1 DS 149 zm UC SOUTHERN RE III 11 < n n'^aian iDSi: i2S That would be a practical embodiment of " the Jewish mission." Situation of the Jewish Territory. But where is our Territory to be? This is the most momentous question before our Organization — the whole future of our people may turn upon the answer. The choice is there- fore a solemn and serious responsibility, and if any ITOist has lost patience because we took two years to consider the possi- bilities of the whole world, we are better without such weaklings. Why, many people take longer to look for a house. In the year 1881, Pinsker, the first Territorialist, pointed out in his book " Self-Emancipation " that the selection must be made with every precaution by a single body, through a Committee of Experts. "Only such a superior tribunal," he wrote, "could competently determine, after thorough and comprehensive investi- gations, on which continent and on which part our final choice must be fixed. ' ' Exactly in accordance with this prophetic state- ment, the task has been undertaken by a single body, through a Committee of Experts. The single body is the ITO, the Committee of Experts our Geographical Commission. This Com- mission, as you are aware, is made up of five of the most trusted Jews in the whole world. Russia is represented by that grand old man, Dr. Mandelstamm ; Germany by Herr James Simon, the President of the Hilfsverein, and by that indefatigable traveller for the Jewish cause. Dr. Paul Nathan ; America by the Hon. Oscar Straus, Secretary of Commerce and Labour in Mr. Roosevelt's Cabinet; and England by Lord Rothschild. The British Sectional Council was charged by the International Council with the task of making a preliminary study of the whole field of political possibility, and after long and anxious weighing 12 JEWISH TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION, of all the pros, and cons., we drew up a Report, which, I am happy to say, was signed by all my thirty colleagues. An abstract of our investigations, together with our final recom- mendations, was privately printed in this Blue-book, and I cele- brated our second anniversary by handing it to Lord Rothschild. Much of this preliminary work was in the melancholy nature of the discovery of lost opportunities. A century ago we could have had our pick in three continents. Nay, only three-quarters of a century ago a Jew named Nathaniel Isaacs, having fought for a Zulu king, was granted a large territory, with the title " Chief of Natal." There was no ITO then, and his one thought was to pass it over to England. To-day there is again a Jewish Chief of Natal, Sir Matthew Nathan, and he is even a member of the ITO Council. But the territory has gone to that bourne from which no territory ever returns. We produce men, you see, who can win territories and men who can govern them. Why not, then, win and govern a territory for ourselves? Although opportunities that lay around even as late as the first Zionist Congress are now for ever closed, adventures are still to the adventurous. Of some fifteen possibilities still surviving we have here printed ten, and of these ten we have specially selected two, and of these two we have, on the ground of secret informa- tion, recommended one to the Geographical Commission for prior investigation. This Territory, though one of the two best for our purpose yet left in the whole world, is not without its draw- backs and difficulties. But a Territory without drawbacks and difficulties there never was since Adam was expelled from Eden and the Expulsion Emigration began. Palestine, you will remem- ber, was adversely reported upon by the original Zionist Com- missioners, though fortunately Caleb and Joshua presented a minority report. Anybody who landed in London on a foggy day would refuse England. With the curiosity of Eve you are longing to know the name of our chosen land, but, alas ! I' must beware of the serpent. You know what happened with East Africa — how the Christians of that country united with the Zionists and anti-Zionists of this country to stamp upon our idea. Nor are our diplomatic difficulties lessened by the fact that this Territory is so much more desirable than East Africa. I am, perhaps, already imperilling the chance of its acquisition in telling you that it lies in that same continent of Africa, from which, according to the proverb, there comes always something new. But our people are such unbelieving Jews that they require even diplomacy to be carried on in public. And so — unless I am A LAND OF REFUGE. 13 to be twitted again with the moon — I must risk telling even a little more. In July, 1903, two years before the ITO was born, at a period when I had been putting into shape the dismal report of the Zionist Commission which had investigated the Sinai Peninsula, I was asked by the late Dr. Herzl to summon a small Zionist Council to discuss the idea of acquiring Morocco for Jewish colonization. That land was much better than Sinai, he said, and it was a country in which the Powers — he propheti- cally declared — would sooner or later intervene. The idea struck me as rather fantastic, though it was an audacious conception to make the Jew dominant just where he was most downtrodden. But the more I have pondered since over Dr. Herzl's suggestion, the more I have convinced myself that in spirit, if not in form, it was a political inspiration, and that one of the best fields, if not the best field, for Jewish colonization, lies in North Africa. Here, in this vast half-known, half-populated, half-governed region, largely temperate and nowhere tropical, fertile in soil, supplied with a commercial channel through the half-developed or half-decayed ports of the Mediterranean, provided with a nucleus of Jewish population, and even Jewish agricultural popu- lation, within easy access from Russia and Roumania, the chief centres of persecution, here surely somewhere or other in this spacious Sun-land a place of Jewish refuge should be found. All around, dumbly eloquent of misgovernment and neglect and the chances of history, lie the ruins of great cities and ancient civilizations. I have myself sailed past the dark grey mound which marks the site of Carthage, once the mighty rival of Rome. And, apart from holding the traces of ancient empires which might again be restored, this vast North Africa holds tracts that have never yet been developed, stretches down towards a Sahara that modern science shows not to be a desert at all, but a country with a great future ; and a Soudan that turns out to be a country with a great civilised past. There is even a country south-west of Morocco, as large as England, with a splendid seaboard, yet practically a no-man's-land, inhabited only by some nomadic tribes ; and one of the most romantic episodes in the ITO'S career was the appearance in our offices of an Arab possessing influence with the Holy Man of Adrar and anxious to obtain concessions for us. Leaving Egypt for the Egyptians, I ask what other people has so great an historic claim upon North Africa as the Jews? Apart from our original iLsidence in Egypt, we settled all along the South Mediterranean coast, while 14 JEWISH TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION. Palestine was still a Jewish State, centuries before the Christian era. To-day, in a million square miles of North Africa you will find only twelve million people — just the number of the Jews. Fancy the Jews being- allowed to monopolize a million square miles ! But there is no reason why they should not have fifty thousand ! That they are to play a role in civilizing this vast region is an idea that has of late been forcing its way into clear consciousness. But they must not redeem and regenerate North Africa and leave themselves unregenerated and unredeemed. What, however, does our Geographical Commission say to the Territory indicated by us in this region ? Unfortunately, I can give no full and formal report on that head, because one of the Commissioners, Dr. Paul Nathan, is travelling in the East, out of reach, and will not be back till the end of the year. But of the other four, I can tell you that none has dismissed the Territory as undesirable or impossible of acquisition. Lord Rothschild, however, counsels delay. He recommends " that in view of the unsettled state of things in North Africa no steps should be taken in connection with a Jewish project at present." Mr. Oscar Straus advises as an indispensable first step the investigation of the Territory by engineering, agricultural, and commercial experts. Herr James Simon offers two hundred and fifty pounds towards the expenses of such an investigation. Dr. Mandelstamm, while at first leaning to some of the Trans- atlantic Territories in our Blue-book, finally admitted that the North African Territory offers better chances of autonomy. On the whole, then, the Commission agrees with our Council that here is a possibility worthy of the most serious consideration by the Jewish people. The programme, then, that lies before us, I hope in the near future, as soon as the Morocco episode is over, is (a) Scientific Expedition to the Territory, and if the report is favourable, as I have every reason to believe, then (b) diplomatic and financial negotiations. I may mention that the Mayor of Salford has just offered me fifty pounds towards the expedition. Should, however, we fail in securing the necessary political safe- guards here, we have still the second string to our bow, and if we fail again we must fall back on the Territories favoured by Dr. Mandelstamm ; and after these there are still half-a-dozen other Territorial possibilities, not to mention Palestine. We , need not abandon hope any sooner than the Zionists, you see. Definition of "To Procure." And this brings me to the word " Procure." For, of course, A LAND OF REFUGE. 15 we have not yet " procured " a Territory. House-hunting is not house-taking-, though it is far more tiresome. "To procure," according to the dictionary, means " to come into possession or enjoyment of by some effort or means." But what efforts have the Jews yet made, what means have they yet put at our disposal? Our people have fed so long on the expectation of miracles, they - have so long lost the sense of real history and real politics, that they perhaps expect me to produce a territory out of nothing, as a conjuror produces a rabbit. Do you suppose the British Cabinet could run England for a day without money or soldiers? And England has not even to be "procured"; she is, as I said, a going concern. Three-quarters of a million was raised to help the victims of the pogroms, it has vanished without leaving a trace. Do you imagine any less heroic effort is needed to safeguard the whole Jewish future? Do you think it needs less capital than a brewery or a tobacco trust? Although our Colony must depend, like all colonies, upon the capital of its own immigrants, still there must be an adequate backing for administrative purposes. We do not say this money should be donated — let it be philanthropy and five per cent. Land companies can make large profits. And when they fail it is for lack of labour-force. Lack of labour- force has always been the great difficulty of new colonies. But this labour-force, this stream of population, our scheme carries with it in its very essence. The stream of population is the true Pactolus — it enriches immeasurably the land it flows over. Thirty-eight years ago almost the whole of the immense area of Canada belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company was trans- ferred to the Dominion for ;;£'30o,ooo. Now it is worth untold millions. .Still further to increase its value, hundreds of our Roumanian agriculturists have — through lack of a Jewish land to enrich — been poured into Canada this year by the all-beneficent IC.A, and we have seen some of these refugees passing through London with their scythes on their shoulders. Our stream of emigration, which is a source of infinite Jewish trouble, could be the source of infinite Jewish wealth. And yet the Jews are said to be a money-making people. We give this stream away to Canada, to the Argentine, to Biazil, and are only too thank- ful if it is let in. And yet the Jews are said to be a clever people. But this is not a world in which everything can be bought for money. It may be that ere a Jewish State arises, whether in North .'\frica or elsewhere, part of the price will have to be paid in blood. Even British protection could not save us from i6 JEWISH TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION. that. Not one of Britain's colonies, neither New Zealand, nor Canada, neither Natal nor East Africa, has escaped defending- itself against the native tribes. To " procure " may partly mean to procure at the cost of blood. But just think what blood it has cost us not to have " procured " earlier ! Nay, what war has ever cost the disembowelling of women and the braining of little children? Jewish poets, beholding these meaningless martyr- doms, have cried out in despair that there is no God. Let them behold the bodies of young men sacrified for a Jewish State, and will they not cry Cpl ""n — The God of Israel yet liveth ! North .\frica, if it is not as safe for the Jews as North London, is at least safer than Russia. And, safe or unsafe, the Jews already inhabit North Africa in their tens of thousands, and are taking far greater risks to-day than they would run in a Jewish colony supplied with a defensive force. I know there will be English Jews shocked at this idea, possibly the same English Jews who sent out their sons to the Boer War, and held military services last Sunday in the Synagogue, who have trained up our boys' brigades, and taught our school-children to sing the song' of "The Jewish Soldier." For, you see, we have to pay in Jewish blood even for living in our present lands ; and with lands like England we pay it gladly. But who can contemplate without bitterness Jews dying for Holy Russia on the frozen fields of Manchuria? Russia has now some 53,000 Jews in her army : by the right percentage she only ought to have 43,000. Give me only these surplus 10,000 and I guarantee you the safety of our Jewish State. When I say. Give me, I am, of course, speaking only as a political thinker. You do not suppose I pretend to lead this legion myself. I know nothing of war : I cannot shoot — not even a snapshot with a kodak. But neither did Mr. Chamberlain conduct the campaign against the Boers. The actual leader of a colony must be a farmer and a fighter, like old Kruger, or rather, like Kruger when he was young — a Jew of the stamp of Nathaniel Isaacs, or Emin Pasha, or General Ottolenghi, or Sir Matthew Nathan. That we have the necessary agricultural forces the ICA alone proves, and I refer you to its last Report for an eloquent vindication of the Jewish farmer by its President. Even the necessary agricultural experts, the scientific leaders, are to be found in North Africa, where able Jewish farmers abound and where the Alliance Israelite has a valuable farm- school. The rise of the Jewish colony would provide billets for A LAND OF REFUGE. 17 the sons of our middle-classes, as India does for the English ; and incidentally I would advise Jewish parents, instead of turning out so many briefless barristers and idle doctors, to send their sons to the agricultural colleges of Montpellier or Cornell, for whose graduates there is such a demand in these days of scientific farming. If we cannot lay our hand to-day upon the future leaders of the colony, yet, knowing as I do how stoutly Jews have pioneered and fought in every country on earth, I believe that when the hour strikes, the spirit of our race will provide the man or the men we need. The Intermediate Problem. But Rome was not built in a day, neither will a Jewish State be built in twenty-four hours, .^s the life of a State exceeds- vastly the life of a man, so is its infancy proportionately long. Before a Territory is fully "procured," i.e., made capable of receiving all those " who cannot or will not remain " in other lands ; before railways and ports are built ; before towns arise and factories are established, and mines are working, many years must pass. The foundations of a Jewish land must be laid slowly and cautiously in our best human material. To try to solve our emigration problem without an autonomous Territory is to build on sand ; but to expect that such a Territory can receive our emigration immediately is to build on air. This is the dilemma of the Jewish position. No undeveloped land could receive our emigration. No developed land would afford us autonomy. If we grasp at an immediate solution we shall never get a final solution. If, on the other hand, we try for a final solution, we are left with the immediate problem. What is the escape from this dilemma? Why, the way the ITO has found — to try both for the temporary solution and the final solution ; with one hand to work for the present, and with the other for the future. Our solution of the more pressing half of our problem is known to you. The Chief Rabbi, alarmed by the Aliens Bills in England and America, had raised the cry Wohin? The ITO, by the advice and support of, perhaps, the leading American- Jew, gave the answer "Galveston " — a United States port that was absolutely unknown to our Ghettos. Even to-day many an emigrant, when invited to go to Galveston instead of New York, replies wistfully, " But I want to go to America." We agree with that emigrant. Rather than see the myriads who leave Europe scattered through the other four continents and corrupted i8 JEWISH TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION. in remote regions, the ITO would far prefer them gathered, millions of voters, strong for self-defence, under the free American constitution and under the influence of Jewish leaders and teachers. Only, if the States are to be and remain this land of refuge, they must go not to the slums of the overcrowded Eastern cities, but to the smaller healthier rising towns of the West, where their labour is in demand. Galveston is not the goal of the ITO emigrants; they do not remain a single day in Galveston. Indeed, few have been placed in Texas at all. Galveston was chosen in preference to New Orleans because it is only a port — it has no industries, and hence no Ghetto can grow up there. Our solution therefore is merely to twist the stream of emigra- tion round- — from New York to Galveston, thus opening up to Jewish immigration the whole great region west of the Missis- sippi, and, by facilitating the movement of the first twenty thousand pioneers in the new direction, to promote a spontaneous diversion of a great volume of future emigration. This idea sounds simple, as do all great ideas once you know them, but whatever its value, it is the only practical contribution to Jewish politics that has been made for many a day. I say Jewish politics, for it concerns not the charity classes, but the classes that pay their own way. It is the neglect of these classes, the entire neglect of Jewish politics, that is at the bottom of nearly all our troubles. It is our boast that we look after our own poor. But we do not look after our own rich, nor our own independent working classes, and the result of this policy of drift is the degraded status of our people throughout the world. Pkactical Working of the G.'\lveston Project. I said the Galveston idea sounds simple ; yet the attempt to change it into a reality was fraught with incredible complications. There was the danger of Russia hampering us, the danger of -America rejecting the immigrants as under suspicion of assistance, the danger of the emigrants refusing to exchange New York for a place they had never heard of and to go there at their own expense. .\nd all these and many other difficulties were aggra- vated by the attacks and caricatures of the Zionist Press and many Russo-Jewish organs. But over all these things our Russian bureau — under the brilliant guidance of Dr. Jochelmann, Advocate Jassinowski, and their colleagues — rose victorious. After an anxious period, during which the bureau had to work its mimeograph in the dead of night, like an infernal machine, the Russian Government recognised the new department, and even A LAND OF REFUGE. 19 called its representative to a seat on a Government Emigration Commission at St. Petersburg. After months of doubt and scepticism on the part of the emigrants, a batch of believing Jews was collected, and on the ist of July 86 pioneers arrived in Galveston, where, instead of being turned back, they were wel- comed by the Mayor, who shook hands with every man and wished him good luck in the new land. By a curious coincidence this I St of July was the very day on which a new and severer Restriction Law with a doubled head-tax came into force in the States — it seemed almost symbolic of our diversion having been begun only in the nick of time. Indeed, the National Liberal Immigration League of America, the body which is fighting desperately against further restriction, has written to thank us for our help in keeping America open. Best of all, one of the Washington Commissioners of Immigration came to see me and expressed his satisfaction with the Galveston project. Since that ist of July, which every Riisso-Jewish paper now admits to be an epoch-making date in Jewish emigration, nine other ITO parties, of a thousand souls in all, have sailed out for Galveston. At first we were hampered by the intolerable condi- tions in the German lodging-houses and the German ships ; but Mr. Salaman and I went to Germany, and now, as you may have read, the Jewish emigrant by the North-German-Lloyd lodges in a special Jewish house at Bremen, with a reading-room and a synagogue; he finds his berth on the steamer reserved, his food on board cooked in a specially-erected kosher kitchen, and himself protected against ill-treatment all through the voyage Ijy a special ITO official. And not only do our Galveston passengers enjoy these advantages, but kosher kitchens have been placed on the ships going to New York, too, so that even the emigrants who do not take the ITO'S advice cannot escape its benefits. It is not our province to deal with our peculiar problem in its beginning — in the lands of persecution — but I think you will admit we have modified its middle and its end. And there is scarcely one of our thousand emigrants who does not bless the day he landed at Galveston. Of 55 settled, for example, in Kansas City, the average weekly wage is $10.25. One man receives as much as 21 dollars. For our emigrants, being a superior pioneer class, have scarcely been in America a fortnight before they begin to demand the Union rate, though they can only ask for it in Yiddish ; and this, instead of being resented, makes them popular with their Christian fellow-work- men, and the newspapers remark with satisfaction that here at 20 JEWISH TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION. last are alien immigrants who are not gomg to lower the standard of livinsf. Nor is the ITO going to lower its standard of success The^enth batch sailed last Tuesday, but rather than risk any of our emigrants not finding work during this mdustnal crisis that has followed on the financial panic, we shall probably suspend our next shipment till the factories are resummg opera- tions on the old scale. But with a great growmg country, or rather continent, like the States this can be only a passmg cloud; and in any case New York remains doubly undesirable. We have now created in Russia no fewer than 150 centres of informa- tion and selection, and Galveston is now a household word and a word of hope throughout the Pale. For by every mail our emigrants' letters are arriving there, describing their brotherly reception by the Rev. Henry Cohen and his colleagues in our Galveston establishment and the brotherly kindness of the Com- mittees of the towns to which they are directed. Not only are they helped over all their early difficulties, they are even taught English. Never in Jewish history has there been a longer chain of brotherhood. Beginning in the lands of persecution, and passing through Germany by the co-operation of the Hilfsverein, it stretches across the Atlantic and reaches by way of Galveston to all the Western States of America. But noteworthy as is its direct humanitarian accomplishment, all this is only a means to its end. Its object, like all the ITO'S objects, is political, not philanthropic, and could we point to 20,000 families happily settled in Western America, we should still consider our move- ment a failure did it not succeed— by the magnetism of their presence and by the force of imitation— in setting up a spon- taneous movement to Western America to vie with and diminish the movement to New York. But with every Russian shipping agent now advertising Galveston side by side with New York, I think we may already proclaim that Galveston has caught on. One imaginative agent actually advertises that he is coming to London to arrange about a new line to Galveston with Mr. Zangwill. Most amazing of all is the action of the ICA. The ICA was the first body to which I took the Galveston idea, as being clearly the business of the trustees of the Hirsch millions. This was a year ago last October. But the ICA shivered and shilly-shallied so much over anything approaching an idea that I went to the Rothschilds, who at once financed the European end of it. Last Tuesday, on the very day of the sailing out of our tenth batch, I received a formal announcement from the ICA that it had resolved to initiate an independent emigration to Galveston. A LAND OF REFUGE. 21 Nothing could be more characteristic of the ICA, more flattering to the ITO, or more auspicious for the future of our enterprise. It even encourages the hope that a year after the ITO has started a Jewish State the ICA will decide to start another in the same place. For all this has been done in less than a year. It is difficult to realise that when I last stood upon an ITO plat- form, not one of the thousand souls now emigrated to the Western States had ever heard of Galveston. Is it not a pathetic proof of how our people are hungering for guidance, and what nonsense it is to say a Jewish State can only be set up in one particular spot ? Alternative Solutions of the Jewish Question. And if a proof was needed of the ITO's wisdom in supplement- ing its search for a State by this provision for our immediate needs, it would be supplied by a study of the human material we have emigrated. For although the stream of emigration con- tains all the types of labour necessary for a new State, it also — as I pointed out in my original ITO Manifesto — contains much that would only be clogging and hampering to it. Of the first 300 emigrants handled by us, 30 were tailors. What should we have done in ITOLAND with such a proportion of tailors? It may take nine tailors to make one man, but surely not to make one man's clothes. Dr. Gaster, not content with drawing a lurid picture of Texas worthy of the most imaginative Jew of the century, has recently censured us for not diverting the emigra- tion towards the Holv Land. Well, the famine now raging in Palestine is the best answer to that criticism. Even were Palestine secured to the Jews by the tireless labours of Herr Wolffsohn and his colleagues, the young State could no more receive our stream of emigration than any other form of ITO- LAND. And the ITO would do Zionism the best service in its ipower by continuing to divert the emigration from Palestine till the new State had overcome its internal economic difficulties. On this point an honest Zionist like your Dr. Weizmann is the best guide. W'hat report does he bring back from his visit to Palestine? ^^'hy, that Jewish labour cannot compete with the •cheap Arab labour, that in most of the so-called Jewish colonies 60 to 80 per cent, are not Jews at all. Of 1,000 field-labourers in Petach-Tikwah no fewer than 800 are Arabs. I can tell you an even graver fact. A Zionist group of Russian agriculturists, possessing three or four hundred pounds each, and anxious to ■leave Russia, sought in vain for land in Palestine suitable to their ■means, and finally, in despair, they applied the other day to the 22 JEWISH TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION. ITO for guidance. Let us hear no more therefore of Palestine as a field for our emigration. Unless you mean Palestine, U.S.A. For Texas possesses a place called Palestine, quite near to Galveston, with two Jewish families and one synagogue between them, and to this Palestine we shall cheerfully conduct the emigration. But people may say. If your Galveston project not only solves our immediate emigration problem but safeguards the future of the Jew in America, why go further? I freely admit that after Territorialism (which includes Zionism) America is the best solu- tion of the Jewish question, and if the ITO should do no more than safeguard that solution it will have amply justified its brief existence. But between the second-best solution and the first- best solution what a melancholy gap? Not to mention the Sabbath problem or the Cultur question, social anti-Semitism rages furiously in America, even though on paper there is full Jewish equality. The Jew has still a good deal to fight through there, as in every other land which he has not founded for himself. Other critics may say, If your Colonization scheme is to take so long, will not the Jews of Russia get Equal Rights quicker than you can get ready your new land? But even should the Jews ever get these rights on paper, surely nobody imagines the Russians are going to turn out superior to the Americans ; or that the economic emigration from Russia is going to dry up. Nor do these Equal Rights seem so near to-day as in the days of the first Duma. People seem to forget that complete Equal Rights in England are not fifty years old. And England is a free Protestant country that got its Magna Charta in 12 15 and beheaded its Monarch in 1649 — not a Greek-Church country with an anti-Semitic autocrat. I have here a pamphlet published in London in 1753 proving that to naturalize the Jew would damage British trade and dishonour the Christian religion. But Russia is far from being our only battleground. Read your Jewish Calendar. Let me take only the first fortnight of last year's, as given in the American Jewish Year Book for 5667 : — August 16. — Disturbances at Philadelphia between Jewish strikers and non-Jewish working men. August 19. — Stolypin informs Dr. Paul Nathan Equal Rights for Jews are impossible. .August 19. — National anti-Semitic Assembly of Bulgaria meets at Phillipopolis. August 20. — Rabbis of Palestine and Russia request Jews to observe the day as a fast on behalf of the Russian Jews. A LAND OF REFUGE. 23 August 23. — First massacre at Siedlce, Poland, 7 Jews killed, many wounded, 33 arrested. .'\ugust 25. — Thirty-four Russian children, orphaned by the outrages of last November, arrive in the States. August 29.- — Union of True Russians issues its platform, demanding Jews be regarded as foreigners but without the privileges of other foreigners. August 30. — Mohammedan soldiers assault the Hara (Jewish quarter) of Tunis. August 30. — Arab insurgents attack Mogador and Morocco and insist that wealthy Jews shall return to the Mellah ; 150 to 200 Jewish families homeless. August 30. — Galician village partly destroyed by fire (possibly incendiary); 1,800 Jews homeless. September i. — New French Seventh Day Law presses heavily on the French Jews. France, Galicia, Morocco, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, America ! What a frontier to defend — and all in the same fortnight ! Every- where, you see, we are living in a state of war. And the standard of conduct in a state of war differs from the standard in a state of peace. What the War Standard Demands. Do you not remember how in this country only a few years back, men, young, noble, rich, were throwing away their lives for England, how the stateliest homes were like those Egyptian houses over which the destroying Angel had passed, leaving no house without its dead? But where is the Jew, young, noble, rich, who will throw away his life for his people? In the Japanese war the highest ladies of Japan spent their days, shut up in wards and roughly-clad like convicts, making antiseptic band- ages for the wounded. Where is the noble Jewish lady who spends her days making bandages for the wounds of her people? Hunting and horse-racing, balls and dinners and operas are legiti- mate enough in the piping times of peace; but when we are on a war footing, when the agony of our people cries to us from the shambles of Russia to the Mellahs of Morocco, and from the Hara of Tunis to the ruined villages of Kouniania, then I say that if our upper classes do not pause in their pleasurings and make a supreme effort of salvation, the blood of their brothers will cry out against them from the ground. And not only against them, but against every Jew, however lowly, who has done less than his utmost. Judaea expects every man to do his duty. Are 24 JEWISH TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION. there a hundred Jews in the world who can say they have lived up to the war standard — that standard which exacts the last ounce of sacrifice, ay, even of the heart's blood, that standard which demands that all factions and parties should suspend their strife and take counsel before the common foe? Are there a thousand Jews who have lived even up to the peace standard? The race whose naturalization was regarded as a degradation to England now poses as the pillar of Throne and Church. They are Englishmen, our fashionable folk tell us ; Jewish affairs are not their business. Englishmen? They libel a great race when they use its name to cover up cowards and time-servers. As if it was not the duty of Englishmen to right human wrong ! As if great Englishmen like the Lord Chancellor and Lord Selborne had not presided at ITO meetings ! I have had from John Morley and Joseph Chamberlain the sympathy I could not obtain from Solomon Jacobs, M.P. Did I not say that, though we look after our poor, we fail to look after our rich? We exact from them no standard of duty, not even a peace-standard. We are grateful for the dirtiest crumb of concession to race or religion. This, must end. What land in the world but shows us, amid all our humilia- tions, Jews mighty in wealth and name and power, merchant princes, statesmen, soldiers, judges, financiers. This Jewish power is a mockery to us — we enjoy only the envy it arouses, not the salvation it might afford. This power has destroyed us time and again — let it now stand up and save us. Money thrown to us is not enough — we want the brain, the heart, the soul of our best and strongest, not the dregs of their time or the scat- terings of their philanthropy. In this financial crisis in America Mr. Pierpont Morgan and his fellow-financiers sat up all night to save American credit. When will our financiers Sit up all night to avert the destruction of our people? United we are invincible ; we can build what we will. Cen- turies enough we 'have wept and wrung the hands that should have laboured. Centuries enough we have cried, " How long, O Lord, how long? " It is time we listened to the reply thundered to us through the ages : " How long, O Israel, how long? " THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE ITO. President: Israel Zangwil!.. T.i'ivi I AuRAHA.MS (Financial Secretary of the India Office). Hon. Sec. : Clement I. SALA^^A^■. (>KEAT BRITAIN. Pr. i;. L. Abrahams. Kt. Hon. Arthur Cohen, K.C. Jjenjamin A. Cohen. Walter S. Cohen. Ur. J. Dulberg (Manchester). Dr. M. D. Eder. Joseph Fels. Miss Carmel Goldsmid. Sir Israel Hart. Philip J. Hartog. Paul Hirsch, J.P. (Leeds). 1!. Kisch. H. M. Kisch, C.S.I. A. jM. Lazarus Langdon, K.C. E. H. Langdon (Manchester). Phineas H. Levi (Birminf^rham). A. Lewinstein. Professor Meldola. R. M. Sebag-Montefiore. Oscar Plaut. Solomon J. Solomon, R.A. Sir Isidore Spielmann, C.M.ci. Marion H. Spielmann. Meyer A. Spielmann (President of the British Federation). Alfred Sutro. Major-Gen. Sir Alfred Turn(»r, K.C.B, Lucien Wolf. Mrs. I. Zangwill. AUSTRALIA. ( ). L. Bernard. Rev. Francis L. Cohen. Arthur W. Hyman. 1. Jacobs. A. Marks. E. Casper. SOUTH AFRICA. Mrs. .Auerbach. Hon. Max Langerniann. Major Sir Matthew Nathan, K.C.M.G., R.E. INDIA. R. Nathan, CLE. 1 ■'r. S. Soils Cohen. 1 >aniel Guggenheim. Hon. A. S. Solomons. AMERICA. Hon. (3scar S. Straus. Cyrus L. Sulzberger. Hon, Judge Mayer Sulzberger. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA iirdadv University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 nS9 Return this material to the library from which it was t>orrowed. Tt' QEJ 06 2tf)8 « Bi,-,' ' PSD 2343 » ' 'COMM Right Hon. Lord schild, G.C.V.O. Hon. Oscar S. Straus. Roth- Dr. M. Mandelstaiiim. Dr. Paul Nathan. Herr James Simon. For all informauu.i retaungr to ilie Organization, please a^li to the Hon. Secretary of the TTO, Kln-'s Chambers, Portuga Street, London, W.C. "'«."«» l.hAi.liUltv, AU.VEW & CI). 3 1158 01010 2731