jtibrarjp of "the t1veolo;gical PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY John Stuart Conning, D.D. DS 135 .R9 D38 1903 Davitt, Michael, 1846-1906. Within the pale tXs n:- A*' • ' \ WITHIN THE V \ PALE JAD ^ WITHIN^ THE PALE The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecution in Russia BY MICHAEL DAVITT AUTHOR OF '' LEAVES FROM A PRISON DIARY,” “ LIFE AND PROGRESS IN AUSTRALASIA,” “the BOER FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,” ETC. SPECIAL EDITION IpbtlaDelpbla THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA NEW YORK A. S. BARNES & CO. 1903 Copyright, 1903, By a. S. BARNES & CO., Published, October, PREFACE It is deemed necessary, for the twofold aim of this book,—to arouse public feeling against a murder-making legend, and to put forward a plea for the objects of the Zionist movement,—to tell the story of the Russian Jew, apropos of recent massacres. This task could only be partially done in my des¬ patches from Kishineff to Mr. William R. Hearst’s American papers. Moreover, all the despatches were not published, for rea¬ sons which govern the exigencies of jour¬ nals that are concerned much more with a record of daily events in the United States than with history. While in Russia I tried to find both sides of the anti-Semitic Question, so as to give expression to all views which could throw light upon crimes that had shocked the pub¬ lic mind in America and in Europe no more V VI PREFACE than they had pained and scandalised all right-thinking Russians. To several of the minor representatives of the Tsar’s Government I owe an acknowl¬ edgment for uniform courtesies, and for valuable assistance in my investigations, and I endeavour, in the chapter on Rus¬ sia’s Attitude,” to let the voice of such ex¬ ponents of official Russian ideas and pur¬ poses be heard alongside of counter Jewish accusations. The unwarranted attempts that have been made in some quarters to use the Kishinev crimes as means of creating an unfriendly feeling between the two greatest powers in the world to-day—the United States Re¬ public and the Empire of Russia—^are repre¬ hensible. There are very unworthy motives behind this mischievous endeavour that are not calculated to serve the cause of the Rus¬ sian Jew. The writer of these pages can have no sympathy with nor lend encourage¬ ment of any kind to these sinister efforts. Russia cannot, for her own sake, allow the PKEFACE vii present state of things to continue within the Pale of Settlement, lleform or revolu¬ tion must deal with an absolutely impos¬ sible condition of social and economic life. I follow Russian, and not Jewish, guid¬ ance in the brief sketch I give of the history of the Russian Jew and of his long and persistent persecution. The clear and un¬ biassed opinions, and statement of historic facts, so courageously and clearly expressed in Prince Demidoff San Donators book, have been the chief source of information from which the materials for that sketch have been derived. The Jew, as he is ruled and oppressed by Russian officials, is a far greater danger to Russian autocracy than anti-Semitism is to the Israelites of the Pale. The danger was candidly avowed by all representative Russians from whom I solicited light and information. The average Russian, how¬ ever, errs most seriously in believing that measures of repression, like those of 1882 and 1891, can ever cure the Empire of its PREFACE • • • Till “ Semitic malady/’ as one high official harshly expressed it. Had far more drastic and more barbarous methods of coercion than those of General Ignatieff possessed the power to cure a similar malady/’ or kill the same race, no Jew would be alive on earth to-day to trouble the domestic cares of the Tsar’s Government. There can be no stronger argument against the policy of continued repression found in the literature or history of liberty than the existence and the marvellous influence to-day of this, the most persecuted of all peoples among the civilised races. Contempt for human rights, even if they be Jewish rights, is an unwise attitude for an autocratic government. It can only lead to more outrage, through the example and encouragement it offers to the lowest aims of anti-Semitism; to more poverty, through the steady increase within the existing Pale of men and women of the most intellectual of races, who grow up conscious of the fact that they are made poor by the working of PREFACE IX special laws, because they are Hebrews. Such contempt and neglect are the best re¬ cruiting forces for disloyalty and Socialism among 4,000,000 subjects, having powerful racial friends and political allies in coun¬ tries where Russia's strongest enemies are to be found; and are far more dangerous to Russia's internal peace and progress than any measure of Jewish emancipation could possibly be. This book is neither inspired by feeling, political or otherwise, against Russia, nor by any pro-Jewish purpose outside the ques¬ tions immediately touched upon by the wri¬ ter. Where anti-Semitism stands, in fair political combat, in opposition to the foes of nationality, or against the engineers of a sordid war in South Africa, or as the assail¬ ant of the economic evils of unscrupulous capitalism anywhere, I am resolutely in line with its spirit and programme. Where, however, it only speaks and acts in a cow¬ ardly racial warfare, which descends to the use of an atrocious fabrication responsible X PREFACE for odious and unspeakable crimes like those that are to its credit in the massacres of Kishineff, it becomes a thing deserving of no more toleration from right-minded men than do the germs of some malady laden with the poison of a malignant disease. The inquiries made by me in Kishineff convince me that the peculiar atrocity of most of the crimes perpetrated against the Jews of the city at Easter were directly at¬ tributable to the horrible influence of the ritual-murder propaganda upon untutored minds possessed of an ignorant and fanati¬ cal conception of religion. Should these pages succeed, even to a lit¬ tle extent, in influencing public feeling in America and Europe, in favour of the sug¬ gestions they contain for the redress of the indefensible wrongs of a long-suffering peo¬ ple, the writer will be amply rewarded for his small share in the performance of so worthy and necessary a task. The public moral sense of all nations,’^ wrote Cardinal Manning, on the same topic, PREFACE xi a dozen years ago, “ is created and sus¬ tained by participation in a universal com¬ mon law; when this is anywhere broken, or wounded, it is not only sympathy, but civi¬ lisation, that has the privilege of respectful remonstrance.” _ M. D. St. Justins, Dalket, Ireland, m July, 1903. CONTENTS PART I The Story of the Russian Jew CHAPTER PAGE I. From Ancient Times to 1804, . . . 1 II. The Pale op Settlement (1804-1882), . 12 III. From the Ignatiepp Laws to the Kishi- IV. NEFP Massacres, . . . A Murder-Making Legend, . 83 . 52 V. Russia’s Attitude, .... . 64 VI. The Zionist Solution, CO • PART II The Kishinefp Massacres VIL I. Origin and Agency, .... 91 VIII. II. Letters from Kishinefp, . 101 IX. III. M. DE Plehve’s Version, . 182 X. IV. An Impartial Account, 189 XI. V. Documents: (I) Petition to the Director- General OF Police, . 207 (II) List op Killed, 217 (III) Extracts from a Report by T wo Christian Ladies, 222 XII. Notes and Comments,. 231 xill xiv CONTENTS APPENDICES I. PREsroENT Roosevelt on the Kishinepp Crime and the Jews, . . . . II. Letter prom Tolstoy, .... III. Letter prom Maxime Gorky, IV. Father John op Kronstadt Recants, V. The Story op Simon op Trent, VI. English Translation op Papal Bulls, PAGB 256 268 272 276 278 291 WITHIN THE PALE PART I TEE STORY OF TEE RUSSIAN JEW CHAPTER I FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO 1804 HE time when Jews first settled in Russia is a subject of mere historical conjecture. Some accounts assert that col¬ onies of the race were founded in the coun¬ try bordering on the Black Sea several cen¬ turies before the Christian era. All the probabilities favour this view. Both before and after their dispersion by the Romans, a people so intelligent and resourceful as the Hebrews would learn of the fruitful regions watered by the four great rivers which flow into the southern sea-boundaries of the vast territory now under the sway of the Tsar. 2 WITHIN THE PALE They would have a choice of land and sea routes for the voyages of emigration, trade, or adventure. The distance from Jerusalem to the mouth of the Volga, through Asia Minor and the Caucasus, is not much more than from Astrakhan to St. Petersburg, while the journey by sea from Joppa to where the city of Odessa stands to-day for Russians richest seaport, is much less than that from Athens to Marseilles. The Caucasus, Tau¬ rida (Crimea), Cherson, and Bessarabia, known in the days of King Solomon by other names, would be within the zone of trading intercourse with the Kingdom of Israel, while these rich and interesting parts of Southern Russia would naturally attract the footsteps of the scattered race after Titus had destroyed their nation and dis¬ persed its people, as well as during the existence of the Byzantine Empire. Whether the race known as the Khazars, who governed the territory stretching north from Astrakhan over the eastern watershed THE RUSSIAN JEW 3 of the Volga as far as Kazan, were civilised by Semitic colonists, as alleged by some wri¬ ters, is now only an interesting speculation. One fact offered in support of this theory is that the Israelites were driven out of this country by its rulers in the eleventh century, at a time when Jews in Christian Europe began to be objects of race persecu¬ tion. The period of the Crusades may be taken as that in which the systematic oppression of the Jews began. The source of this perse¬ cution was the religious influence upon un¬ educated minds of the gospel of the Cruci¬ fixion, coupled with legends about ritual murders, and fables recording the sacrifice of the blood of Christian children and maidens during the sacred rites of Paschal time. It is on record that, in the year 1298, a fanatic in a city of Franconia circulated a story that the Sacred Host in a church had been polluted by a Jew, and that the Al¬ mighty had chosen an avenger of this crime 4 WITHIN THE PALE in the person of the narrator of the act of sacrilege. The populace rose en masse and burned all the Jews in the city. The mas¬ sacre extended to the country, and, before the murderous fury unchained by this fan¬ atic and his falsehood could be stilled, over 100,000 victims were slaughtered in Ger¬ many, Bavaria, and Austria. It was following these and similar feroci¬ ties that the first great movement of the Semitic race into Poland occurred. They were encouraged to move into this country by the toleration extended to smaller col¬ onies of their race who had settled in Polish dominions in earlier times. All accounts agree in crediting to this ancient King¬ dom a far more enlightened rule of the pro¬ scribed Israelites than to any other Chris¬ tian nation during the Middle Ages. Casi- mir the Great protected them in both their religious and civil liberties, in return for which freedom they helped to organise and develop the commerce and crafts of the ' country. They flourished and multiplied THE RUSSIAN JEW 5 under such rule, and became the trading link between producer and consumer, in the economic life of Poland, as well as tillers of the soil and expert artisans. It is an error to assume that the Jews have not thriven anywhere in agricultural industry. Wherever they were sure of protection against spoliation, they took to land labour as readily as to other pursuits, and succeeded. This was so in Poland dur¬ ing the two centuries in which they shared in the general rights guaranteed by the state. Accounts of Jewish agricultural col¬ onies in various parts of Russia, in later days, also support the same testimony. In fact there was no better foundation for this charge in times anterior to our own than the circumstance that a people who were not permitted to own land anywhere, or even to cultivate it in some countries, were, in con¬ sequence, subjected to the imputation of having a racial prejudice against this means of obtaining a livelihood. The halcyon period of Jewish freedom in 6 WITHIN THE PALE Poland came to an end in the middle of the seventeenth century. That proud and an¬ cient nation was itself the victim of inva¬ sion and oppression, and its Semitic popu¬ lation lost over 200,000 men, women, and children in the ferocious campaigns waged by the conquering Cossack Hetman, and his Tartar and Kussian allies, against Poles and Jews alike. The Jews of Poland survived this calam¬ ity, and grew numerous again, as persecuted civilised races somehow do, in their own, or in some other, land. They, however, lent assistance to the designs of the ambitious nobles when the landed aristocracy invaded the recognised prerogatives of the kingly power, and took to themselves all the re¬ sponsibilities and advantages of govern¬ ment. They became their agents and in¬ struments in the sordid work of harassing the peasant cultivators, who found them¬ selves ground down more remorselessly by class rule than under a semi-republican monarchy. Popular feeling w^as thus turned THE RUSSIAN JEW 7 against the Jews, and they began to experi¬ ence, in Poland, as elsewhere, that social and economic antipathy which their greater money-making capacity has always nour- ished in the commercial minds of the less successful Christians. As a friend of Polish freedom remarked to the writer in Warsaw in the spring of 1903, the nobles cultivated their pride, rack-rented their tenants, and lost their in¬ dependence.” And, with this fall of the one Christian nation in Europe, which had fairly ruled and humanely treated the hunted Hebrew up to the eighteenth cen¬ tury, the era of systematic persecution be¬ gan for the Polish Jew when a cruel fate compelled him to become a Russian subject. The early oppression of the Jews in Russia was entirely due to religious feeling. Their exceptional treatment in recent years arises from political and economic more than from sectarian causes. M. Varadinoff, in his history of Russian administration, says: The history of all the cases since 8 WITHIN THE PALE 1649, involving Jewish religious matters, bears on it the stamp of mistrust to the followers of the law of Moses, because the Jews, by their false doctrines, convert to their faith not only Christians, but persons belonging to other religious persuasions; in consequence of this the civil rights of the Jews were more or less restricted, and their settlement in Russia was prohibited. They were also on several occasions entirely ex¬ pelled across the Russian frontiers. The code of Alexis Mikailovitch provides punish¬ ment of death for the perversion of a Chris¬ tian to the Hebrew faith. In 1676 Jews were prohibited from coming to Moscow from Smolensk, and in 1727 an order was promulgated to the effect that ^ All Jews found to be residing in the Ukraine and in Russian towns shall be immediately ex¬ pelled beyond the frontier, and not be al¬ lowed under any circumstances to enter Russia.’ ” Prince Demidoff San Donato, in quoting this expert in his excellent book, says that a THE RUSSIAN JEW 9 proviso to this ukase stipulated that before leaving Russia all the Jews were to be made to exchange their gold and silver for copper money! It was found practically impossible, how¬ ever, to carry out decrees of complete ex¬ pulsion, while, on the other hand, it had to be recognised thait the interest of the state and the development of trade required the trained experience of Hebrew craftsmen, merchants, and bankers. They were toler¬ ated for the utilitarian ends of commercial necessity, while being subject to all the possible penalties of an outlawed com¬ munity. Nearing the end of the eighteenth century the trend of Russian conquest westwards annexed the Polish regions known as White Russia, and the Lithuanian country, in which Jews had hitherto found shelter when driven out from Russia proper. Catherine II. governed the Empire at this period, and her somewhat liberal views gave her Hebrew subjects a brief respite from persistent in- 10 WITHIN THE PALE justice. It was necessarj^ to take account of the recognised status of the Jews in what had been a portion of the Kingdom of Poland, and a ukase was promulgated in 1786, decreeing that Everyone, irrrespec- tive of creed, shall enjoy under the laws all the advantages and privileges of his rank and condition/^ This enlightened law only extended to the territories acquired from Poland, and even within these the tolerant intention of the ukase was frustrated by the bias of Russian officials. The right to enrol themselves in burgher guilds was cur¬ tailed, while double taxes were levied upon the very people whom the law of 1786 had, in words, freed from exceptional burdens. Other special penalties followed, to be again mitigated as when, in 1804, a ukase declared that a spirit of moderation and a sincere wish for the amelioration of the con¬ dition of the Jews,’’ should be shown as being in the best interest of the population among whom the Hebrews were allowed to live. This temporary return to reason and THE RUSSIAN JEW 11 justice was also due to the desire to give Russian workers and peasants the advan¬ tages of superior Jewish workmanship in arts, and the example of trading com¬ petency. Jewish children were to be ad¬ mitted to Russian schools. Manufacturing industry and the occupation of land were to be thrown open to Jews hitherto denied access to these employments, except in specified places. These, however, were but Russian good intentions. They lacked the value of ap¬ plication. CHAPTEK II THE PAI,E OF SETTLEMENT (18044882) G radually the provinces along the western frontier, stretching south from Riga to the territories bordering on the Black Sea, became marked off as a Pale of Settlement. Within these regions all the Jews of the Empire were to be domi¬ ciled; saving merchants, bankers, scientists. and eminent Hebrews whose wealth or ac¬ complishments would outweigh in the self¬ ish plans of domestic government the anti- Semitic feeling which appealed to the des¬ potic expediency of exceptional laws. In¬ side this economic Siberia, the poorer Jews would have their chances of employment greatly diminished, while the struggle for existence must become by degrees a contest between a growing population and a nar¬ rower area of industrial opportunity. 12 THE RUSSIAN JEW 13 Unnatural social and economic conditions necessarily engender correlative abuses and evils. Poverty, illegal pursuits, the smug¬ gling and sale of liquor, evasion of coercive laws, bribery and corruption, protested against the causes which begot them, until finally an Imperial Commission had to be appointed to inquire into and report upon the measures necessary to remedy this state of things. This Commission issued its re¬ port in 1812. The report is so tersely sum¬ marised in Prince Demidoff^s book, and the matters dealt with are so intimately con¬ nected with the inherited injustices of the Russian Jew, that I cannot forbear adding the following extract to this brief historic sketch of anti-Semitic legislation and its results: Firstly, the Commission was of opinion that the impossibility of carrying out the provisions of paragraph 34 of the Law of 1804 ^did not arise from the obstinacy of the Jews and remissness of the authorities, but from the natural and political condition of 14 WITHIN THE PALE those provinces to which residence of the Jews is restricted.^ The report then states that while the Jews retained their political independence and lived in their own coun¬ try, they were an agricultural people. Subsequently, when they were dispersed over the whole world and everywhere sub¬ jected to the bitterest persecution, unrecog¬ nised as regular citizens of the countries in which they were domiciled, agriculture be¬ came to them an inaccessible pursuit. They were thus necessarily obliged to have re¬ course to trade as the sole means of occupa¬ tion according with their new condition of life. In Poland the Jews were so numerous that the pursuit of trade alone was insuf¬ ficient for their subsistence. On the one hand, the Polish landlords, owing to con¬ stant wars and internal strife, were not able to manage their own estates in a proper manner. They were, therefore, obliged to seek special means for increasing the revenue of their properties, for instance, by THE RUSSIAN JEW 15 distilling brandy, lease of farms, etc. The correlation of these two causes led to the utilisation of the Jews by the landed pro¬ prietors in their domestic concerns. The Jews became indispensable to the landed proprietors, and as they did not possess the right to acquire land and engage in agricul¬ ture, they were obliged, while residing in villages, to confine themselves to a retail sale of spirits as a main pursuit. << When White Russia was annexed to Russia, the Russian Government recognised all the previously existing rights of the Jews. The ukase of the Senate of 1786 confirmed their right of residence in provin¬ cial districts, and their faculty of holding estates on lease. The immediate object of this law was the suppression of drunken¬ ness among the rural population. The dis¬ tillation of brandy, however, is a privilege of all landed proprietors, and forms a neces¬ sary adjunct to the process of agriculture. With the departure [expulsion from vil¬ lages] of the Jews the retail sale of spirits 16 WITHIN THE PALE would be carried on by tapsters of the native rural class, so that drunkenness would not diminish, but only a decrease would take place in the number of agriculturists. A peasant had previously been in the habit of selling his corn on the spot to a Jew, but now he was obliged to proceed to the nearest town, at a loss in time and labour, to sell his produce to a* Jew, and the money realised he would still spend on brandy, bought from the same Jew. The same re¬ sult would ensue in the purchase by the peasant of articles required by him, such as iron, salt, etc. “ The Commission also found it unad- visable to allow the Jews to reside in vil¬ lages under the prohibition of their not en¬ gaging in the retail sale of brandy; this opinion being founded on the following con¬ sideration: The Jews who inhabit the vil¬ lages belong to the poorest class, and if not allowed to sell spirits they would be de¬ prived of all means of subsistence. The poverty of the peasantry of White Kussia THE RUSSIAN JEW 17 is not caused by the Jews, and this is proved by the fact that there are also many Jews in the southwestern provinces, yet the peasantry there are in a more prosperous condition than those populating White Russia. So long as the landlords of this latter region continue to adhere to their present system of working their estates, which encourages drunkenness, the evil will spread, be the village tapster who he may, either Jew or peasant. This is confirmed by the example of the provinces of Peters¬ burg, Livonia, and Esthonia, where there are no Jews and yet drunkenness is very prevalent. “ Should the Government adopt the proper measures for making the sale of brandy less lucrative, the Jews would be obliged to turn to other pursuits, perhaps to those of husbandry, especially if they are accorded the right of purchasing land. If the Jews be interdicted to sell brandy such sale would be carried on by the peasants, who, in order to increase their landlord's 18 WITHIN THE PALE revenue, will be obliged to do the same as the Jews. It should also be borne in mind that the Jews, with all their aptitude and experience in matters relating to the sale of spirits, never enriched themselves by this calling, but only earned enough for their subsistence. It would also be impossible to convert all Jews into traders and artisans; firstly, because they would not find sufficient occupation in the towns and hamlets, where there is no demand for a great supply of services of this kind; and secondly, because great injury would be inflicted on those Jews who are unable to find alternative sources of livelihood. As a matter of fact the retail sale of spirits in the western provinces is only carried on by those Jews who are unable to find any other means of existence. The Jews adhere to their present occupations because, owing to the want of means, the Government is unable to effect any radical change in their condition. Lastly, the Commission arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary to re- THE RUSSIAN JEW 19 scind entirely paragraph 34 of the Law of 1804 /' This paragraph of the law thus cited ordered the removal of all Jews from vil¬ lages and hamlets into the towns. The recommendation of the Commission was not acted upon. On the contrary, the law of 1804 was continued. Though not vigorously enforced it remained as a po¬ tential agency for rendering residence of employment outside the Pale a source of insecurity to the Jews, and a means by which police, business rivals, and others could at any time put the ukase of expulsion in operation against them. Trading com¬ munities were most active in appealing for the application of this law. Petitions call¬ ing for expulsion from cities and towns in which Jews were rival workers and dealers are constantly recurring features of the tyranny, official and commercial, to which they were subjected during the next half- century. General Levashoff, Governor of Kiev, re- 20 WITHIN THE PALE porting to the Government in 1833 upon a petition asking for the banishment of all the Jews from that important city, laid bare the motives and condemned the selfish purpose of the petitioners, in honestly say¬ ing: It is desirable on the ground of public utility to allow the Jews to remain in Kiev, where, by the simplicity and moderation of their mode of life, they are able to sell commodities at a cheap rate. It may positively be asserted that their expulsion would not only lead to an enhancement of prices of many products and articles, but that it will not be possible to obtain these at all. Under these circumstances the in¬ terests of the mass of the inhabitants must be preferred to the personal advantages which the Christian trading class would derive by the ejection of the Jews.’’ * Opposed in cities and towns in this man¬ ner, after being turned out of country dis¬ tricts in obedience to a similar spirit, the ♦Observation No. 6418,“ Code of Laws,’' Vol. VIII. THE RUSSIAN JEW 21 authors of these coercion laws began to find it a serious administrative problem what to do with subjects for whose systematic op¬ pression they were alone responsible. Agri¬ cultural colonies were planned in Cherson (Southwestern Russia ) and even in Siberia, to which Jews were induced to go in order to escape from the intolerable hardships of incessant wrong. Failure followed these benevolent designs of the Govern¬ ment; not from the reluctance or incapacity of the migrating Jews to work the land, but owing to the corruption and incompetence of officials who were charged with the superin¬ tendence of these colonies. Money ad¬ vanced for the building of dwellings and purchase of stock was disbursed in the erec¬ tion of unsuitable houses, in most unsan¬ itary places, and in other wasteful and ignorant directions. Great hardships were thus entailed upon the unfortunate victims of this crass official stupidity; a cruelty of deliberate neglect adding, in the instances of the migrations to Siberia, its penalties of 22 WITHIN THE PALE suffering and death to the bitter disappoint¬ ments and the blasting of hopes caused bj the callous miscarriage of the well-meant enterprise of the Government by its blun¬ dering officials. One unexpected good result followed both to Russia and to large numbers of Jews by the failure of these contemplated agricul¬ tural settlements in the Governments of Cherson and Ekaterinoslav; where, at a later time, similar colonies grew and flourished. Odessa, to-day the richest and busiest maritime city of the Empire, owes its prosperity and progress largely to Jew¬ ish enterprise. Both the forced and volun¬ tary migration from the north to the south of the Pale brought this resourceful race near where they were to find an outlet in a young and rising commercial centre for qualities essential to its rapid development which Russians do not themselves possess in any marked degree,—commercial genius. The city and its varied opportunities at¬ tracted both those who succeeded and those THE RUSSIAN JEW 23 who had obtained no fair chance of thriving as agriculturists, and to-day over two hun¬ dred thousand of the Jewish population of Odessa embrace the wealthiest and most enterprising bankers, merchants, brokers, contractors, and business men of the Em¬ pire. From the codification of the ukases and laws relating to Jews in 1835, down to the Ignatiefi or May Laws ’’ of 1882, the treat¬ ment of the Jews, as regulated by these measures, is consistent with their expe¬ rience as already briefly described. In some of these laws, Jews would appear from the text to be on a footing of theoretic equality with other citizens, while again special provisions are made to limit the application of these general rights to residence within the selected sphere of domicile, and to be further curtailed within this area, in the light and meaning of the law of 1804. There is a bewildering mass and maze of contradictory purpose in this code of special lav^ which no summary can hope intel- 24 WITHIN THE PALE ligently to disentangle. It is obvious, how¬ ever, that the vigour of direct persecution is meant to be modified to the extent of pro¬ moting the utilities of the State by Jewish abilities, while reserving all the powers necessary to dispense with the objectionable artisan, trader, or mechanic when his ser¬ vices or example are no longer needed in hamlet or village. This is one of the most objectionable features of indefensible laws. It wears a character of state meanness which can well compare in odious rivalry with the methods and morals of Jewish usury. The spirit of fair play is totally absent from regulations which give the state, by virtue of permissive coercion, ^ the benefits of subjects^ services which are ultimately repaid in penalties and expulsion. In 1843 the Pale of Settlement was further contracted by a law forbidding Jews to reside within a distance of fifty versts (about thirty-three miles) of the Austrian or German frontiers. The neces- THE RUSSIAN JEW 25 sity for this regulation was said to be the smuggling operations of the Jews. They probably excelled in this as in other illegal practices, to which they were driven on being denied the chances of living by more reputable means. The injustice of punish¬ ing thousands of families who had resided in these frontier districts for generations, for the wrongdoing of a few people, would not be calculated to lessen the feeling of settled disloyalty which persistent oppres¬ sion must inevitably create in the minds of an intellectual race. And, these accumulat¬ ing measures of an insensate injustice are now responsible for the existence of four millions of disaffected subjects adjacent to the frontiers of Russians two most formi¬ dable rival powers, Germany and Austro- Hungary. The Pale of Settlement has thus become, by the lex talionis of a poetic jus¬ tice, the most vulnerable part of the Russian Empire. It is not alone the seed¬ bed and centre of Socialism, born of per¬ secution, it is a military weakness well 26 WITHIN THE PALE iriGasurGd and notGd in the army bureaus of Berlin and Vienna. Under the Emperor Alexander II., the emancipator of the serfs, the Jews obtained a respite from many of the most oppressive and vexatious of the penal ukases. Schools hitherto closed to Hebrew children were thrown open to their admission. Restric¬ tions upon attendance at fairs in the interior were removed, while in many other respects the original plan and purpose of the Pale were forgotten, and the dawn of happier days began to rise above the troubled and darkened horizon of the Russian Jew. The freedom of the peasants gave rise to the hope that the same liberal-minded Tsar would break the bonds of his Semitic subjects, when there fell upon all this promise of brighter times the bolt of Nihilist venge¬ ance, in the assassination of the best of Russia's rulers. The abominable deed, which shocked the world by its terrible character and results, shattered the hopes of Hebrew emancipation, and led to the THE RUSSIAN JEW 27 savage onslaught which was made upon the objects of peasant fury in 1881 and 1882, in many parts of the Empire. Beyond doubt there were some Jews con¬ cerned in Nihilist plots. The man who at¬ tempted to kill General Loris Melikoff was of Jewish blood. The women Lewinsohn and Helfman, who were sent to Siberia for complicity in murder conspiracies, were Jewesses, while several prominent Nihilists were believed to be half Hebrew in parentage. But the history of human ^ oppression always explains, even where it may not justify, deeds of savage political vengeance. No race can be denied the ordinary franchises of personal freedom the right to live secure from the insult and intrusion of a tyrannical law, and the un¬ fair infliction of exceptional burdens— without rousing into dangerous activity passions which appeal to the wild impulse of revenge. The assassination of Alexan¬ der II. had nothing to do with the coercion of the Jews. He was not their enemy; he 28 WITHIN THE PALE was their friend. But the revolutionary spirit which germinates under despotic rule is generally blind in selecting the objects of its unreasoning fury; just as many Govern¬ ments are deaf to the pleadings of an en¬ lightened justice in the rule of a country until the shock of some desperate deed com¬ pels them to think of that which, if listened to in time, would protect both subjects and monarchs from the fear and consequences of criminal acts. If some Jews were guilty accomplices in the murder of a humane Emperor, so were Eussians. And it would have been no greater wrong to punish guilt¬ less peasants for the acts of the Nihilists than to wreak vengeance upon equally inno¬ cent Jews. In Warsaw, Kiev, Eostov, and elsewhere Jews were killed, their houses wrecked, and their shops looted. Outrages occurred throughout the whole Pale of Settlement, and thousands of terrified people fied across the frontiers into Germany, Bohemia, and Eoumania. These outbreaks occurred near THE RUSSIAN JEW 29 the end of 1881 and early in the following year and, like the recent massacres in Bes¬ sarabia, aroused a widespread expression of sympathy in Europe and America for the hapless objects of Russian popular fury. Manifestations of international feeling greatly impressed the Tsar’s Government, and earnest efforts appeared to have been made to curb the lawless conduct of the mobs. This action, however, instead of being a promise of better things, turned out to be but a prelude to sterner measures than ever against the victims of exceptional laws. On the 3d of May, 1882, General Igna- tieff obtained the Emperor’s sanction and signature to what have since been known as the May Laws”; the purpose of these being to add more rigorous provisions, as a supplement to the law of 1804. This latter law ordered all the Jews of the Empire to retire within the Pale of Settlement, except¬ ing those who possessed special permits, passports, or privileges to live outside. The 30 WITHIN THE PALE May Laws ordered Jews living inside the Pale to remove from the villages into the towns within that area. In a word, Greneral Ignatieff created a Pale within a Pale, and contracted the territory of life and liveli¬ hood for upwards of four millions of people within the boundaries of the cities and towns inside the already limited domain of legal domicile. These measures read as follows: The Committee of Ministers, having heard the report of the Minister of the In¬ terior on the execution of the temporary orders concerning the Jews, resolved: 1. As a temporary measure, and until a general revision has been made in a proper manner of the laws concerning the Jews, to forbid the Jews henceforth to settle outside the towns and townlets, the only exceptions admitted being in those Jewish colonies that have existed before and whose inhabitants are agriculturists. 2. To suspend temporarily the comple¬ tion of instruments of purchase of real THE RUSSIAN JEW 31 property mortgages in the name of Jews ; as also the registration of Jews as lessees of landed estates, situated outside the pre¬ cincts of towns and townlets, and the issue of powers of attorney to enable them to manage and dispose of such property. 3. To forbid Jews to carry on business on Sundays and on Christian holidays, and that the same laws in force, about the clos¬ ing on such days of places of business be¬ longing to Christians, shall, in the same way, apply to places of business owned by J ews. 4. That the measures laid down in para¬ graphs 1, 2, and 3, apply only to the Govern¬ ments vdthin the Pale of Jewish Settlement. His Majesty the Emperor was graciously pleased to give his assent to the above reso¬ lutions of the Committee of Ministers, on the 3d of May, 1882.’’ These Laws did not apply to the Jews of Poland. These temporary measures ” remain to¬ day the potential law of Russia regarding 32 WITHIN THE PALE Jews. They were not immediately en¬ forced. Russia is never in a hurry in mat¬ ters of this kind. She waits and notes the material results of such enactments at home, and the moral effects upon opinion abroad. In the case of the May Laws, there was a universal chorus of condemnation in Western Europe. It was felt everywhere that any attempt to put such savage meas¬ ures into operation must either lead to the flight of hundreds of thousands of wretched Jews over the borders, or to their death within the crowded towns of the Pale, from starvation induced by an overwhelming con¬ gestion of labour without means of employ¬ ment. The laws were, therefore, left inoperative, but in terrorem; General Ig- natieff being conveniently superseded, while a Commission presided over by Count Pahlen was appointed by the Emperor to prepare a report upon the whole Jewish question. CHAPTER III FROM THE IGNATIEFF LAWS TO THE KISHI- NEFF MASSACRES P RINCE DEMIDOFF SAN DONATO was a member of the Pahlen Com- misision, and in his admirable work La Question Jtiive en Russie” (published at Bruxelles, 1884,) he gives, in his own pro¬ posed solution of the problem of the Russian Jew, the broad and liberal measures which forced themselves upon the Commission as an essential basis for a settlement of the question on just and rational lines. He recommended the three following pro¬ posals : (1) For the re-establishment of more healthy relations between the Jews and the other inhabitants and counteracting Jewish industrial and other exploitation in the western region [the Pale of Settlement], 33 34 WITHIN THE PALE it is necessary to grant the Jews complete civil equality and freedom of choice of residence. This would lead to a greater dissemination of the Jewish population, which is now crowded together in partic¬ ular districts; to the alleviation of the poverty and hopeless condition of the Jew¬ ish masses, and would relieve the part of the country they now occupy from exces¬ sive industrial and other competition. (2) In order to destroy Jewish exclu¬ siveness and to facilitate the fusion of the Jews with the rest of the population it is necessary to incorporate the Jews with the local rural and urban communities, and to subject them completely in fiscal, admin¬ istrative, and other respects to the rules and regulations established for these com¬ munities. Those Jews who would wish to settle in the interior provinces should be allowed to enjoy the right of joining peas¬ ant and burgher communities in the places of their domicile in the ordinary way. (3) It is at the same time necessary that THE RUSSIAN JEW 35 sGrious attciition should be directed to¬ wards the organisation of elementary schools for the juvenile Jewish population, inasmuch as the school must always be one of the principal instruments for the moral training and Russification of the Jewish masses.” These were the common-sense recommen¬ dations of an enlightened mind for the cure of a growing social and political malady in Russian life. They would have effected that cure, had there been a statesmanship in the Government of the Empire capable of rising above anti-Semitic prejudice in the rendering of a great service to the country. In fact, there are but three Russian remedies for this growing danger to Russia, and two of them are impossible; the third being the rational one outlined by Prince Demidoff San Donato. Extermination can¬ not be thought of. Emigration is out of the question, where poverty is almost the nor¬ mal condition of two or three millions of people who have inherited the evils asso- 30 WITHIN THE PALE ciated with social wretchedness, religious intolerance, and race persecution. No other country will consent to receive them. The third remedy is, therefore, that alone which the nature and extent of the evil demand, and which, if wisely and courageously adopted, would make Kussia the stronger through the only effective remedy appli¬ cable to a growing, deadly danger. The facts of the economic and social con¬ ditions within the Pale of Settlement are so objective that the warning they give of a coming catastrophe cannot be ignored. It would be like leaving an epidemic of small¬ pox to cure itself by neglect. This condi¬ tion of things is fully explained and ex¬ pressed by the term, unnatural. It is analogous to a situation which would result from a Federal law compelling eveny European-born artisan and labourer within the whole United States to reside inside of Pennsylvania, and to be forbidden to seek employment outside the cities and towns of that state. The murderous competition for THE RUSSIAN JEW 87 employment, the deadly rivalry for exist¬ ence, the bad blood between opposing races, the poverty and social wretchedness which such a condition of things would create— apart from the operation of coercive laws— can readily be imagined by the American reader. But this is no overdrawn picture of the economic anarchy prevailing within the Russian Pale of Jewish Settlement. The present estimated population of the TsaPs dominions in Europe and Asia is 145,000,000. The territory of legal domicile for the Russian Jew is embraced in the fifteen governments,’’ or provinces, of Kovno, Vitebsk, Vilna, Mohilev, Minsk, Grodno, Volhynia, Chernigov, Poltava, Kiev, Podolia, Bessarabia, Cherson, Eka- terinoslav, and Taurida—extending south from near the Gulf of Riga, on the Baltic, to the Crimea and the Sea of Azov, and forming the western provinces of the Em¬ pire; having Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Roumania as frontier barriers. Poland is not included in the Pale. The Jews have 38 WITHIN THE PALE more_ freedom of movement there, and are not subject to some of the coercive restric¬ tions imposed within the above provinces. The Pale itself is again narrowed by the law which forbids a Jew to reside within thirty-three miles of the western frontier. It has a total area about equal to that of France. The population of the fifteen provinces of the Pale, including Poland, will be about 26,000,000. There are some 4,000,000 Jews comprised in this population, but these, ex¬ cepting 1,000,000 in Poland, are compelled under the May Laws’^ to reside within the cities, towns, and townlets ’’ of the Pale. The united population of these urban centres will probably not exceed a total of 5,000,000; so that the Jews num¬ ber three out of every five of the inhabitants of the urban centres within the fifteen provinces. The percentage of Jews to non-Jews in the towns and townships of the province of Mohilev, is estimated at 94; for those of THE RUSSIAN JEW 39 Valhynia, 71 per cent.; Minsk, 69; Kovno, 68; Podolia, 62; Vitebsk, 61; Grodno, 60; Vilna, 56; Kiev, 49; Poltava, 43; Bessa¬ rabia, 38; Chernigov, 29; Cherson, 28; The Taurida, 19; and Ekaterinoslav, 15 per cent. In the provinces of Russia in which Jews are not permitted to reside the town in¬ habitants average 59 persons to every 1000 of the rural population. In the population of the Pale the urban inhabitants average 222 for every 1000 of the rural residents and workers. Within the industrial centres of the Jewish Pale to which they are con¬ fined there are about 2730 Jews to every square mile of residential area. These facts and figures show how im¬ possible it is, under such economic condi¬ tions, for any healthy or hopeful prospect of industrial life to exist. The towns are crowded with artisans and traders, and as these are out of all proportion to the pro¬ ducers and consumers of an agricultural country they necessarily become more 40 WITHIN THE PALE destitute and wretched as their numbers increase. They are too poor to emigrate. They are prohibited from migrating. They cannot seek work on land. They are not permitted to engage in several occupations. Municipal and Grovernment posts are prac¬ tically closed to them. They have to com¬ pete with Eussian workers for such means of existence as can be found; and in face of these facts they are reproached for their poverty and made subject to special taxa¬ tion. It is also a charge against these people that they are exploiters of labour and not producers. The taunt comes from the apologists for the Ignatieft laws. The charge is not true. In proportion to popu¬ lation, there are relatively more artisans among Jews in Russia than among non- Jews. According to statistics obtained by the Pahlen Commission, the artisans and labourers averaged 15 per cent, of the total Jewish population of the Pale. In England the proportion of labourers and artisans is THE RUSSIAN JEW 41 over 20 per cent. ^ nbout 12 per cent, in Bel* gium; 10 per cent, in France, and 9 in Prus¬ sia. In KisFineff, where the Jews number 50,000 of the city population, the Hebrew artisans, and wage-earners generally, would number fully 10,000 before the recent anti- Semitic outrages. Nor can the injustice of the May Laws be defended or explained by the equally un¬ founded assertion that the Jew will not work the land. He refuses to do so in Russia only where he is prohibited. W^henever he has obtained access to the land, on fair terms, he has readily embraced the chance, and invariably improved his condition. This has been proved by the records of the Jewish agricultural colonies in the provinces of Vilna, Minsk, Grodno, Kovno, Volhynia, Cherson, and in Ekaterinoslav. There are colonies of more than 50,000 land-workers among the Jews of the southwestern prov¬ inces who have more than held their own in every branch of agricultural industry 42 WITHIN THE PALE with their Russian or Moldavian neigh¬ bours. This taunt is, consequently, no explanation of the Ignatieff laws. The evils—both to Russia and to the Jews of the Pale—arising out of the economic conditions which these laws must stereo¬ type, would have been swept away or modi¬ fied in the ten years following the killing and despoiling of the Jews in 1882, had the proposals of the Pahlen Commission been acted upon. The recommendations of provincial governors were preferred in¬ stead. Biassed officialism prevailed over the courageously wise counsels of Count Pahlen, Prince Demidoff San Donato, Count Strogonoff, and their colleagues, with the result that M. Pobedonostsev became the virtual administrator of the Ignatieff laws, and the murders, crimes, and expulsions of 1891 followed, in decadal sequence, the out¬ rages of 1882; not, by any means, as a desired or necessary measure of the policy adopted by the famed Procurator of the Holy Synod. M. Pobddonostsev would be THE RUSSIAN JEW 43 as averse to the killing of Jews as General Ignatieft. Both are far above suspicion in this respect. The instigator of the May Laws ” probably believed, as a soldier and diplomat, that such measures were needed the better to subdue a suspected revolution¬ ary tendency among a non-Russian race, and thought they might be enforced accord¬ ing to his plans, without any serious ex¬ plosion of anti-Semitic feeling. What followed, however, ought to have ‘been a warning to the keeper of the Tsar’s con¬ science on combined religious and national concerns. The Procurator’s plans would be as religious in their ultimate object as Ignatieff’s policy was the reverse; but both sought the accomplishment of a tyrannical purpose by means which led to such suffer¬ ing, injustice, and bloodshed as will ever be associated with their records and names. The Russian Jew was a domestic menace to the mind of Ignatieff; to M. Pob^donost- sev he was tainted with the unforgivable sins of heterodoxy, and a religious persecu- 44 WITHIN THE PALE tor is always relentless in proportion to his fanatical sincerity. No one can justly question the honesty of the Procurator’s zeal for Church and State in Russia., and this is why the infidel Israelites have found in him the most implacable of their power¬ ful foes. The measures resorted to in 1891, at the instance of the influence exerted by the Procurator of the Holy Synod, had for their end the carrying into effect of the provisions of the May Laws.” Thousands of Jews were still scattered throughout the prov¬ inces beyond the Pale; tolerated in centres of trade and enterprise for utilitarian rea¬ sons. Most of these were artisans who had by residence, and membership of trade guilds, acquired the privilege of living and working in various provinces of the Empire. Large numbers of these had been specially encouraged in previous years to settle in cities and towns where their proficiency in crafts was necessary to the development of local industries or manufacture. Suddenly THE RUSSIAN JEW 45 in 1891 an Imperial decree was issued, and all these sober, industrious, skilled, and, in many instances, respected citizens were ordered to quit their homes, property, or employment, within a given time, and take themselves within the Pale of Settlement or outside of the Russian Empire. The orders issued by the Chief of Police of Moscow to his subordinates, contained the following instructions: You must personally verify in all the . shops and factories kept hj Jews the num¬ ber of the assistant artisans; also, what category the Jews belong to, and the time of their arrival in Moscow for residence; and then take their signature to a notice of voluntary [!] departure from the Capital, warning them that the computation of their terms of stay will begin on the 14th of Julv next. Also, take a registry of names, C/ in alphabetical order, of Jewish artisans and, second, of Jews living in Moscow under the right of Circular No. 30 issued bv the Minister of the Interior in 1880, t/ 46 WITHIN THE PALE specifying in separate columns the time of arrival in Moscow, number of assistant artisans, number in family, and the expiration of the term of departure. In reference to Jews residing according to Cir¬ cular of 1880, specify their occupations, also the names of commercial houses where they were employed, and present them to me within two weeks.” The penalty for refusing to sign the paper suggested by General Yourkoffsky, was im¬ mediate expulsion. The '' voluntary ” alter¬ native gained only a little time for prepara¬ tion. It offered, however, some chances to wealthy Jews to come to an arrangement with lower police officials, whereby the gen¬ eral order of expulsion might be evaded, for a consideration. The attack by Government and people upon the Jews in 1891 was a deliberate pro¬ ceeding, Prince Dolgorouki was an able and a fair-minded Governor-General of Moscow. Neither Russian nor Jewish com¬ plaint had been lodged against him during THE RUSSIAN JEW 47 his tenure of office. His duties had been performed with care and competency, and his administration of the ancient capital and province left no room for official fault¬ finding at St. Petersburg. Coincidently with a notification to all Governors of Provinces in the Emperor’s name, that all permits to allow Jews to re¬ side outside of the Pale should be with¬ drawn on a certain date, an order for the removal of the Governor-General of Mos¬ cow was also made, and the Tsar’s brother, the Grand Duke Sergius, was nominated to supersede General Dolgorouki. General Kostanda was to act as Deputy Governor; pending the arrival of Duke Sergius, and to this officer, along with the equally zealous anti-Semite, Yourkofisky, Chief of the Mos¬ cow Police, was left the congenial task of clearing-out ” the Jews. Never was an odious work more brutally performed. The quarter in which the poorest Jews resided was surrounded in the night time by the police and fire-brigade forces, and the un- 48 WITHIN THE PALE happy creatures were routed from their dwellings as if they were so many noxious animals. Some who had been warned a few hours beforehand fled to the CeMetcLires of the city for protection, whil^ it has been placed on record that several fathers of families took their daughters to houses of ill-fame for the night, presumably to find protection where they would be least sus¬ pected of seeking refuge. All this being done in the name of the Tsar, the populace were encouraged to co¬ operate in executing what they were led to believe to be the Emperor’s wish. Mas¬ sacres, raping, and looting became once more the direct results of barbarous decrees. Some 3000 Jews were driven from Moscow after many had been killed. Hundreds of business men were ruined, being compelled to close their establishments, and to dispose of valuable stock at prices which could not realise enough to discharge their obliga¬ tions. Those who were able to purchase transport to America emigrated, but the THE RUSSIAN JEW 49 *• mass of the expelled victims wended their way toward the Pale, there to add still more to the congestion of life and labour which had already rendered the vast Ghetto of the Empire the home of poverty, suffering, and despair. The example set in Moscow was followed in Kiev and other cities, and encouraged police and mobs elsewhere to emulate the inhuman work of hunting the hated race from villages and towns. Throughout the year 1891 outrages were perpetrated in vari¬ ous provinces, despite some apparently ear¬ nest efforts on the part of the Government to stop the more violent outbreaks which had been provoked by its own orders. Sev¬ eral villages where Jews resided were burned down. Fully 70,000 Jews emi¬ grated during the year; this fact confirming, in part only, a saying attributed to a con¬ spicuous personality in the Tsar’s confi¬ dence, that the Russian Jewish question would be ultimately solved by the action of the “ May Laws,” as these would force one- 50 WITHIN THE PALE third of the Jews to emigrate; one-third more would become converted to the Ortho¬ dox Church; while the other third would perish of hunger! Whatever may be the desire of the more violent anti-Semitic Eussians to see such an unparalleled programme realised in results, there can be no doubt as to the efficiency of the anti-Jewish code of Russian laws to work out such a solution, if it were a task legally possible of accomplishment. Allusion has already been briefly made to the tangle of contradictory laws which the ukases, decrees, promulgations, and provi¬ sions relating to the Russian Jew have created. Many of these measures appear to have been adopted under the pressure of unreflecting prejudice or apprehension. Some bear the impress of wise and humane intentions, born, however, in the minds of Ministers orMonarchs too weak to carry out the enlightened impulse which gave them birth. But the vast proportion of these re¬ pressive and oppressive laws are frankly THE RUSSIAN JEW 51 tyrannical in inspiration and purpose, and the spirit that could suggest measures which are a deliberate violation of the fundamental principles and rights of civilised existence would be a feeling worthy to animate the task of carrying the above programme into execution. CHAPTER IV A MURDER-MAKING LEGEND DE PLEHVE and the Tsar can ac- -LT-L.. eomplish one good and blessed work, if so minded, without altering a single anti-Semitic Russian law. The Emperor can destroy, in Russia, the atrocious legend about the annual killing of Christian chil¬ dren by Jews as an alleged part of the Blood Atonemeut in Hebrew Paschal rites. In this humane and Christian task he is entitled to the co-operation of the Emperor of Aus¬ tria, the King of Roumania, and the heads of other Balkan States, where this story of ritual murder is constantly circulated, and not infrequently as a part of political propa¬ ganda. There ought to be a truly Christian crusade waged against this infamous prod¬ uct of ancient, insensate, sectarian hate. It was the inspiration of the most horrible of 63 THE RUSSIAN JEW 53 the Kishineff murders; the driving of nails through the eyes of a woman, the cutting out of the tongue of a two-year-old child, and of nameless sexual mutilations. Thou¬ sands of innocent people have been done to death in the centuries through which these crimes have been the bloody fruit of a mon¬ strous invention, born of a spirit of super¬ stitious savagery, which no age has yet made any honest civilised endeavour to ex¬ orcise out of ignorant and fanatical Chris¬ tian minds. The Jews of Kishineff believe with all right-minded people everywhere that no one deplores these shocking crimes more than the Emperor. His humanity is beyond ques¬ tion in popular belief, and, should a suitable opportunity be given, or be forthcoming, while the recollection of this great stain on his country’s reputation remains in the pub¬ lic memory, he may be counted upon, it is to be hoped, to place on record his honest con¬ demnation of such abominable deeds. Let His Majesty the Tsar add this task m 54 WITHIN THE PALE other noble duties with which his name is associated. A special ukase, reciting his own disbelief in the ritual-murder legend, and forbidding under severe penalties its circulation anywhere, and, by any means, in Russia ; ordering that this ukase sihall be read, in the Emperor’s name, in every church in the Empire, a fortnight before Easter each year for the next five years; let this be done, and the good work is virtually accomplished for Christianity, for civilisa¬ tion, and for Russia, too. A similar obligation lies upon the govern¬ ments of Austria and of the Balkan States. Roumania is at present the worst of sinners in this matter. This legend is in constant circulation through the anti-Semitic press there, being used, in fact, as an argument in political campaigns for driving the Jews out of the country. A few months ago, a Roumanian paper, the Yocea Tutovei of Berlad, openly incited the populace to kill the Jews. In a series of articles, subsequently reprinted in pamphlet THE RUSSIAN JEW 55 form, popular ignorance and passion were appealed to by stories of alleged Hebrew murders of Christian children. One extract from this organ of Roumanian opinion will illustrate at once the savage sentiments of the writer and the culpable conduct of a government which could permit such ap¬ peals to assassination to be openly made in a civilised land: “ The recent ritual murders committed by Jev^s in Austria,, Bohemia, Hungary, Ger¬ many, and Russia must still be fresh in everyone^s mind. And how many children have disappeared in our own country! How many mutilated bodies have been found, while the criminals have remained undis¬ covered! Who are these criminals—these bloodthirsty murderers of our prattling babes? They are the fanatical Jews that infest our land. These monsters are the slayers of our Christian children. They are the criminals^—the Jews who have in¬ vaded our country like locusts. 66 WITHIN THE PALE The time for peaceful and legal re¬ strictions is passing away. Let all good Roumanians raise their heavy sticks and kill these parasites of their country.’’ Roumania is the western boundary of Bessarabia. Before the Berlin Treaty of 1878, a portion of this now Russian prov¬ ince belonged to Roumania. Moldavians live on each side of the frontier. The pamphlets circulated by the anti-Semites of Berlad, containing the above and other murderous appeals to fanaticism, would in¬ evitably find their way into the Moldavian community of Kishineff, where Pavolachi Kroushevan, himself a Moldavian, was car¬ rying on a similar bloodthirsty propaganda in the Bessarahetz against the Jews of Bessarabia. The Governments which con¬ tinue to permit this kind of press savagery are themselves morally responsible for the crimes which find their instigation in such writings. Nor can diplomatic denunciation, after the occurrence of deeds of infamy such THE RUSSIAN JEW 57 as those of Kishineff, atone in any way to the outraged sense of civilised human feel¬ ing for what Leo Tolstoyjrightly terms the permitted assassinations of innocent people. For the law or Government which encourages by indifference the circulation of these atrocious, fabricated tales of the slaughtering of Christian children by He¬ brews, is either the indifferent guardian of citizens^ lives or the cowardly accom¬ plice of a fanatical ruffianism which it is unable or unwilling to grapple with and put down. There is another and a higher authority that can deal with the propagation of this crime-stained legend, especially in Catholic countries like Austria and Poland. This is the authority of the Holy See. A few years ago a parish priest of Vienna revived the old story of the alleged murder of the boy Simon of Treaty for ritual pur¬ poses, by Jews in the fifteenth century. He republished particulars of what purported to be the crime so named, but unfairly sup- 58 WITHIN THE PALE pressed tlie facts associated with the accu¬ sation, which would explain the whole charge away. The Jews who had confessed to the murder of the boy did so under the application of torture; a pretty common method of extorting desired information ” of trumped-up charges by the various au¬ thorities in the Middle Ages. The confes¬ sion thus wrung from the accused by the application of the rack led to their execu¬ tion, but it is on record that Pope Sixtus IV. denounced their conviction and death as a murder. The reverend anti-Semite tried his hand again, in the same line, in conjunction with a renegade Jew, and came to grief. One Paul Meyer revealed ” how a Christian boy, to his (Meyer^s) own knowledge, w^as kidnapped and slaughtered for the purposes of Paschal rites by the hated Hebrews. The sensational story was published in an anti-Semitic Vienna newspaper. This was a deliberate challenge to inquiry and refuta¬ tion. The challenge was accepted by the THE RUSSIAN JEW 59 Jews of the city, in a prosecution of the Vaterland, when Meyer confessed in open court that the whole story was an invention of his own, palmed off on both the priest and the public. An ex-professor of Hebrew in the Univer¬ sity of Prague, an enthusiastic student of Eastern cabalistic writings, has contributed very materially to the revival in Poland, Bohemia., and Austria of these miserable inventions. He has written a. work in Latin on the subject, and he gives the impression of a,n honest fanatic who is in the grip of a mysterious investigation. He also falls back upon a converted Jew as a guide, and is led to believe in the authenticity of cer¬ tain cabalistic writings shown to him by this man, Brimamo'. He quotes from one of these books, the Ha-likkutim,^’ a passage which the credulous padre is convinced proves the employment of the blood of Chris¬ tian maidens in these unhallowed Hebrew ceremonies. This quotation is found, on critical examination, to refer to a passage in 60 WITHIN THE PAI.E the Bible dealing with the supernatural world, in which the colour of the blood of a virgin is taken as emblematical of the Day of Judgment, There is nothing whatever beyond this in Brimamo’s work to justify the inference that Christian maidens’ blood is sometimes used in Jewish sacrifices. In the same book Canon Kohling draws upon other cabalistic documents for sug¬ gestions and innuendoes tending to uphold his case, but in every instance in which he quotes passages to support his proposi¬ tions, they are found, on close inspection, to convey no such meaning as he attempts to attach to them. There is not, in fact, a solitary authenticated instance of this san¬ guinary sacrifice given in his two works, “ My Replies to the Rabbis,” and “ The Controversy and the Human Sacrifices of Rabbinism,” both published in 1883. Still, these writings have been widely read, and have done much harm in misleading minds that look for truth and Christian guidance from clerical authors. THE RUSSIAN JEW 61 Can nothing effective be done to kill this legend ? I quote in an appendix, some pronouncements from Bulls issued by Popes Innocent IV., Gregory X., Martin V., Nicholas V., and Paul III., all reprobating this blood accusation as being a groundless and monstrous invention, and a general pre¬ text for the plundering of Jews. These en¬ lightened words of denunciation were ad¬ dressed to the rulers, prelates, and people of the Middle Ages, some of them so far back as six hundred years ago. Can this example not be followed now when the reputable press of all civilised countries would will- ^^S^ly co-operate in a just crusade against this hoary-headed, crime-stained infamy? It has been urged that as anti-Semitism in France, Austria, and Germany is a politi¬ cal movement, a denunciation of the use of the murder-legend calumny would probably be misconstrued. This is a highly sensitive but very inconsistent position. Surely, when Socialism—which is a far greater and nobler political movement in each of these 62 WITHIN THE PALE _ countries—can be vigorously condemned, on assumed moral and Catholic grounds; an agitation relying upon literature and le¬ gends, convicted of forgery and lies, and condemned again and again by the Holy See itself; and which has the killing or tor¬ ture of fellow beings as its ultima ratio, should claim some measure of earnest repu¬ diation and moral censure at the hands of Catholic Powers, temporal and spiritual. His Holiness Pope Pius, the Emperor of Austria, and the Tsar could easily draw the fangs of this murder legend. To no other minds in Christendom could the consequen¬ ces of this horrible calumny of long and in¬ famous vitality be more odious or hateful. It is a reproach and disgrace to Chris¬ tianity that certain notorious clerical or¬ gans in France and Austria persistently cir¬ culate these incitations to fanatical outrage, and a stain upon the political life of Aus¬ tria, Eoumania, and Eussia, whose govern¬ ments tolerate this poisonous propaganda. It is a pestiferous evil that could be readily THE RUSSIAN JEW 63 stamped out if the wish and will to rid Eu¬ rope of its baleful influence could overcome the opportunist counsels of a spiritless en¬ tourage, which prevent the three best and greatest potentates in Europe from realis¬ ing all the evils, religious, moral, and po¬ litical, that spring from this perennial source of shameless sectarian rancour, bloodshed, and crime. CHAPTER V RUSSIAN’S ATTITUDE HE absolute truth about the plan and purpose of the massacres at Kishi- netf in April may be difficult to determine amidst the conflicting accounts of Russian officials, and of Jewish witnesses of what actually occurred. The wronged and the wrongers seldom or ever agree as to dis¬ puted facts. But there can be no doubt upon any mind conversant with the state of Russian feeling, and the trend of Russia’s domestic policy, as to the intolerable posi¬ tion of the Hebrew subjects of the Tsar. No facts are concealed in this connection. They are as objective and undisguised as the Russian policeman, and as patent to every inquirer from Odessa to Warsaw as the rivers Dniester and Vistula. I brought away with me after a journey through the 64 THE RUSSIAN JEW 65 Jewish Pale, the conviction that there is no horizon of hope for the Russian Jew in any prospective era of future emancipatian. He is and will remain an alien until the politically impossible comes to be a reality —until the Empire of the Tsar elects to adopt a government of constitutional liberty. He is under no personal or political re¬ straint, it is true, in the matter of emigra¬ tion. The Jews are free to leave Russia to¬ morrow. Such freedom of action, however, is like the tempting waters which only aggravated the thirst of Tantalus by the mockery of a nearness made impossible to reach. The poverty of the vast mass of these unfortunate people renders the thought of finding refuge in America or the Argentine a hopeless dream. And, as an educated Russian official said, in discussing this question with the writer, What can we do with them? They are the racial antithesis of our nation. A fusion with us is impossible, owing to religious and other 66 WITHIN THE PALE disturbing clauses. They will always be a potential source of sectariain and economic disorder in our country. We cannot admit them to equal rights of citizenship for these reasons and, let me add, because their in¬ tellectual superiority would enable them in a few years^ time to gain possession of most of the posts of our civil administration. They are a growing danger of a most serious nature to our Empire in two of its most vulnerable points,—^their discontent is a menace to us along the Austrian and Ger¬ man frontiers, while they are the active propagandists of the Socialism of Western Europe within our borders. The only solu¬ tion of the problem of the Russian Jew is his departure from Russia.’^ This is the conclusion to which one is irresistibly driven by a full survey of the cruelly anomalous position occupied by the Jew in relation to all the dominant factors of Russian life and government. He is under the obligations of citizenship, mili¬ tary and otherwise, without its privileges or THE RUSSIAN JEW 67 full protection. Special taxes are imposed upon him. He is confined by law within a kind of economic concentration camp. The legal difficulties put in the way of the full exercise of his industrial capacities are both the source of his poverty and of his oppression. He cannot own land, within the Pale, * or work it; but he must live. Therefore, he is compelled to exploit those who will hate him all the more on account of a resourcefulness which conquers some of the obstacles purposely placed in the way of his livelihood. His faith is assailed by almost every form of human temptation, in¬ cluding the terrorism of such periodical crimes as those perpetrated a few weeks ago. And the very fidelity which enables him to resist both the powers of proselytism and of persecution, only adds one more prejudiced ground to the many which appeal against him to the religious side of an autocratic regime which decrees that an invulnerable heterodoxy is one of the worst of crimes in Russia. 68 WITHIN THE PALE T'hG Jgw has no friend outside his own race in Russia, while not infrequently those of his own household are the worst pay¬ masters of his talent and industry. The peasant dislikes him for his race, his religion, and his exploiting propensities. The artisan and labourer in urban centres of the crowded Pale look upon him a^s an economic black-leg, because he is compelled to work at anything for the wages of bare subsistence, in order to live. He is, by the cruel decree of his fate, and not by choice, the cause of low wages. This is one reason why a great number of the sanguinary rioters at Kishineff were Russian and- Moldavian workingmen. The shop-keeper and petty dealer see in their Hebrew rival a competitor who out¬ classes them in all the dexterous tricks of trade, and w'ho can succeed where the busi¬ ness capacity of the Slavonic gentile is wanting in perseverance and resource. Here hatred is bom of a sordid jealousy. As rich merchant and banker he is toler- THE RUSSIAN JEW 69 ated. The wealthy Russian Jew is, at present, a Russian necessity. Odessa, one of the richest cities of