I thought you were too young.
QUINCY
My dad, Miss Revendal, is one of those antiquated Americans who are always in a hurry!
VERA
He burns coal and you burn time. ”

“ VERA
But this is my father.
DAVID
Your father!... God!
[He staggers.]
BARON [Drawing her to him]
Come, Vera, I told you——
VERA [Frantically, shrinking back]
Don't touch me!
BARON [Starting back in amaze]
Vera!
VERA [Hoarsely]
Say it's not true.
BARON
What is not true?
VERA
What David said. It was the mob that massacred—you had no hand in it.
BARON [Sullenly]
I was there with my soldiers.
DAVID [Leaning, pale, against a chair, hisses]
And you looked on with that cold face of hate—while my mother—my sister— [Pg 152] —
BARON [Sullenly]
I could not see everything. ”

“ I do wish a few Americans could have been there to see, and they would know what America is, and what it means to live in the United States. It was not enough for them to open up a woman's abdomen and take out the child which she carried, but they took time to stuff the abdomen with straw and fill it up. Can you imagine human beings able to do such things? I do not think anybody could, because I could not imagine it myself when a few years before I read the news of the massacre in Kishineff, but now I have seen it with my own eyes. ”

“ VERA
Rubinstein was a Jewish boy-genius, just like my David.
BARONESS
But his parents vere baptized soon after his birth. I had it from his patroness, ze Grande Duchesse Helena Pavlovna.
VERA
And did the water outside change the blood within? Rubinstein was our Court pianist and was decorated by the Tsar. And you, the Tsar's servant, dare to say you could not meet a Rubinstein.
BARON [Wavering]
I did not say I could not meet a Rubinstein.
VERA
You practically said so. David will be even greater than Rubinstein. Come, father, I'll telephone for him; he is only round the corner. ”

“ Can't you see I'm a Russian, too?
[With a faint tremulous smile]
I might even have been a Siberian had I stayed. But I escaped from my gaolers.
MENDEL
You were a Revolutionist!
VERA
Who can live in Russia and not be? So you see trouble and I are not such strangers.
MENDEL
Who would have thought it to look at you? Siberia, gaolers, revolutions!
[Rising]
What terrible things life holds! [Pg 26]
VERA
Yes, even in free America.
[Frau Quixano's sobbing grows slightly louder.]
MENDEL
That Settlement work must be full of tragedies.
VERA
Sometimes one sees nothing but the tragedy of things. ”

“ Our poverty, not your prejudice, stands in the way of our marriage. But David is a musician of genius, and some day——
BARONESS
A fiddler in a beer-hall! She prefers a fiddler to a millionaire of ze first families of America!
VERA [Contemptuously]
First families! I told you David's family came to Poland in 1492—some months before America was discovered.
BARON
Christ save us! You have become a Jewess!
VERA
No more than David has become a Christian. We were already at one—all honest people are. Surely, father, all religions must serve the same God—since there is only one God to serve. ”

“ That would be even a greater descent than Pappelmeister's to comic opera. One must fly upward—somehow.
[He drops on the chair that Mendel dried. A faint music steals up and makes an accompaniment to all the rest of the scene.]
Ah! the popular classics!
[His head sinks on a little table. The elevator comes up again, but he does not raise his head. Vera, pale and sad, steps out and walks gently over to him; stands looking at him with maternal pity; then decides not to disturb him and is stealing away when suddenly he looks up and perceives her and springs to his feet with a dazed glad cry.] ”

“ Is it wonderful if the crucible, capable of fusing such a motley of types into "the true-born Briton," should be melting up its Jews like old silver? The comparison belongs to Mr. Walkley, who was more moved by the beauty of the old and the pathos of its passing than by the resplendence of the new, and who seemed to forget that it is for the dramatist to register both impartially—their conflict constituting another of those spiritual duels which are peculiarly his affair. Jews are, unlike negroes, a "recessive" type, whose physical traits tend to disappear in the blended offspring. ”

“ Oh, David! David! Don't be angry with poor little Vera if she doubts, if she wants to feel quite sure. You see father has talked so terribly, and after all I was brought up in the Greek Church, and we oughtn't to cause all this suffering unless——
DAVID
Those who love us must suffer, and we must suffer in their suffering. It is live things, not dead metals, that are being melted in the Crucible. ”

“ Meantime the inquisition at Ellis Island has to its account cruelties no less atrocious than the ancient Spanish—cruelties that only flash into momentary prominence when some luxurious music-hall lady of dubious morals has a taste of the barbarities meted out daily to blameless and hard-working refugees from oppression or hunger, who, having staked their all on the great adventure, find themselves hustled back, penniless and heartbroken, to the Old World. ”

“ David jumps up in surprise, releases the violin-case to Mendel.]
They at my symphony!
MENDEL
Mother would come—even though, being Shabbos, she had to walk.
DAVID
But wasn't she shocked at my playing on the Sabbath?
MENDEL
No—that's the curious part of it. She said that even as a boy you played your fiddle on Shabbos, and that if the Lord has stood it all these years, He must consider you an exception.
DAVID
You see! She's more sensible than you thought. [Pg 167] I daresay whatever I were to do she'd consider me an exception.
MENDEL [In sullen acquiescence]
I suppose geniuses are. ”

“ Indeed, it is as much social prejudice as racial antipathy that to-day divides black and white in the New World; and Sir Sydney Olivier has recorded that in Jamaica the white is far more on his guard and his dignity against the half-white than against the all-black, while in Guiana, according to Sir Harry Johnston in his great work "The Negro in the New World," it is the half-white that, in his turn, despises the black and succeeds in marrying still further whitewards. ”

“ DAVID
I must explain to Herr Pappelmeister—it wouldn't be fair. Even now
[Shuddering]
there comes up before me the bleeding body of my mother, the cold, fiendish face of the Russian officer, supervising the slaughter——
VERA
Hush! Hush! [Pg 140]
DAVID [Hysterically]
Oh, that butcher's face—there it is—hovering in the air, that narrow, fanatical forehead, that——
PAPPELMEISTER [Brings down his umbrella with a bang]
Schluss! No man ever dared break down under me. My baton will beat avay all dese faces and fancies. Out with your violin!
[He taps his umbrella imperiously on the table.] ”

“ There is none, therefore, more in need of a land of liberty, none to whose future it is more vital that America should preserve that spirit of William Penn which President Wilson has so nobly characterised. And there is assuredly none which has more valuable elements to contribute to the ethnic and psychical amalgam of the people of to-morrow. ”

“ Begorra, we Jews never know our way.
[Mendel, carrying the violin, escorts his mother and Kathleen to the elevator. When they are near it, it stops with a thud, and Pappelmeister springs out, his umbrella up, meeting them face to face. He looks happy and beaming over David's triumph.] ”

“ And besides being, as Sir Sydney Olivier says, "a matrix of emotional and spiritual energies that have yet to find their human expression," the African negro has obviously already not a few valuable ethnic elements—joy of life, love of colour, keen senses, beautiful voice, and ear for music—contributions that might somewhat compensate for the dragging-down of the white and, in small doses at least, might one day prove a tonic to an anæmic and art-less America. ”

“ Call yerself a Jew and you forgettin' to keep Purim!
[She is going back to the kitchen when a merry Slavic dance breaks out, softened by the door; her feet unconsciously get more and more into dance step, and at last she jigs out. As she opens and passes through the door, the music sounds louder.]
FRAU QUIXANO [Heard from kitchen]
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Kathleen!!
[Mendel's feet, too, begin to take the swing of the music, and his feet dance as he stares out of the window. Suddenly the hoot of an automobile is heard, followed by the rattling up of the car.] ”

“ PAPPELMEISTER
And saved my soul. Dollars are de devil. Now I must to an appointment. Auf baldiges Wiedersehen.
[He shakes David's hand.]
Fräulein Revendal!
[He takes her hand and kisses it. Exit. David and Vera stand gazing at each other.]
VERA
What have you done? What have you done?
DAVID
What else could I do?
VERA
I hate the smart set as much as you—but as your ladder and your trumpet——
DAVID
I would not stand indebted to them. I know you [Pg 90] meant it for my good, but what would these Europe-apers have understood of my America—the America of my music? ”

“ VERA
The wild beasts! I feel more ashamed of my country than ever. But there's his symphony.
MENDEL
And who will look at that amateurish stuff? He knows so little of harmony and counterpoint—he breaks all the rules. I've tried to give him a few pointers—but he ought to have gone to Germany.
VERA
Perhaps it's not too late.
MENDEL [Passionately]
Ah, if you and your friends could help him! See—I'm begging after all. But it's not for myself.
VERA
My father loves music. Perhaps he—but no! he [Pg 40] lives in Kishineff. But I will think—there are people here—I will write to you. ”

“ I was a Red Cross nurse on the battlefield.
The words of the chief doctor of the Jewish Hospital of Odessa still ring in my ears. When the telephone message came, he said, "Moldvanko is running in blood; send nurses and doctors." This meant that the Pogrom (massacre) was going on.
Dr. P—— came into the wards with these words: "Sisters, there is no time for weeping. Those who have no one dependent upon them, come. Put on your white surgical gowns, and the red cross. Make ready to go on the battlefield at once. God knows how many of our sisters and brothers are already killed." ”

“ Whether any country will ever again be based like those of the Old World upon a unity of race or religion is a matter of doubt. New England, of course, like Pennsylvania and Maryland, owes its inception to religion, but the original impulse has long been submerged by purely economic pressures. And the same motley immigration from the Old World [Pg 212] is building up the bulk of the coming countries. At most, the dominant language gives a semblance of unity and serves to attract a considerable stream of immigrants who speak it, as of Portuguese to Brazil, Spaniards to the Argentine. ”

“ My dear reader, I want to tell you one thing before I describe the scenes of the massacre any further; do not think that you are reading a story which could not happen! No, I want you to know that everything you read is just exactly as it was. My hair is a little grey, but I am surprised it is not quite white after what I witnessed.
The procession of the Pogrom was led by about ten Catholic (Greek) Sisters with about forty or fifty of their school children. They carried ikons or pictures of Jesus and sang "God Save the Tsar." ”

“ Do you know, David, I haven't seen you smile since that Purim afternoon?
DAVID
You haven't worn a false nose since, uncle.
[He laughs bitterly.]
Ha! Ha! Ha! Fancy masquerading in America because twenty-five centuries ago the Jews escaped a pogrom in Persia. Two thousand five hundred years ago! Aren't we uncanny?
[Pg 165] [He drops into the wiped chair.]
MENDEL [Angrily]
Better you should leave us altogether than mock at us. I thought it was your Jewish heart that drove you back home to us; but if you are still hankering after Miss Revendal——
DAVID [Pained]
Uncle! ”

“ How small a part in the modern movement is played by patriotism proper may be seen from the avidity with which the farmers of the United States cross the borders to Canada to obtain the large free holdings which enable them to sell off their American properties. How little the proudest tradition counts against the environment is shown in the shame felt by Argentine-born children for the English spoken by their British parents. ”

“ Even the negrophobia is not likely to remain eternally at its present barbarous pitch. Mr. William Archer, who has won a new fame as student of that black problem, which is America's nemesis for her ancient slave-raiding, and who favours the creation of a Black State as one of the United States, observes: "It is noteworthy that neither David Quixano nor anyone else in the play makes the slightest reference to that inconvenient element in the crucible of God—the negro." ”