fflTAC 
 
 
 ; 
 
 THE JEWS OF ROUMANIA AND 
 THE TREATY OF BERLIN 
 
 The marvelous contributions of the Jewish people to the spiritual 
 and intellectual wealth of the world entitle them to the gratitude and 
 homage, not the hatred and persecution of mankind. 
 
 If gratitude were a supreme virtue of nations, as it should be of 
 individuals, there would never be any organized governmental perse- 
 cution of the Jews. 
 
 If her sense of national honor and international obligation does not 
 incline Roumnuia to deeds of justice and righteousness, then let the 
 strong arm of force be used and the wrath of the nations be visited 
 upon her. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OP 
 
 HON. WALTER M. CHANDLER 
 
 OF 
 
 YORK 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
 
 OCTOBER 10, 1913 
 
 13001 1245G 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
 1913
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. WALTER M. CHANDLER, 
 
 OF NEW YORK. 
 
 THE JEWS OF ROUMANIA AND THE TREATY OF BERLIN. 
 
 Mr. CHANDLER of New York. Mr. Speaker, I wish now to 
 address myself to the subject of Roumanian persecution of the 
 Jew in defiance of the treaty of Berlin, and I preface my re- 
 marks by reciting a joint resolution which I have introduced 
 this afternoon. 
 The joint resolution is as follows: 
 
 House joint resolution 138. 
 
 Whereas the following is the literal text of Articles XLIII and XL1V of 
 the treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878 : 
 
 " XLIII. The high contracting parties recognize Hie independence of 
 Roumania, subject to the conditions set forth in the two following 
 articles. 
 
 " XLIV. In Rotimar ia the difference of religious creeds and confes- 
 sions shall not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclu- 
 sion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and 
 political rights, admission to public employments, functions, and 
 honors, or the exercise of the various professions and industries in 
 any locality whatsoever. 
 
 " The freedom and outward exercise of all forms of worship shall 
 be assured to all persons belonging to the Roumanian state, as well as 
 to foreigners, and no hindrance shall be offered either to the hierar- 
 chical organization of the different communions or to their relations 
 with their spiritual chiefs. 
 
 " The subjects and citizens of all the powers, traders or others, 
 shall be treated in Roumania, without distinction of creed, on a foot- 
 ing of perfect equality." 
 
 Whereas the Government of Roumania accepted the terms of said arti- 
 cles of said treaty as a condition precedent to the recognition of her 
 independence ; and 
 
 Whereas it is a matter of certain knowledge that the Jews of Roumania. 
 numbering about 250,000, have been the barbarized and impoverished 
 victims of Roumanian discriminatory legislation and of Roumanian 
 riots and massacres for a period of more than 30 years in violation 
 of both the letter and the spirit of the treaty of Berlin : Therefore 
 be it 
 
 Resolved by 1he Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
 States of America in Congress assembled. That it is the sense of the 
 American Congress that the interests of civilization, the rights of 
 humanity, the principles of eternal justice, and the dignity and sanctity 
 of international Jaw demand that the signatory powers of the treaty of 
 1300112450 3 
 
 21 17853
 
 Berlin compel Roumania to observe the stipulations of the treaty of 
 Berlin in the matter of the treatment of the Jews. 
 
 Resoli-ed, That the Secretary of State be requested to transmit a copy 
 of this resolution to the Governments of Great Britain, Germany, 
 Austria, Russia, France, Italy, and Turkey. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, in all the history of prejudice the persecution of 
 the Jew has no parallel. Whether born of human wickedness 
 or divine vengeance, Jewish persecution is the strangest of all 
 historical phenomena. When and where it originated and what 
 have been its intensifying and perpetuating causes are still sub- 
 jects of grave doubt and speculative debate. 
 
 AVhen we coine to trace the history of prejudice against the 
 Tew and to seek its cause we are led by many labyrinthian 
 paths through shadows of doubt and mystery to a remote an- 
 tiquity. The popular notion that hatred against the Jew origi- 
 nated in the crucifixion of the Savior is without basis in 
 reason or in fact. The tragedy of Golgotha might have been a 
 perpetuating, an intensifying means, but it was not the origin 
 the originating principle. 
 
 To ascertain the real beginning of Jewish persecution we must 
 antedate the Christian era by several centuries. We must go 
 back to the days of ancient Egypt. We learn from Genesis 
 xliii, 32, that " the Egyptians might not. eat bread with the 
 Hebrews: for that it is an abomination unto the Egyptians." 
 Social discrimination and ostracism seem to have been keen and 
 bitter even in those early times. And in the Book of Esther, 
 iii, 8, we find an epitome of much of the complaint made by 
 the anti-Semites and Jew baiters of modern times : "And Hainan 
 said unto the king, Ahasuerus, there is a certain people scat- 
 tered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces 
 of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people, 
 neither keep they the king's laws." Then Haman added : " If it 
 please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed." 
 Those were plain, fierce days when thoroughgoing measures 
 were unhesitatingly advised. 
 
 How thoroughly the old Romans hated and despised the Jews 
 may be learned from early Roman writers. Cicero, Pro Flacco, 
 says: "Their barbarous superstitions must be fought." "The 
 Jews are nothing but a superstitious nation," says Persius. 
 " Their Sabbath is a lugubrious day," adds Ovid. " They wor- 
 ship the hog and the ass," affirms Petronius. Of course, the 
 charge of worshiping the hog was a gratuitous slander, a lie 
 born of calumny and ignorance and perpetuated by hate and 
 superstition. 
 
 In the annual carnivals of ancient Rome the Jews were com- 
 pelled to play the roles of clowns and buffoons, were forced to 
 
 1300112456
 
 run in the races ridiculously dressed, and were compelled to 
 ride through the streets mounted backward on donkeys, holding 
 the animals' tails in their hands. 
 
 When the night of the Middle Ages fell upon the human race 
 Jewish persecution often assumed forms of peculiar malignity 
 and hate. King John of England once caused one of his Jewish 
 subjects to be cast into prison, and then ordered that a tooth 
 should be drawn from his mouth each day until he had sur- 
 rendered his money. Seven teeth were extracted, one on each 
 subsequent day, until, on the eighth, the unhappy and unlucky 
 man ransomed the remainder of his teeth at the price demanded, 
 10,000 marks of silver. 
 
 In Toulouse, France, it was an ancient custom on certain 
 holidays to slap the Jews in the face publicly and ostentatiously. 
 All the Jews in town were compelled to assemble in the public 
 square. The Count of Toulouse then opened the miserable pro- 
 ceedings by slapping in the face the elder of the Jewish com- 
 munity, and his subjects followed suit, until all the Jews had 
 been slapped and thoroughly humiliated. 
 
 In Germany in the eighteenth century, even so grand a King 
 as Frederick the Great persecuted the Jews by contemptible 
 and irritating exactions. He permitted only a certain number 
 of them to marry annually, and then only on condition that they 
 would buy $300^ worth of china ware from his royal porcelain 
 factory. We are reminded by this that Frederick was not only 
 a scholar and philosopher under the tutelage of Voltaire, but 
 that he was a money-maker as well. 
 
 But time does not permit a recital of all the laws of ancient 
 and medieval ages, whose effect was to embitter the life and 
 degrade the condition of the Jew. The world is already too 
 sadly familiar with the history of his woes. The references 
 already made have been merely academic and introductory. 
 
 It now becomes my painful duty to be pointed and practical; 
 to discuss and denounce the brutal and savage persecutions of 
 the Jews by Roumania, reputed to be a Christian nation, pre- 
 tending to be civilized and enlightened, while violating the most 
 sacred and solemn treaty obligations to her sister nations, 
 while trampling under foot all the charities of the heart, all 
 the tenets of religion, and all the sentiments of humanity and 
 this at the beginning of the twentieth century more than a 
 hundred years after the American Revolution established the 
 immortal principle that all just powers of government are de- 
 rived from the consent of the governed ; more than a hundred 
 years after the French Revolution sent the cry of " Liberty, 
 equality, fraternity," reverberating around the globe; and more 
 
 13001 1245G
 
 6 
 
 than nineteen centuries after the Prophet of Nazareth delivered 
 the Sermon on the Mount; the chart of the soul on the sea of 
 life, whose beatitudes are the glorifications of the virtues of 
 meekness, mercy, peace, gentleness, and love. 
 
 The modern Kingdom of Roumania was formed by the union 
 of the ancient Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Prov- 
 inces situated near the mouth of the Danube, having an area of 
 about 50,000 square miles, and occupying an extent of territory 
 some 350 miles in length and 160 miles in breadth. The shape 
 of the country is an irregular half-nioou, touching the Black 
 Sea near the center of the crescent. 
 
 The people of Roumania proudly boast a classic antiquity in 
 their supposed descent from the Romans who conquered the 
 ancient Scythian Kingdom of Dacia, which was practically the 
 modern territory of Rouinania. 
 
 If not classic in history the country of Roumania is at least 
 classic and historic in soil, for the legions of Rome, the hordes 
 of Attilla, the crusaders of Richard and Barbarossa, and the 
 Cossacks of Peter the Great, have crossed its borders and tra- 
 versed its plains. 
 
 The language of Rouruaiiia has a groundwork of Latin and 
 Slavonic, with a superstructure of Turkish, Greek, and French. 
 
 The social, political, religious, and intellectual life of the 
 people is a strange, weird blending of the cruder forms of occi- 
 dental and oriental civilizations. 
 
 The population of Roumania in 1910 was about 6,850,000. 
 Fully 6,000,000 of these were Rouinans or Vlachs ; the rest were 
 Jews, Armenians, gypsies, Greeks, Germans, Turks, Magyars, 
 Servians, and Bulgarians. 
 
 Of the total population of Roumania the Jews number about 
 250,000. And it is with the Jews of Roumauia, in their relation- 
 ship as citizens and subjects to the Government of Roumania, 
 and with the Government of Roumania in its relationship to its 
 Jewish population, under binding treaty obligations entered into 
 by Roumania with the great powers of Europe, that I shall 
 hereafter in this address deal particularly and pointedly. 
 
 'I desire especially to discuss the persecution of the Jews by 
 Roumania, in defiance of the treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878. 
 .1 shall, however, in the first place, as a foundation for that 
 discussion, submit for your consideration a classified list of Rou- 
 manian laws, passed during the half century preceding the 
 assembling of the congress of Berlin, which were intended to 
 discriminate against the Jews. This list, though short, may be 
 tedious and tiresome to study and contemplate, but it will be 
 decidedly illuminating and enlightening when we come to con- 
 
 1300112456
 
 sider the motive and conduct of the great powers in forcing 
 Rouniania, through treaty stipulations, to accord better treat- 
 ment to her Jewish subjects. The following is a resume, with 
 authorities cited, of the leading Roumanian legal enactments 
 against the Jews between the years 1802 and 1ST6: 
 
 1803. Alexander Monize forbids Jews to rent farms. (" American Jew- 
 ish Year Book," 1901, p. 48.) 
 
 May 18, 1804. Alexander Monize, of Moldavia, forbids Jews to buy 
 farm products. (Locb, " La Situation des Israelites en Turquie, en Serbie 
 et en Roumanie," p. 212, Paris, 1877, hereafter cited as " Loeb.") 
 
 1817. Code Cahmachi, section 1430, forbids Jews of Roumania to ac- 
 quire real property. (Loeb, p. 213.) 
 
 By 1818. Code of Jolm Caradja, of Wallachia, repeats the church laws 
 against allowing Jews to be witnesses against Christians. (Am. Jew. 
 Yearbook, 1901, p. 50.) 
 
 By 1819. Code of Kallimachor of Moldavia gives civil rights to Jews, 
 who, however, may not own land. (Am. Jew. Yearbook, 1901, p. 50.) 
 
 1831. Fundamental law of Moldavia, chapter 3, section 94, orders 
 all Jews and their occupations to be registered ; Jews not of proved 
 usefulness are to be expelled ; others of same class shall not be allowed 
 to enter. (Loeb, p. 214.) 
 
 March 11, 1839. Tax of GO piasters per annum placed on Jews of 
 Moldavia. (Loeb, p. 215.) 
 
 December 12, 1850. No Jew allowed to enter Roumania unless pos- 
 sessed of 5,000 piasters and of known occupation. (Loeb, p. 216.) 
 
 May 5, 1851. Appointment of commission of vagabondage at Jassy to 
 determine right of entry of foreign Jews. (Loeb, p. 21G.) 
 
 June 17, 1861.- Circular of Roumanian ministry preventing Jews from 
 being innkeepers in rural districts. (Locb, p. 217.) 
 
 April 12, 18G4. Communal law of Roumania permits only those Jews 
 to be naturalized who (1) have reached the grade of noncommissioned 
 officers in the army (2) or have passed through college (3) or have a 
 recognized foreign degree (4) or have founded a factory. (Loeb, pp. 
 107-108.) 
 
 December 4, 1864. Jews excluded from being advocates. (Loeb, 
 p. 124.) 
 
 December 7, 1864. Elementary education of all children between the 
 ages of 8 and 12. (Sincerus, " Les Juifs en Roumanie," hereafter cited 
 as " Sincerus.") 
 
 April 14, 18GG. Ghika, Roumanian minister of interior, permits Jews 
 already settled in rural districts to keep farms till leases run out, but 
 they must not renew them. (Loeb, p. 218.) 
 
 March, 1868. Law submitted to chamber preventing Jews from hold- 
 ing land, settling in the country, selling food, keeping inns, holding 
 public office, trading without special permits. Jews already settled in 
 rural districts were to be driven therefrom. This was withdrawn April 
 5 in fear of the intervention of the powers. (Loeb, pp. 1G9, 311-312.) 
 
 June 23, 1868. All Roumanians forced to serve in Army, "but not 
 strangers" (Loeb, p. 109); therefore Jews who served were for this 
 purpose regarded as Roumauians. 
 
 December 27, 1868. Jews excluded from medical profession In Rou- 
 mania. (Loeb, p. 124.) Clause omitted in decree of June, 1871. 
 
 January 15, 1869. Jews not allowed to be tax farmers in rural com- 
 munes. (Loeb, p. 112.) 
 13001 12456
 
 8 
 
 July, 1869. Note of M. Cogalniceano to French consul at Bucharest 
 refuses to consider Jews as Roumanians. (Loeb, p. 102.) 
 
 October, 1869. Extra tax put on kosher meat at Roman and Focsan. 
 (Loeb. p. 127.) 
 
 October 25, 1869. Jews prevented from being apothecaries In Rou- 
 mania, except where there are no Roumanian apothecaries. (Loeb, p. 
 125; Sincerus, p. 102.) 
 
 November 10. 1870. Servian Jews obliged to serve in Army. (Loeb, 
 p. 57.) 
 
 February 15, 1872. All dealers in tobacco in Roumania must be 
 "Roumanians." (Loeb, p. 120.) 
 
 April 1, 1873. Law forbidding Jews to sell spirituous liquors in rural 
 districts. (Loeb, p. 188.) A license may be given only to an elector. 
 (Sincerus, p. 19.) 
 
 These enactments show the legal disabilities of the Jews. But 
 they do not tell the full story of shame and humiliation of a long- 
 suffering and wretched people. Written in the calm and digni- 
 fied phraseology of the law they can not and do not recount the 
 bloody details of riot and massacre, whose occurrence was the 
 disgrace of civilization and whose horrors compose the blackest 
 chapters of Roumanian history. I will not harrow your feelings 
 with a recital of the details. I shall content myself with a 
 simple and dispassionate discussion of legal rights and treaty 
 obligations in the matter of Roumania and the Jews. 
 
 It was at the close of the War of the Crimea that the great 
 Governments of Europe first gave serious attention to the op- 
 pressions of the Jews by the rulers of the principalities of 
 Moldavia and Wallachia, the Provinces from which the kingdom 
 of Roumauia was afterwards formed. At that time the first 
 decisive effort was made to relieve the legal disabilities of the 
 Jews. 
 
 The following articles of the protocol of the conference of 
 Constantinople of the llth of February, 1856, imposed, it must 
 be admitted, rather exacting terms upon Moldavia and Wal- 
 lachia : 
 
 XIII. All the religions and those who profess them shall enjoy equal 
 liberty and equal protection in the two Principalities. 
 
 XV. Foreigners may possess landed property in Moldavia and Wal- 
 lachia on discharging the same liabilities as natives and on submitting 
 to the laws. 
 
 XVI. All Moldavians and Wallachians, without exception, shall be 
 admissible to public; employments. 
 
 XVIII. All classes of the population, without any distinction of birth 
 or religion, shall enjoy equality of civil rights and particularly of the 
 right of property in every shape, but the exercise of political rights shall 
 be suspended in the case of natives placed under a foreign protection. 
 
 The language of these articles was an emphatic and unequivo- 
 cal' declaration in favor of civil and religious liberty for all the 
 inhabitants of Roumauia. A complete realization of ttoe protec- 
 
 1300112456
 
 9 
 
 tion afforded by these articles would have been all that the Jews 
 could reasonably have asked. But such a thing was not to be. 
 No such blessing was in store for thorn. The reigning Prince of 
 Moldavia, Gregory Ghika, began at once a course of subterfuge 
 and evasion for the purpose of rendering abortive the intentions 
 and efforts of the powers. Pie contended that a strict applica- 
 tion of the provisions of these articles was impracticable, if not 
 impossible, on account of the great number of unassimilated 
 Jews in the Principalities; and two years later he presented a 
 memorial to the congress of Paris asking that the realization of 
 the principle embodied in the articles of the protocol of the con- 
 ference of Constantinople, which he admitted to be excellent 
 within itself, should be left to the discretion of the local Gov- 
 ernment, which alone, he contended, knew how to apply the 
 principle. His arguments were plausible, if not sound and 
 righteous, and at h;st, out of deference to the wishes and pledges 
 of Ghika, the powers modified their intentions by the adoption 
 of Article XLVI of the convention of Paris, which runs as 
 follows : 
 
 All Moldavians and Wallachians shall be equal in the eye of the law 
 and with regard to taxation, and shall be equally admissible to public 
 employments in both principalities. 
 
 Their individual liberty shall be guaranteed. No one can be detained 
 or prosecuted but in conformity with the law. No one can be deprived 
 of his property unless legally for causes of public interest and on 
 payment of indemnification. 
 
 Moldavians and Wallachians of all Christian confessions shall equally 
 enjoy political rights. The enjoyment of these rights may be extended 
 to other religions by legislative arrangements. 
 
 Indeed the pledge of Ghika and the expectations of the 
 powers based upon this pledge were that the Jews would be 
 gradually enfranchised and emancipated politically by legisla- 
 tive arrangements. But Roumanian legislation during the past 
 50 years shows how badly founded were those expectations and 
 how complete has been the evasion of that pledge. 
 
 Instead of relieving their legal disabilities, the efforts of the 
 powers to help the Jews through stipulations of the conventions 
 of Constantinople and Paris proved to be a positive misfortune. 
 "So far," says a modern writer, "from ameliorating the con- 
 dition of the Jews, the convention of Paris by a regrettable ac- 
 cident led to more burdensome disabilities and a more barbarous 
 persecution than they had ever before endured. Under the old 
 organic laws, by which the principalities were governed pre- 
 viously to 1859, the people had no effective voice in the govern- 
 ment. Hence there was little cause for jealousy between 
 Christians and Jews, and with the exception of occasional ex- 
 13001 1243G 2
 
 10 
 
 plosions of religious fanaticism, they lived together in harmony. 
 The new order of things established in 1858 destroyed this equal- 
 ity. It gave to the Christian population a monopoly of political 
 power which they were not slow to use against their trade rivals 
 among the unenfranchised Jews. This unfortunate incidence of 
 the convention of Paris was aggravated by the new electoral 
 law under which a preponderating franchise was reserved for 
 the mercantile classes, with whom the Jews, being chiefly of 
 the same classes, most directly competed. The result was that 
 not only was the fulfillment of Article XLVI of the convention 
 of Paris rendered impossible, but the whole influence of the 
 mercantile electorate was employed to obtain the imposition 
 of fresh disabilities upon the Jews and to inflame the reli- 
 gious and racial prejudices of the populace against them. In- 
 stead of gradually emancipating them in accordance with the 
 provisions of the convention of Paris, even their status as 
 ' non-Christian Moldo-Wallachs,' acknowledged in that instru- 
 ment, was denied them. They were assimilated by the civil 
 code of 1SG4 to aliens, though admitted by the code to be ' in- 
 digenes,' and were made dependent on a difficult and tedious 
 process of naturalization for their acquisition of political rights 
 (Arts. VIII, IX, and XVI). Even the privilege was withdrawn 
 from them by the constitution of I860, which declared (Art. 
 VII) ' that only Christians may obtain naturalization-' Conse- 
 quently Article XLVI of the convention of Paris remained a 
 dead letter." 
 
 In the meantime the Jews of Roumauia were more bitterly 
 oppressed than ever. New laws discriminating against them 
 were passed ; riots and massacres were renewed with greater 
 fury. They were languishing in a bondage worse than that 
 endured by their fathers in ancient Egypt when hope was re- 
 vived again among them by the adoption of Article XLIV of the 
 treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878. 
 
 The Berlin congress of 1878 was a gathering at the German 
 national capital of the brainiest and most brilliant statesmen 
 of Europe. The purpose of the congress was to settle the ques- 
 tions growing out of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. 
 
 On the 24th of April, 1877, Russia declared war against Tur- 
 key with the avowed object of protecting the Christian inhabi- 
 tants of the Ottoman Empire. Bulgaria, Roumauia, Servia, and 
 Montenegro were either tacitly or openly the allies of the Czar. 
 After varying successes the fortunes of war finally favored the 
 Russians, and the fall of Plevna opened the way to Constanti- 
 nople. The Turks sued for peace, and on March 3, 1878, the 
 treaty of San Stefano was signed. Some of the terms of this 
 
 13001 1245G
 
 11 
 
 treaty were displeasing to several of the Governments of Europe. 
 Austria and England were decidedly dissatisfied. The political 
 changes made and the territorial readjustments provided for in 
 the treaty, together with the exaction of 1,400,000,000 rubles 
 war indemnity, which promised to cripple most seriously the re- 
 sources of the Turkish Empire for years to come, practically 
 made the Czar permanent arbiter of Balkan affairs. To avert 
 such a catastrophe had been the traditional policy of Austria, 
 and to prevent a result so disastrous to her interests England 
 had waged the war of the Crimea. 
 
 Assuming the initiative in the matter Count Andrassy, in the 
 name of the Austrian Government, dispatched a circular note to 
 the signatory powers of the treaty of Paris of 1856 and the Lon- 
 don protocol of 1ST1 suggesting an international congress for the 
 purpose of establishing " the agreement of Europe on the modi- 
 fications which it might become necessary to introduce into the 
 above-mentioned treaties," in view of the provisions of the 
 treaty of San Stefauo. The suggestion of Count Andrassy met 
 with a ready response. Germany was especially willing to co- 
 operate with England and with Austria, her ally, in the as- 
 sembling of a congress of which her own great statesman, 
 Bismarck, was sure to be the dominating figure. Russia was 
 naturally displeased with the turn events had taken. She 
 felt intuitively that she would lose all that she had gained in the 
 war with Turkey if she consented to the revision of the articles 
 of the treaty of San Stefano by an international conference 
 dominated by her enemies. 
 
 But she was powerless to resist. She demanded, however, as 
 a condition of giving her consent to the assembling of the pro- 
 posed congress and of her participation in its proceedings, that 
 the scope of its powers be limited by the exclusion of certain 
 clauses of the treaty of San Stefano from its consideration. 
 The reply of Disraeli, on behalf of England, to this demand 
 was to mobolize the militia and to bring Indian troops to the 
 Mediterranean. Finding that the diplomatic support which she 
 had hoped to receive from Bismarck had failed her, she took the 
 hint, and finally consented to submit the whole question of the 
 Balkan situation to the determinations of a new international 
 conference. 
 
 On the 3d of June, 1S78, Count Miinster, in the name of the 
 German Emperor, invited the delegates of the signatory powers 
 of the treaty of Paris of 1S5G to assemble at Berlin. The invi- 
 tation was accepted. Great Britain was represented by Lord 
 Beaconsfleld, Lord Salisbury, and Lord Russell ; Germany by 
 Prince Bismarck, Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, and Baron 
 1300112456
 
 12 
 
 von Billow; Austria by Count Andrassy, Baron Karolyi, and 
 Baron von Hayinerle ; Italy by Count Corti and Count Launay ; 
 France by William H. Waddington, Felix Desprez, and Le 
 Coinpte de Saint-Valliers ; Russia by her imperial chancellor, 
 Prince Gorchakov, Count Shuvalov, and Paul D'Oubril; Turkey 
 by Alexander Pasha, Ali Pasha, and Sadullah Bey. 
 
 These distinguished representatives of the leading nations of 
 the world lords, princes, barons, counts, ambassadors, and 
 prime ministers men renowned in statesmanship, diplomacy, 
 law, and letters, convened, and organized the Congress of Ber- 
 lin, on the 13th day of June, 1878, under the presidency of 
 Prince Bismarck. 
 
 On the 13th of July, a month after the assembling of the con- 
 gress, the treaty of Berlin was signed. It consists of 64 articles. 
 
 Two great purposes of the delegates of the congress are re- 
 vealed in the terms of the treaty : 
 
 (1) The reconstruction, upon an equitable basis, of the map 
 of southeastern Europe; 
 
 (2) The establishment of the independence of certain Balkan 
 States upon a foundation of civil and religious liberty. 
 
 The first great purpose was achieved, in the main, by certain 
 territorial changes. Bulgaria was divided into two parts Bul- 
 garia proper and eastern Rumelia. Parts of Armenia were given 
 to Russia and Persia. Bosnia and Herzegovina were transferred 
 to Austria, and Bessarabia was restored to Russia. 
 
 The second great purpose was accomplished by the recogni- 
 tion of the independence of Rouinania, Servia, and Montenegro 
 under terms of guaranty by them of civil and religious liberty 
 to all the inhabitants of their territories. 
 
 In the archives of history are few more important documents 
 than the treaty of Berlin. It readjusted the boundaries of king- 
 doms and empires. It proclaimed the independence of states and 
 the freedom of races. It was, above all, a grand proclamation 
 of religious emancipation. 
 
 The conditions of life among the Jews of Roumania were far 
 more pitiable and their political situation was infinitely worse 
 when the Berlin Congress convened in 1878 than they had been 
 20 years before when the conferences of Constantinople and 
 Paris met. In 1858 the legal status of the Jews was admitted 
 to be that of unenfranchised Roumanians. In 1878 they had 
 been declared to be outcasts and aliens, and were cruelly treated 
 as such. A succession of barbarous persecutions, culminating 
 in riots and massacres had reduced them to such a state of 
 misery and degradation that the pity of mankind was excited 
 and the indignation of the civilized world found vigorous ex- 
 1300112456
 
 13 
 
 pression in official protests to the great powers of Europe. 
 This was the state of affairs when Rouuinnin asked the dele- 
 gates to the Congress of Berlin to recognize her independence as 
 a kingdom. 
 
 The representatives of the powers knew well the cunning 
 character of Roumanian statesmanship. They remembered dis- 
 tinctly the subterfuge and chicanery employed to evade the 
 pledges given at the time of the conferences of Constantinople 
 and Paris. They recalled that discretion had been allowed and 
 that it had been abused in the matter of the promise of Ghika 
 to emancipate the Jews gradually by legislative enactment. ' 
 They now resolved to withdraw all discretion from the Govern- 
 ment of Bucharest in the matter of the emancipation of its 
 non-Christian subjects. And to the demand of Koumauia that 
 her independence be recognized the powers responded with 
 Articles XLIII and XLIV of the treaty of Berlin of July 13, 
 1878, which imposed as a condition of recognition the absolute 
 equality of all religious creeds and confessions in the Kingdom. 
 The following is the text of those articles : 
 
 XLIII. The high contracting parties recognize the independence of 
 Rournania, subject to the conditions set forth in the two following 
 articles : 
 
 XLIV. In Rou-nania the difference of religious creeds and confessions 
 shall not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or 
 incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and political 
 rights, admission to puhlic employments, functions, and honors, or the 
 exercise of the various professions and industries in any locality what- 
 soever. 
 
 The freedom and outward exercise of all forms of worship shall be 
 assured to all persons belonging to the Roumanian State, as well as 
 to foreigners, and no hindrance shall be offered either to the hier- 
 archical organization of the different communions or to their relations 
 with their spiritual chiefs. 
 
 The subjects and citizens of all the powers, traders or others, shall 
 be treated in Roumania without distinction of creed on a footing of 
 perfect equality. 
 
 Such were the terms offered by the Congress of Berlin to 
 Roumania as a condition of the recognition of her independence. 
 
 Strangely and unfortuutaely the powers were once again per- 
 suaded to agree to a compromise. " That only Christians may 
 obtain naturalization" was a provision of Article VII of the 
 Roumanian constitution of 1866. Acting upon the arbitrary 
 and illegal assumption that all Jews were aliens, Roumania 
 contended that the only disability imposed upon them was ex- 
 clusion from naturalization under this article, and she conse- 
 quently proposed to revise Article VII of her constitution as a 
 satisfaction of Article XLIV of the treaty of Berlin. The 
 13001 1245C
 
 14 
 
 offer of Roumania, in other words, was to open the door of 
 naturalization to the Jews, the inference then being, of course, 
 that all other blessings would flow from citizenship. 
 
 The powers pointed out in reply that by Uie Roumanian 
 naturalization law the " equality of citizen " could only be 
 obtained after a probation of 10 years, and then by individual 
 act of Parliament, which was liable to be defeated by the 
 Chambers; and the offer of compromise was consequently 
 declined. 
 
 Rournania then changed her ground by deserting her legal 
 position and urging a plea of expediency. She insisted that if 
 the Jews were not aliens in law they were aliens in fact, " not 
 only by their religion, but by language, custom, manners, as- 
 pirations in a word, by all that constitutes distinctive char- 
 acter in a man as a member of society." She contended, further, 
 that the Jews were " illiterate and fanatical," and that they 
 were " peculiarly accessible to foreign influences, and that, 
 owing to their large numbers, they were calculated to strike a 
 fatal blow at the homogeneity of the Roumanian national 
 character." And as a final plea it was urged that " the nation 
 was strongly opposed to an immediate and wholesale emanci- 
 pation, and that if the powers insisted upon it the effect would 
 be that the cause of religious liberty in Roumania would be en- 
 dangered rather than promoted." 
 
 The powers seem to have been somewhat impressed by the 
 force of these contentions, but. nevertheless, they still declined 
 to admit that a revision of Article VII of the Roumanian consti- 
 tution would, in full measure, meet the requirements of Article 
 XLIV of the treaty of Berlin. 
 
 It was then that Roumania, fearing the shipwreck of her 
 hopes to become an independent nation, gave the most solemn 
 assurances that if the proposed solution was accepted, it would 
 be made to apply at once to all assimilated Jews, and tuat the 
 naturalization of unassimilated Jews would be provided for and 
 accomplished within a reasonable time. 
 
 Sir William White was told by Boeresco, the Roumanian for- 
 eign minister, " that if the present bill could only become a 
 law, a more complete measure of emancipation would be ac- 
 cepted by the electorate later on when the present agitations 
 had subsided." 
 
 But more specific and emphatic than this were the promises 
 
 contained in a circular dispatch sent out by Boeresco under 
 
 date of August 31, 1879, a document that he himself described 
 
 as " a sort of expose des motifs of the measure we are about 
 
 1300112456
 
 15 
 
 to submit to the Chambers." The essential passages of this 
 dispatch are the following: 
 
 Will the Jews who do not immediately obtain naturalization remain 
 foreigners? No; they will remain what they always have been Rou- 
 manian. But in the measure that they identify themselves with the 
 population of the country, in the measure that by schools and other 
 means of preparation they become enlightened men and attached to the 
 country, they will be able to obtain and exercise political rights. 
 ******* 
 
 There will be three categories of Jews foreigners, Roumanian sub- 
 jects, and citizens. Hitherto both the foreign and native Jews have 
 been the objects of certain prohibitions, but in their quality of Jew 
 alone. From the moment that article 7 of the constitution shall be 
 suppressed all these prohibitions will disappear, and no distinction will 
 be made between the foreign Jew and the foreign Christian. It will be 
 the same with the Jews who are Roumanian subjects. Hitherto certain 
 civil rights have been denied them. Thus they could not be advocates, 
 professors, State engineers; they could not serve on juries, etc. Under 
 the new regime they will have, in the first place, all the rights enjoyed 
 by foreigners in general. Then, as Roumanian subjects they will have 
 (he right of serving in the army and the national guard, the right of 
 acquiring real estate, the right to be advocates, to serve on juries, to 
 exercise freely every -profession and every trade ; they will, in short, 
 have the same civil rights as Roumanians and will be protected in the 
 same way by the same law and by the authorities. (Official documents 
 extracted from the diplomatic correspondence of 2/14 September, 1878 ; 
 17/20 July, 1880. Bucharest, 1880, pp. 121-123.) 
 
 The Governments of Austria and Italy were somewhat in- 
 clined to accept these assurances, but England, France, and Ger- 
 many still demanded that legislative guaranties be given for the 
 faithful observance of the treaty and that this be done within a 
 reasonable time, if not immediately. 
 
 The negotiations between Boeresco and the powers were still 
 in progress when the Roumanian Parliament passed an act re- 
 vising Article VII of the constitution, which was soon after- 
 wards promulgated by the Prince in the following terms : 
 
 In room of Article VII, which is revised, the following shall be placed : 
 
 "ART. VII. The difference of religious creeds and confessions does not 
 constitute in Roumania an obstacle to the acquirement of civil and 
 political rights and their exercise. 
 
 " 1. Every foreigner, without distinction of creed, whether enjoying 
 any foreign protection or not,, cau acquire naturalization under the fol- 
 lowing conditions : 
 
 "(a) By addressing to the Government an application for naturaliza- 
 tion, in which must be declared the capital he possesses, his profession, 
 and his wish to establish his domicile in Roumania. 
 
 "(b) By residing in the country for 10 years after having made this 
 application and by proving by his acts that he is useful to the country. 
 
 " 2. The following may be exempted from this delay of residence (10 
 years) : 
 
 "(a) All who shall have introduced into the country industries, use- 
 ful inventions, or distinguished talents, or who shall have founded large 
 commercial or industrial establishments. 
 1300112456
 
 16 
 
 '"(b) All who have been born and educated in Roumania of parents 
 domiciled in the country and have, neither in their own case nor that 
 of their parents, at any time been in the enjoyment of any foreign pro- 
 tection. 
 
 "(c) All who have served with the colors during the war of independ- 
 ence, and these can be naturalized collectively on the proposition of 
 the Government by a single law, without further formalities. 
 
 " 3. Naturalization can only be granted by a law, and individually. 
 
 " 4. A special law will determine the manner in which foreigners can 
 establish their domicile on Roumanian territory. 
 
 " 5. Roumanian and naturalized Roumanian citizens can alone acquire 
 rural estates in Roumania. 
 
 " Rights acquired up to the present time are respected." 
 
 The international conventions existing at present remain in force, 
 with all their clauses and for the term mentioned therein. 
 
 This decisive action of the Parliament of Bucharest, bold in 
 design and prompt in execution, seems to have changed the no- 
 tions of the powers, for they soon afterwards consented, though 
 reluctantly, to the Roumanian solution. But before giving their 
 final consent they required the Roumanian Government to make 
 a formal declaration of acceptance of the principle of Article 
 XLIV of the treaty of Berlin and of its resolution to act upon it 
 "loyally and sincerely."' The required obligation was expressed 
 in the following note : 
 
 Article 7 of the Roumanian constitution, sanctioning the principle of 
 article 44 of the treaty of Berlin, has opened to the Jews access to citi- 
 zenship and has abrogated all existing laws. That principle will con- 
 tinue to be observed sincerely and loyally. The organic powers will de- 
 vote themselves to assuring its respect and will pursue its application 
 with the view of securing a more complete assimilation of the Jews. 
 * Meanwhile ail Jews residing in the country will possess, from 
 the point of view of private civil law, an assured juridical position, and 
 will have no cause to fear arbitrary administrative measures or excep- 
 tional laws aimed at confessions or religions. (Statement by Signor 
 Cairoli in the Italian Parliament, Dee. 9, 1879.) 
 
 Upon the receipt of this note Austria and Italy signified their 
 willingness to recognize the independence of the new Kingdom. 
 
 After considerable hesitation Great Britain, France, and Ger- 
 many did the same, but not before they had made it perfectly 
 clear to the Roumanian Government that they were well aware 
 that the conditions of the treaty of Berlin had not been fulfilled 
 and that they relied upon the solemn pledges of the principali- 
 ties "to -observe them in the spirit and to execute them gradu- 
 ally in the letter." 
 
 That there might be a clear understanding of the situation 
 the three last-mentioned powers presented an identic note to 
 M. Boeresco on the 20th of February, 1880. The following are 
 the essential paragraphs of that note: 
 
 Her Majesty's Government can not consider the new constitutional 
 provisions which have brought to their recognizance and particularly 
 13001 12456
 
 17 
 
 those by which persons belonging to a nonchrfstian creed domiciled 
 In Roumania, and not belonging to any- foreign nationality, are required 
 to submit to the formalities of individual naturalization as being a 
 complete fulfillment of the views of the powers signatories of the 
 treaty of Berlin. 
 
 Trusting, however, to the determination of the prince's Government 
 to approximate more and more in the execution of these provisions, to 
 the liberal intentions entertained by the powers, and taking note of the 
 positive assurances to that effect which have been conveyed to them, 
 the Government of her Britannic Majesty being desirous of giving to 
 the Roumanian Nation a proof of their friendly sentiments, have de- 
 cided to recognize the principality of Roumania as an independent 
 State. Iler Majesty's Government consequently declares themselves 
 ready to enter into regular diplomatic relations with the prince's Gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Such was the result of the diplomatic negotiations of nearly 
 two years in which the great powers of Europe had again been 
 cajoled and hoodwinked by a contemptible little Balkan prin- 
 cipality. Rournauia had secured the recognition of her sov- 
 ereignty and, in return, had given promises and pledges which 
 the developments of the last 30 years show she never intended 
 to fulfill. 
 
 The congress of Berlin of 1S78 accomplished nothing more in 
 fact than did the convention of Paris of 1858. The illusory 
 pledges of Prince Gregory Ghika remained unfulfilled for 20 
 years. The promises of the Government of King Charles have 
 been equally false and hypocritical, for more than three decades 
 have passed and yet nothing has been done to meet the just 
 expectations of the powers. A new generation of Roumanian 
 Jews have been born in the land, and yet they are as far from 
 emancipation as were their fathers. The night of oppression 
 and persecution still hovers over them and the day of freedom 
 and regeneration still seems far away. They are still held to 
 be aliens and outcasts in the laud of their birth; naturalization 
 is still practically inaccessible to them ; and the sufferings of 
 persecution are still as great and painful as ever. 
 
 Roumanian statesmanship triumphed in the matter of the 
 compromise of 1SSO, not by honest methods of skillful diplomacy, 
 but by craft and cunning and through the negligence of the pow- 
 ers themselves. 
 
 It was a regrettable mistake that the Governments of Europe 
 should have overlooked two fatal defects in the compromise. 
 In the first place they should by all means have forced from 
 the Roumanian Parliaiueat a legislative acknowledgment that 
 Jews " belonging to no other nationality and enjoying no for- 
 eign protection were Roumanian nationals in the sense of article 
 46 of the convention of Paris and of the admission of M. Boer- 
 esco in his dispatch of August 31, 1879." 
 1300112456
 
 18 
 
 Again the Roumanian Parliament consists of two chambers. 
 All naturalization bills arc individual and must pass each cham- 
 ber by a two-thirds majority. Paragraph 3 of the revised 
 Article VII of the constitution left Jewish petitions for naturali- 
 zation at the absolute mercy of the Parliament. This was the 
 second fatal defect of the compromise which should not have 
 been overlooked by the powers. 
 
 These defects are all the more to be lamented because they 
 furnish loopholes of escape to Ronmania in the matter of keeping 
 her naturalization pledges under the treaty. They gave ground 
 for the practice of rank hypocrisy, and at the same time for a 
 plea of seeming justification in terms of law. 
 
 The unfortunate result has been that in the matter of natu- 
 ralization, so far from keeping her pledges, Roumania has almost 
 completely ignored them, for the Roumanian chambers have in 
 nearly every case refused to pass bills intended to confer citizen- 
 ship upon the Jews. Since 18SO, the date of the recognition of 
 the new Kingdom, only 170 Jews have been naturalized out of a 
 total population of 100,000 adult males, the greater part of 
 whom are natives, and many thousands of whom have bravely 
 and patriotically performed military service for the Roumanian 
 fatherland. 
 
 When arraigned at the bar of the nations and charged with 
 bad faith in the matter of broken pledges, the defense of Rou- 
 mania is at once astonishingly simple and amazingly cynical. 
 She simply revives her ancient argument that the Jews are now 
 and have always been strangers and aliens in the land, and 
 that the treaties of 1S5S and 1878, under strict interpretation, 
 did not alter their status. When pointed to the formal and 
 categorical pledges of 1880, and the admission of M. Boeresco in 
 1879, which directly contradicted and repudiated her conten- 
 tions in this regard, and, moreover, when reminded that Great 
 Britain, Franca, and Germany had recognized her independence 
 only after she had specifically and emphatically renounced such 
 a theory, she simply points to the equivocal revision of Article 
 VII of her constitution, which Europe had accepted under pres- 
 sure and protest, and declares that she is bound by that alone. 
 
 Strange to say, no attempt is ever made by Roumania to con- 
 ceal the hypocrisy or to hide the bad faith of her astonishing 
 defense. Indeed, eminent writers of Roumania have frequently 
 boasted of the trick which was successfully played on Europe. 
 One of these, M. Suliotis, writes in this manner : 
 
 The treaty of Berlin was thought to work wonders in favor of the 
 strangers, but Roumania has been wise enough to escape the incon- 
 veniences which might have resulted from the application of article 7 
 in the sense of the treaty of Berlin, which has had no other effect than 
 to render more difficult the situation of the aliens. 
 13001 12456
 
 19 
 
 Again, writing in the Romanul of December 25, 1881, M. 
 Rosetti, an ex-minister and one of the leading statesmen of the 
 Kingdom, has this to say: 
 
 We may congratulate oui selves to-day on having solved the Jewish 
 question in a national sense, and that we may now avow loudly con- 
 trary to the manifest will of the powers and even contrary to the spirit 
 of the treaty of Berlin. 
 
 The solution of " the Jewish question" in " a national seuse," 
 it will be readily seen, was by the simple method of having 
 the Roumanian Parliament pass laws antagonistic to " stran- 
 gers," and then have all public officials of Roumania re- 
 gard the Jews as " strangers," in the application of those laws. 
 
 Nothing can better illustrate the determined efforts of the 
 Roumanian Government to evade its pledges in the matter of 
 the treaty of Berlin than its systematic legislation against 
 " strangers," which was, in fact, intended to apply only to the 
 Jews. The following classified list of laws, discriminating 
 against the Jews, will prove conclusively that Roumania, from 
 the very beginning, never had any intention of fulfilling her 
 obligations under Article XLIV of that treaty: 
 
 October 21, 1879, Roumanian Senate passes law stating that dis- 
 tinction of religion shall not be a bar to civil or political rights, but 
 that " strangers " may obtain naturalization only by special law on 
 individual demand and after 10 years' residence. (Act VII of constitu- 
 tion ; Sincerus, pp. 3-4.) 
 
 June 6, 1880. The directors and auditors of the National Bank of 
 Roumania must be Roumanians. (Sincerus, p. 77.) 
 
 March 18, 1881. Law of expulsion passed, authorizing minister of 
 interior to expel or order from place to place, without giving reason, 
 any "stranger" likely to disturb public tranquillity. (Sincerus, p. 
 146). (Originally intended against Nihilists after murder of Czar, 
 but afterwards applied to Jews.) 
 
 July 16, 1881. Law promulgated declaring that all " agents de- 
 change " or " courtiers de merchandise " must be Roumanians or natural- 
 ized, except in the ports (where there are Christian "strangers"). 
 (Sincoms, p. 45.) 
 
 October 21, 1881. Ministerial council extends the law excluding 
 Jews from the sale of liquors in rural districts to cities and towns 
 included in such districts. (Sincerus, pp. 22-23.) 
 
 November 11, 1881. All " strangers " in Roumania required to obtain 
 a permit of residence before they may pass from place to place. (Sin- 
 cerus, p. 163.) 
 
 February 26, 18S2. Jews forbidden to be customhouse officers. (Sin- 
 .eerus, p. 53.) 
 
 November 3, 1882. Roumanian Senate passes law declaring all " in- 
 habitants " liable to military service, except subjects of alien States. 
 (Sincerus, p. 35.) See above, June 23, 1868. 
 
 January 31, 1884. Roumanian Senate decides that " strangers " have 
 no right of petition to Parliament. (Sincerus, p. 197.) 
 
 March 19, 1884. Law passes prohibiting hawkers from trading In 
 rural districts. (Sincerus, p 65.) 
 
 April 15, 1885. Pharmacy law permits minister of interior to close 
 any pharmacy not under direction of a recognized person ; pharmacies 
 1300112456
 
 20 
 
 may be acquired only by Roumanians or by naturalized citizens ; per- 
 mission to employ "strangers" extended to 1886. (Sincerus, p. 104.) 
 
 March 13. 1886. Electors of chambers of commerce must be persons 
 having political rights. (Sinceruo, p. 75.) 
 
 June 16, 18SG. Druggists must be Roumanians or naturalized citizens. 
 (Sincerus, p. 84.) 
 
 December 7, 1886. Account books must be kept in Roumanian or in a 
 modern European language. (Sincerus, p. 81.) (The object was to 
 keep out Yiddish.) 
 
 February 28, 1887. All employees of the " regie " must be Rou- 
 manians or naturalized. (Sincerus, p. 29.) 
 
 April 28. 1S87. Farmers of taxes in Roumania must be persons 
 capable of being public officers. (Sincerus, p. 89.) 
 
 May 22, 1887. Majority of administrators of private companies must 
 be Roumanians. (Sincerus, p. 78.) 
 
 May 24, 1887. Five years after the foundation of a factory two- 
 thirds of its workmen must bo Roumanians. (Sincerus, p. 94.) 
 
 August 4, 18S7. Ministerial circular orders preference to be given 
 to children of Roumanians in the order of admission to public schools. 
 (Sincerus, p. 123.) 
 
 1889. Of 1,307 permits issued to hawkers, only 123 went to Jews; 
 of these : only G were held in Wallachia. (Sincerus, p. 70.) 
 
 August 31, 1892. Retired Jewish soldiers are not allowed to serve as 
 rural gendarmes. (Siuccrus, p. 40.) 
 
 April 21, 1893. Professional education permitted to " strangers " only 
 when places are available and on payment of fees. The number of 
 " strangers " on the roll of such an educational institution must not 
 exceed one-fifth of the total roll, and these may not compete for 
 scholarships "Strangers" are not admitted at all to schools of agri- 
 culture. (Sincerus, p. 138.) 
 
 May 20, 1893. Roumanian Senate passes law giving preference to 
 children of Roumanians in elementary public schools and placing a tax 
 on children of "strangers" admitted. (Sincerus, p. 129.) This tax 
 amounted to 15 francs for rural and 30 francs for urban schools. (Ib., 
 127.) 
 
 June 26, 1893. Royal decree declaring all functionaries In the sani- 
 tary service must be Roumanians except In rural districts. " Stranger " 
 invalids may be admitted to free public hospitals only on payment of 
 fees, and they may not 1n any case occupy more than 10 per. cent of 
 the beds. A " stranger " may be taken as an apprentice by an apothe- 
 cary only where there is a Roumanian apprentice. (Sincerus, pp. 106, 
 110, 115.) 
 
 January 26, 1894 Farmers may be represented in law courts by their 
 stewards if the latter be Roumanians, not Jews. (Sincerus, p. 44.) 
 
 May 22, 1895. Students in the military hospitals and army doctors 
 must be either Roumanians or naturalized citizens. (Sincerus, p. 117.) 
 
 April 13, 1896. Jews may not act as Intermediaries at the customs 
 in Roumania. (Sincerus, p. 54.) 
 
 June, 1896. A ministerial order declares that letters on school busi- 
 ness excuses for absence, etc. need not be stamped except in the 
 case of " strangers " ; only children of " strangers " are required to pay 
 entrance fees at examinations. (Sincerus, p. 130.) 
 
 June 26, 1896 Ministerial order instructs rural council that permis- 
 sion to remain in a rural district may be revoked at any moment. 
 (Sincerus, p. 185.) 
 
 April 4, 1898. Law permitting secondary instruction of children of 
 " strangers " only where places are available and on payment of fees, 
 though to Roumanians tuition is free. (Sincerus, p. 133.) 
 1300112456
 
 21 
 
 October, 1898. Admission to public schools in Roumania refused to 
 11,200 Jewish children. (Sincerus.) 
 
 February 18, 1899. Only Roumanians henceforth admitted as em- 
 ployees on State railways. (Sincerus, p. 97.) 
 
 October 21, 18J>9. Ministerial order closes private Jewish schools in 
 Roumania on Sundays. (Sincerus, p. 141.) 
 
 1900. Number of Jewish children in elementary public schools in 
 Roumania reduced to 5J per cent ; in secondary schools, from 10J per 
 cent (in 1895) to 7 per cent. (Sincerus, p. 133.) 
 
 February 27, 1900. Ministerial circular orders pupils to receive in- 
 structions in Jewish private schools with heads uncovered. (Sincerus, 
 p. 143.) 
 
 March 28, 1900. On private railways 60 per cent of the employees 
 must be Roumanians. (Sincerus, p. 99.) 
 
 April 17, 1900. Ministerial circular orders Jewish private schools to 
 open on Saturdays. (Sincerus, p. 142.) 
 
 March 16, 1902. Artisans' bill requires special authorization from the 
 authorities to carry on any trade, only to bo obtained by " strangers " 
 i. e., Jews on production of foreign passports, and proof that in their 
 " respective countries " reciprocal rights are accorded to Roumanians. 
 (Am. Jew. Yearbook, 1902-3, p. 30.) 
 
 The culmination of Roumanian meanness and malignity was 
 reached in the passage of the artisans' bill. Other measures 
 had been designed to cripple and harass, to degrade and humili- 
 ate them, but this bill was evidently intended to starve the 
 Jews to death, for it inevitably deprived many thousands of 
 Jewish artisans of the only means of earning their daily bread. 
 The ludicrous absurdity as well as the fiendish cruelty of such 
 a law are shown by the fact that, under its provisions, no 
 "foreigner" was permitted to exercise a handicraft in Rou- 
 mania unless " he could show reciprocity for Roumanians in his 
 own country." The Jews being " foreigners not under any foreign 
 protection" were unable to prove this reciprocity. They were 
 therefore unable to carry on any trade without violating the law. 
 
 Another characteristic illustration of the ingenious method 
 employed by the Roumanian Parliament in framing laws to evade 
 the spirit, if not the letter, of the treaty of Berlin is afforded 
 by the military law of November 3, 1882. By Article I of this 
 law " all the inhabitants " of the country are liable to military 
 service. By Article II " subjects of foreign States " are declared 
 ineligible for entrance into the army. The Jews being "in- 
 habitants " of the country, but not " subjects of foreign States," 
 are required to perform military service, although deprived of 
 all civil and political rights, because of their status as " stran- 
 gers." Although forced to risk the dangers and bear the bur- 
 dens of war as privates in the rank they are denied promotion 
 on the ground that " service in the army is a duty, while the 
 rank of officer is a public function reserved for Roumanian citi- 
 zens." These distinctions and the reasons for them were all 
 solemnly declared in a speech by M. Bratiano in the Roumanian 
 
 13001 1245G
 
 22 
 
 Senate May 27, 18S2. But it is needless to elaborate the ques- 
 tion at greater length. 
 
 The hideous result of long years of persecution and oppres- 
 sion, of riot and massacre, has been that the Jews of Roumauia 
 have been barbarized and impoverished and that life for most 
 of them has been rendered an intolerable burden. Within the 
 last 10 years 60,000 of them have been forced to emigrate and 
 100,000 others have been reduced to a state approaching vaga- 
 bondage. 
 
 Shall these frightful conditions continue to exist? Shall the 
 barbarous practices of a semicivilized people forever violate the 
 precepts and shock the sentiments of civilization? Shall Article 
 XLIV of the treaty of Berlin become as dead a letter upon the 
 statute books of nations as did Article XLVI of the conference 
 of Paris? What says old England, the laud of Magna Charta, 
 of the Bill of Eights, the petition of rights, and habeas corpus, 
 the birthplace of Hampdeu, Pym, and Cromwell, the grandest 
 and most majestic among the commonwealths of the earth? 
 What says she, a party to the treaty of Berlin? Shall the 
 /nighty power that conquered Napoleon and preserved the lib- 
 erties of Europe be forever defied and mocked by a petty and 
 contemptible little Balkan State? What says France, the bril- 
 liant and beautiful among the nations, whose chivalric sym- 
 pathies sent Rochambeau and Lafayette as ambassadors of 
 freedom to our shores? What says she, a party to the treaty 
 of Berlin? Shall the bad faith and insolence of Roumania go 
 forever unpunished and unrebuked while France, the dauntless 
 and eternal champion of the rights of man, stands mute and 
 motionless? And last, but not least, what says America, the 
 country of Washington, the Republic of Jefferson, the Union 
 of Lincoln, whose Goddess of Liberty in the harbor of Nt-w 
 York brandishes forever a torch of freedom as a beacon light 
 to the oppressed and distressed of all the world? What says 
 America, the protagonist of republican virtue and the model of 
 newborn Republics throughout the earth? Shall she give no 
 response and make no protest when a suffering and helpless 
 people ask for sympathy and aid? 
 
 But it is contended that America was no party to the treaty 
 of Berlin and that it would be improper therefore for her to 
 seek to interfere in the local affairs of Roumania. There is a 
 grain of truth in this contention, but only a grain. The fatal 
 defect in the argument is that the barbarous persecution and 
 merciless oppression of any race within the borders of any 
 country causing wholesale emigration of the members of that 
 race to other countries as a means of preserving life are the 
 internal affairs of the state guilty of the persecution and op- 
 13001 12450
 
 23 
 
 pression with which other countries have no concern and in 
 which they should not interfere. Such a contention wrongfully 
 assumes that the intercessory and intervening powers of civil- 
 ized nations are suspended and paralyzed when the laws of 
 humanity and the rights of races happen to conflict with the 
 local arrangements of some small despotic government. 
 
 Whether rightfully or wrongfully, America has already pro- 
 tested, in vigorous and solemn terms, against Roumanian op- 
 pression of the Jews; and this protest was not born of the 
 hurry and heat of a political convention or of any other volun- 
 tary association of irresponsible persons. It was a calm and 
 deliberate act of American diplomacy, the product of one of the 
 noblest and finest of American intellects. 
 
 Following the passage of the artisans' bill of March 16, 1902, 
 which was designed to prevent the Jews from earning a liveli- 
 hood by any form of handicraft or trade, Mr. Secretary Hay, on 
 August 11, 1902, addressed a ministerial note of protest to the 
 Roumanian Government, pointing out the tendency of such legis- 
 lation to produce an abnormal stream of emigration to the 
 United States. The following is the essential passage of that 
 note : 
 
 The teachings of history and the experience of our own Nation show 
 that the Jews possess in a high degree the mental and moral qualifica- 
 tions of conscientious citizenhood. No class of immigrants is more wel- 
 come to our shores when coming equipped in mind and body for entrance 
 upon the struggle for bread and inspired with the high purpose to give 
 the best service of heart and brain to the land they adopt of their own 
 free will ; but when they come as outcasts, made doubly paupers by 
 physical and moral oppression in their native land and thrown upon the 
 long-suffering generosity of a more favored community, their migration 
 lacks the essential conditions which make alien immigration either ac- 
 ceptable or beneficial. So well is this appreciated on the Continent that 
 even in the countries where anti-Semitism has no foothold -it is difficult 
 for these fleeing Jews to obtain any lodgment. America is their only 
 goal. 
 
 The United States offers asylum to the oppressed of all lands, but its 
 sympathy with them in no wise impairs its just liberty and right to 
 weigh the acts of the oppressor in the light of their effects upon this 
 country and to judge accordingly. 
 
 Putting together the facts now plainly bro'ught home to this Govern- 
 ment during the past few years, that many of the inhabitants of Rou- 
 mania 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, and that they are objects of charity from the outset and 
 for a long time, the right of remonstrance against the acts of the Rou- 
 manian Government is clearly established in favor of this Government. 
 Whether consciously and of purpose or not, these helpless people, bur- 
 dened and spurned by their native land, are forced by the sovereign 
 power of Roumania upon the charity of the United States. This Gov- 
 13001 12456
 
 eminent can not be a tacit party to such an International wrong. It is 
 constrained to protest against the treatment to which the Jews of Rou- 
 mania are subjected, not alone because it has unimpeachable ground to 
 remonstrate against the resultant injury to itself, but in the name of 
 humanity. The United States may not authoritatively appeal to the 
 stipulations of (he treaty of Berlin, to which it was not and can not 
 become a signatory, but it doc-s earnestly appeal to the principles con- 
 signed therein because they are the principles of international law and 
 eternal justice, advocating the broad toleration which that solemn com- 
 pact enjoins and standing ready to lend its moral support to the fulfill- 
 ment thereof by its cosignatories, for the act of Roumania itself has 
 effectively joined the United States to them as an interested party in 
 this regard. 
 
 It iniglit.be well to add that a copy of this note of Mr. Hay, 
 American Secretary of State, to the Government of Romnania. 
 was simultaneously sent to the Governments of Great Britain, 
 France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, the signatory pow- 
 ers of the treaty of Berlin. By this act the United States served 
 notice upon Roumania and upon the great powers of Europe that 
 she considered herself a party to that treaty, if not hy direct 
 signature then at least by the laws of humanity, by the princi- 
 ples of eternal justice, by the binding obligations of interna- 
 tional law in which all civilized peoples have a common interest, 
 and by the right of self-preservation involved in the necessity 
 of protecting her own population and her own civilization 
 against the barbarized and impoverished victims of Roumanian 
 persecution. 
 
 This authoritative action of our State Department some 10 
 years ago is still a landmark and a precedent. No one will 
 question the righteousness of the motive or the soundness of 
 the political principle involved in this action. No one can ef- 
 fectively contend that this diplomatic step should not have been 
 taken. The only regret that can be expressed is that the results 
 accomplished were not greater. , 
 
 Historical considerations affecting the discussion of the pres- 
 ent question are these: A great Balkan war has just been termi- 
 nated. Roumania was involved indirectly in the struggle. 
 Changes in territory, similar to those brought about at the close 
 of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, will probably be made. 
 The Roumanians, it is said, contemplate revising their present 
 constitution in view of changed conditions. It is more than 
 probable that the great powers of Europe will again be called 
 upon to adjust, in international conference, various questions 
 growing out of the recent war. 
 
 Now, after the lapse of 30 years, Roumanian persecution of 
 the Jews exists in more acute and malignant form than when 
 Mr. Hay dispatched his note of diplomatic protest. Roumanian 
 laws against the Jews have become more stringent and oppres- 
 sive. Social discrimination and ostracism have become more 
 13001 1245G
 
 pitiless and humiliating. Riot and massacre are still as immi- 
 nent as ever. 
 
 In view of tlie approaching conference of the powers, what 
 shall be done, what can be done to compel Roumania to act 
 justly and humanely by the Jews within her borders? The 
 powers will have no difficulty, in the matter of the Jews, with 
 any other Balkan State. At the same time and in exactly the 
 same language as that employed in the case of Rouinania, Servia 
 and Montenegro promised the congress of Berlin to guarantee civil 
 and religious freedom to the Jews within their territories in con- 
 sideration of the recognition of their independence. Both Servia 
 and Montenegro have faithfully kept these pledges, which demon- 
 strates conclusively that there was no inherent difficulty, no insu- 
 perable obstacle in the way of Roumania's doing the same thing. 
 
 My own opinion is that the United States should accept the 
 invitation of the European powers to become a member of the 
 approaching international congress, if such an invitation is ex- 
 tended. I have been reliably informed that our Government 
 was invited to participate in the proceedings of the Berlin Con- 
 gress, but declined. If we are not invited we should ask that 
 the United States be permitted to be a party to the next con- 
 ference of the powers. We should then join with other nations 
 in reminding Roumania of existing obligations, and in imposing 
 fresh ones upon her in a manner that will preclude any possi- 
 bility of violating them in the future. If no new conference of 
 the powers is called, or if the United States for any reason 
 should not be a party to it if one is called, then let us again, 
 and repeatedly if need be, in the language of Mr. Hay, lend our 
 " moral support " to the gi'eat cause of civil liberty and religious 
 emancipation, by such representations to the great Governments 
 of Europe as will secure prompt and vigorous action on their 
 part, in compelling Roumania, even at this late date, to perform 
 her pledges under Article XLVI of the conference of Paris and 
 Article XLIV of the treaty of Berlin. If her sense of national 
 honor and international obligation does not incline Roumauia to 
 deeds of justice and righteousness, then let the strong arm of 
 force be used and the wrath of the nations be visited upon her. 
 
 But why should we do all these things for the Jews, you ask? 
 The reply is that these things are not to be done primarily for 
 the Jews. They are to be done to promote and maintain civil 
 liberty and religious freedom among men; to prevent offenses 
 against international morality and to uphold the dignity and 
 sanctity of international law; and, above all things, to compel 
 respect for the laws of humanity and regard for the principles 
 of eternal justice. These are the primary objects of action to 
 be taken against Roumauia. 
 13001 12450
 
 26 
 
 But if you challenge me to open declaration I will candidly 
 say to you that I am in favor of doing all manner of good 
 things at all times for the Jews simply because they are Jews. 
 And in this declaration is no sickly sentimentality, no maudlin 
 sentiment. I am well aware that the Jewish race is not a per- 
 fect one. The Jews, along with all the balance of us, have in- 
 herited the curse of Eden. The stamp of sin is upon the Jewish 
 as well as upon the gentile brow. From the records of the 
 courts we gather that there are Jewish as well as Christian 
 criminals. And undoubtedly the sons of Abraham Tire afflicted 
 at times with all the faults and frailties to which human flesh 
 is heir. 
 
 And, again, it should be cheerfully admitted that individual 
 Jews are not entitled to receive and should not receive any par- 
 ticular consideration; any special clemency in the exigencies 
 and crises of life. If Jews steal, they should be sent to prison 
 along with gentile thieves. If they murder, the death penalty 
 should be administered to them as in the case of others. If 
 Jews are physically, mentally, or morally unclean, they should 
 be socially ostracized and banished, as should gentiles who are 
 similarly afflicted. If Jews are guilty of uupardoued sins 
 against the laws of God, they should be consigned to the same 
 place and for the same length of time in the hereafter as in the 
 case of gentile sinners. These statements and concessions I 
 gladly and cheerfully make. But having said these things, I 
 must be permitted to repeat the 'declaration that where the 
 Jewish race as such is concerned and its rights are involved in 
 terms of religious persecution all doubts should be resolved in 
 favor of the Jews. 
 
 The marvelous contributions of the Jewish people to the 
 spiritual and intellectual wealth of the world entitle them to the 
 gratitude and homage, not the hatred and persecution of man- 
 kind. If gratitude were a supreme virtue of nations, as it 
 should be of individuals, there would never be any organized 
 governmental persecution of the Jews. The civilized nations of 
 this earth are too deeply and everlastingly indebted to the Jews 
 to be able ever to cancel the obligation. They should at least 
 treat them with humanity and accord them those considerations 
 which are the absolute essentials of happiness in a civilized state. 
 
 The ghastly feature of Jewish persecution is the fact that it 
 was probably born of the refusal of the Jews to yield the divine 
 unity of Jehovah to the polytheistic demands of ancient Rome. 
 Forupey the Great conquered Palestine and made it a dependent 
 Roman state some 63 years before the birth of Christ. The 
 ordinary results and usual incidents of Roman provincial ad- 
 ministration followed. Among these was the attempt to blend 
 
 13001 12456
 
 27 
 
 the religion and mingle the god or gods of the conquered conn- 
 try with the religion and gods of Rome. Jewish monotheism, 
 which civilization to-day prizes as its most precious jewel, was 
 then sought to be destroyed. 
 
 The civil and religious differences between Jews and Romans 
 were at once fundamental and fatal. In the first place, these 
 two races have shown themselves to be, by all odds, the most 
 masterful of mankind. The Romans founded the world's great- 
 est physical empire. The Jews founded the earth's most illus- 
 trious kingdom of the spirit. In the fiber of both Jew and 
 Roman were to be found those elements of mastery and control 
 that have nowhere else been seen in the organization of any 
 race, with the possible exception of the English. The Romans 
 would brook no earthly opposition and the Jews would submit 
 to none but God. The Romans worshiped a whole host of greater 
 and lesser deities, who inhabited earth and sky, mountains, seas, 
 and streams. Against this polytheism of a most extravagant 
 kind the Jews pitted the doctrine of monotheism, the jealous 
 and exclusive worship of one great God. Again, polytheism 
 was an integral part of the government of the Roman state and 
 could not be attacked or derided without constituting an act 
 of treason against the laws of Rome and the sovereignty of 
 Csesar. On the other hand, the religion of the Jews and their 
 law were identical. To submit to the worship of Roman gods 
 was not only an act of treason to Jehovah, but was also an 
 abrogation of Jewish nationality and a repeal of all Jewish 
 laws. These considerations constituted a definite and acute issue 
 between the Roman masters of the world and the chosen seed of 
 God. The character of each race was such that neither would sur- 
 render, and the result was, of necessity, a mere struggle of the 
 survival of the fittest. Both were victorious. The Romans de- 
 stroyed the physical kingdom of the Jews; the Jews destroyed 
 polytheism, the religious empire of the Romans ; and out of the 
 struggle, which lasted for centuries, grew a bitterness and hate 
 that has been handed down to the modern world as a hideous 
 legacy and from which massacre and persecution have been born 
 and multiplied. 
 
 Monotheism is Judaism's great contribution to the religious 
 thought of mankind and to the civilization of the earth. And 
 for consenting that their country should be conquered, their 
 nationality destroyed, and their race dispersed throughout the 
 world, in order that this best and noblest gift of God to man 
 might not be sacrificed to pagan and barbarian superstition, but 
 might instead be transmitted as a heavenly heritage to all future 
 generations of men; the Jews have received, not the gratitude 
 and love but the hate and oppression of the nations. 
 
 13001 12456
 
 28 
 
 The Jew is the Prometheus of history. The JSschylean 
 Prometheus snatched fire from the skies and gave it to mankind 
 as a priceless boon. As a reward for his trouble he was chained 
 to a rock while a vulture preyed upon his liver. The Jew 
 received the fire of monotheism from Heaven and gave it to 
 man. For his care and solicitude he has been chained to the 
 rock of the ages while the vultures of hatred, persecution, riot, 
 and massacre have preyed upon his heart. 
 
 Another hideous feature of Jewish persecution is the fact that 
 its chief intensifying cause for nearly 20 centuries has been a 
 total misunderstanding and misconception of the real facts and 
 true meaning of the crucifixion of Jesus. The cruel and sense- 
 less notion of the implacable wrath of Deity has prevailed in nil 
 the ages as an explanation of the destruction of Jerusalem and 
 the dispersion and persecution of the Jews. It is worse than 
 nonsense to see in this event anything but the operation of 
 vulgar physical forces of the most ordinary land. The fall of 
 Jerusalem was a most natural and consequential thing. It was 
 not even an extraordinary historical occurrence, even in Jewish 
 history. Titus did not so completely destroy Jerusalem as did 
 Nebuchadnezzar before him. Razing cities to the ground was a 
 customary Roman act. a form of pastime, a characteristic 
 Roman proceeding in the case of stubborn and rebellious towns. 
 Scipio razed Carthage and drove Carthaginians into the most 
 remote corners of the earth. Was any Roman or Punic god 
 interested in this event? Caesar destroyed many Gallic cities 
 and scattered Gauls throughout the world. Was any deity con- 
 cerned about these things? 
 
 Roman admiration was at times enkindled, but Roman clem- 
 ency was never gained by deeds of valor directed against the 
 arms of Rome. Neither Hannibal nor Mithradates, Vercinge- 
 torix nor Jugurtha, the grandest of her enemies, received any 
 mercy at her hands. To oppose her will was to invite destruc- 
 tion ; and the sequel was a mere question of " the survival of 
 the fittest." The most turbulent, rebellious, and determined of 
 all the imperial dependencies was the Province of Judea. The 
 Jews regarded the Romans as idolaters, and instead of obeying 
 them as masters despised and defied them as barbarians. When 
 this spirit became manifest and promised to be perpetual the 
 dignity of the Roman name, as well as the safety of the Roman 
 State, demanded the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion 
 of the Jews; and destruction and dispersion followed as natu- 
 rally as any profane effect follows any vulgar cause. 
 
 But the advocates of the divine-wrath theory quote Scriptures 
 and point to prophecy in support of their contention. Then 
 Scriptures must be pitted against Scriptures. The last prayer 
 13001 1245G
 
 of the Master on the cross must be made to repeal every earlier 
 Scriptural prophecy or decree. " Father, forgive them, for they 
 know not what they do," is the sublimest utterance in the litera- 
 ture of the world. It is the epitome of every Christian virtue 
 and of all religious truth. This proclamation from the cross 
 repealed the Mosaic law of hereditary sin, placed upon a per- 
 sonal basis responsibility for offenses against God and man, and 
 served notice upon future generations that those who " know 
 not what they do " are entitled to be spared and forgiven. To 
 believe that God ignored the prayer of Christ on the cross, and 
 that the centuries of persecution of the Jews which followed 
 were but the fulfillment of prophecy and fate, is to assail the 
 Messiahship of Jesus and to question the goodness and mercy of 
 Jehovah. Jesus knew the full meaning of his prayer and was 
 serious unto death. To believe that the Father rejected the 
 petition of the Son is to destroy the equality of the persons of 
 the Trinity by investing one with the authority and power to re- 
 view, revise, and reject the judgments and petitions of the others. 
 
 If the Christian doctrine be true that Christ was God " mani- 
 fest in the flesh " ; if the doctrine of the Trinity be tine that 
 God the Father, God the Sou, and God the Holy Ghost are one 
 and the same, eternal and inseparable, then the prayer of Jesus 
 on the cross was not a petition, but a declaration that the 
 malefactors of the crucifixion who, in the blindness of ignorance, 
 had helped to kill the Son of Man, would receive at the last day 
 the benefits of the amnesty of the Father of mercy and for- 
 giveness. 
 
 If the perpetrators of the great injustice of the Sanhedrin 
 and of the Pretorium are to be forgiven because they knew 
 not what they did, is there any justice, human or divine, in 
 persecuting their innocent descendants of all lauds and ages? 
 " When Sir Moses Montefiore was taunted by a political op- 
 ponent with the memory of Calvary and described by him as 
 one who sprang from the murderers who crucified the world's 
 Redeemer, the next morning the Jewish philanthropist, whom 
 Christendom has learned to honor, called upon his assailant and 
 showed him the record of his ancestors which had been kept 
 for 2,000 years and which showed that their home had been in 
 Spain for 200 years before Jesus of Nazareth was born." This 
 half-humorous anecdote illustrates the utter absurdity and 
 supreme injustice of connecting the modern Jew with ancient 
 tragic history. The elemental forces of reason, logic, courage, 
 and sympathy wrapped up and interwoven in every impulse and 
 fiber of the human mind and heart will be forever in rebellion 
 against the monstrous doctrine of centuries of shame, exile, and 
 persecution visited upon an entire race because of the sins and 
 
 13001 1245G
 
 30 
 
 crimes of a handful of their progenitors who lived more than a 
 thousand years before. 
 
 But if the visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the sons 
 is to be maintained and perpetuated as a form of divine, if not 
 of human justice, why not, at least, be consistent in the applica- 
 tion of the principle? Many philosophers and critics have 
 detected a striking kinship between the teachings of Socrates 
 and those of Jesus. A celebrated historian closes a chapter of 
 the history of Greece with this sentence : 
 
 Thus perished the greatest and most original of the Grecian philoso- 
 phers (Socrates), whose uninspired wisdom made the nearest approach 
 to the divine morality of the Gospel. 
 
 The indictments against the philosopher of Athens and the 
 Prophet of Nazareth were strikingly similar. Socrates was 
 charged with corrupting Athenian youth ; Jesus, with perverting 
 the nation. Socrates was charged with treason against Athens ; 
 Jesus, with treason against Rome. Both were charged with 
 blasphemy the Athenian with blasphemy of the Olympic gods 
 the Nazarene with blaspheming Jehovah. Both sealed with 
 their blood the faith that was in them. If the descendants of 
 the crucifiers of the Christ are to be persecuted, brutalized, and 
 exiled for the sins of the fathers, why not apply the same 
 pitiless law of hereditary punishment to the descendants of the 
 Athenian dicasts who administered hemlock to the greatest sage 
 of antiquity? Why not persecute all the Greeks of the earth, 
 wherever found, because of the injustice of the Areopagus? 
 
 Let uo persecutor of the Jew lay the unction to his soul that 
 he is justified by the tragedy of Golgotha, for he who persecutes 
 in the name of religion is a spiritual barbarian, an intellectual 
 savage. Let this same persecutor not make the mistake of sup- 
 posing that the Jews are wholly responsible for the persecution 
 that has been heaped upon them. Before he falls into the fool- 
 ish blunder of such a supposition let him ponder the testimony 
 of several gentile experts upon the subject. Let him read 
 The Scattered Nation, a brilliant lecture on the Jew by the 
 late Zebulou Vance, of North Carolina, in which occurs this 
 sentence : " If the Jew is a bad job,, in all honesty we should 
 contemplate him as the handiwork of our own civilization." 
 Let him find Shakespearean confirmation of this statement in 
 The Merchant of Venice, act 3, scene 1. If the Jew baiter 
 objects that this is the imagination of a poet, let us then point 
 him to the testimony of a great historian and statesman to prove 
 to him that the gentile is in great measure responsible for the 
 causes that have produced Jewish persecution. 
 
 In the British House of Commons on April 17, 1833, a bill for 
 the removal of the disabilities of the Jews was the subject of 
 1300112456
 
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 31 
 
 parliamentary discussion. Lord Macaulay took part in the de- 
 bate and spoke as follows : 
 
 The honorable member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are nat- 
 urally a mean race, a money-getting race ; that they are averse to all 
 honorable callings ; that they neither sow nor reap ; that they have 
 neither flocks nor herds ; that usury is the only pursuit for which they 
 are fit ; that they are destitute of all elevated and amiable sentiments. 
 
 Such, sir, has in every age been the reasoning of bigots. They never 
 fail to plead in justification of persecution the vices which persecution 
 has engendered. England has been legally a home to the Jews less 
 than half a century, and we revile them because they do not feel for 
 England more than a half patriotism. 
 
 We treat them as slaves and wonder that they do not regard us as 
 brethren. We drive them to mean occupations and tlv.^n reproach them 
 for not embracing honorable professions. We long forbade them to pos- 
 sess land and we complain that they chiefly occupy themselves in trade. 
 We shut them out from all the paths of ambition and then we despise 
 them for taking refuge in avarice. 
 
 During many ages we have, in our dealings with them, abused our 
 immense superiority of force, and then we are disgusted because they 
 have recourse to that cunning which is the natural and universal de- 
 fense of the weak against the violence of the strong. But were they 
 always a mere money -changing, money-getting, money-hoarding race? 
 Nobody knows better than my honor-able friend, tne member for the 
 University of Oxford, that there is nothing in their national character 
 which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens. 
 
 He knows that in the infancy of civilization, when our island was as 
 savage as New Guinea, when letters and art were still unknown to 
 Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards 
 the site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and 
 cedar palaces, their splendid temple, their fleets of merchant ships, 
 their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, 
 their natural philosophers, their historians, and their poets. 
 
 What nation ever contended more manfully against overwhelming 
 odds for its independence and religion? What nation ever, hi its last 
 agonies, gave such signal proofs of what may be accomplished by a 
 brave despair? And if, in the course of many centuries, the depressed 
 descendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from the qualities 
 of their fathers ; if, while excluded from the blessings of law and bowed 
 down under the yoke of slavery, they have contracted some of the 
 vices' of outlaws and slaves, shall we consider this is a matter of re- 
 proach to them? Shall we not rather consider it as a matter of shame 
 and remorse to ourselves? Let us do justice to them. Let us open to 
 them the door of the House of Commons. Let us open to them every 
 career in which ability and energy can be displayed. Till we have done 
 this let us not presume to say that there is no genius among the coun- 
 trymen of Isaiah, no heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees. 
 
 What more eloquent tribute to the Jew and his achievements 
 could be found in the literature of the earth? And is every 
 word of it not as true to-day when applied to the Jews of 
 Rouinania as it was when spoken by Macaulay of the Jews of 
 England more than 70 years ago? 
 
 But, if the persecutor of the Jew is not moved by the elo- 
 quence of Macaulay or by the satire and sarcasm of Shake- 
 speare, then let him call the roll of Hebrew great names and 
 watch the mighty procession as it moves. Abraham among 
 1300112450
 
 32 
 
 patriarchs; Moses among lawgivers; Isfiiah and Jeremiah among 
 prophets; Solomon and David among kings; Philo, Maimonides, 
 Spinoza, and Mendelsohn among philosophers; Herschel, Syl- 
 vester, Jacobi, and Kronecker among mathematicians and as- 
 tronomers; Josephus, Neanclcr, Graetz, Palgrave, and Geiger 
 among historians; Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Offenbach. Gold- 
 mark, Joachim, Rubinstein, and Strauss among musicians; 
 Sonneuthal, Possart, Rachel, and Bernhardt among actors and 
 actresses; Disraeli, Gambetta, Castelar, Lasker, Cremieux, and 
 Bei:jamin among statesmen; Halevi and Heine among poets; 
 Karl Marx and Samuel Gompers amo'ig labor leaders and po- 
 litical economists; the Rothschilds, Bleichrorders, Schiffs. and 
 Seligmaus among financiers; Auerbach and Nordau among nov- 
 elists; Sir Moses Moutefiore and Baron Hirsch among philan- 
 thropists. 
 
 Civilization may well rush to the rescue of the Jew when 
 threatened with destruction as a terrified and frantic mother 
 struggles to save a favorite child, for if the Bible and the 
 Talmud of the Jews, with all that they teach and mean, should 
 be stricken from the earth, mankind would relapse with fright- 
 ful speed into savage and barbaric night. 
 
 Liberty may well complain when Jews are persecuted and 
 oppressed, for Irom the days of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the first 
 great revolutionists of earth, to the times of Gambetta and 
 Castelar, the fierce and uncompromising advocates of repub- 
 lican government in France and Spain, freedom's c.-ui^e has 
 had no nobler, braver champions than the sons of Israel. 
 
 Religion and Literature will gladly join hands with Liberty 
 and Civilization, their dearest children, in protesting against, 
 mistreatment of the sons of Abraham, for, in every century of 
 history, with their -hands tied behind them and their hearts bur- 
 dened to the breaking point, with a bitter load of hatred and 
 persecution, Jews have yet managed, from the cave of the 
 prophets and from the manger of the Christ, from the filth of 
 the Judengasse, and from the darkness of the hovels of the 
 Ghetto, to plant in the garden of life, in the soil of the soul, the 
 most beautiful and fragrant flowers that bloom and blossom there. 
 
 This race deserves the gratitude and homage, not the hatred 
 and persecution of mankind. The parliaments and congresses 
 of enlightened nations, whose peoples are truly grateful, civ- 
 ilized, and free, will in the future extend to the Jewish race, 
 the chief benefactors of mankind, a positive protection, and will 
 guarantee to each and every one of them who is honestly guided 
 and righteously disposed, a free hand with a full swing in the 
 struggle of life. [Loud applause.] 
 
 1300112456 
 
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