Worcester morning daily spy., 1898-02-14
EMILE zo1A AND THE JEWS.
From the Hartford TimesO


at this time with the bravest man in |
France, the man whose pluck and vim |
and devotion to the truth are putting to |
shame all the boasted honor Of the |
French army and the French govern
ment itself.
1t is no mere contest for the liberation |
of the miserable Dreyfus from his penal
island in which Zola is now engaged. 1t
is to punish him (zola) he says, for his
divergence from the views of the Cath
olic students, who are the most ardent
agitators against the Jews, rather than
because of his belief in the innocence of
Captain Dreyfus, that he is now being
hooted in the streets of aPris We shall
quote his words at some length:
l have to admit regretfully that the
movement has taken a great hold in
France, but / do not admit that the
people really understand it's significance.
1t Is merely accepted by the mass of
the people as the newest form of social
ism The Jews have been. made to rep
resent in the eyes of the ignorant, the
have-alls, the capitalists, against whom
the demagogues have always directed
the furies of the proletariat. Instead of
crying as they used to cry ten years ago,
Down with the capitalists" the people
are now taught to cry, Down with the
Jews" the leaders of the anti-Semitic
campaign acting largely in the interests
of the Catholic party, having induced
them into the belief that all t5e capita
money which employs all the labor of
France, that the whole nation is a vas
sal to the purse Of the Rothsehlds, and
such-like absurdities.
Thus it appears that anti-Semitism in
France closely resembles populism in
America. Here the demagogues de-
nounce the money-power. In France
they denounee the Jews. The prejudice
appealed to is the same in one case as
the other Zola says:
Nobody knows better than the leaders
Of this campaign that they are duping
the people; that the terms are not syn
onymous to us; that if there are some
very rich Jews in France there are also
thousands of poor Jews-of very poor
Jews. 1t is as absurd as the other de-
vice of holding them up to obloquy on
the ground of patriotism, by declaring
that Jews are not and cannot be French
men, when everybody knows that there
are no better Frenchmen and no better
patriots than many of the Jews. The
intensity of the existing fury against
the Jews means nothing more than that
very large number of the have moth
ings have been induced to believe by
people whose interest it is to dupe them,
that the Jews, by all kinds of Devices
hands, that it is the fault of the Jews
that work is scarce and that wages are
no better. The class of people among
whom an anti-Semitism founshes are
not people who understand They are
people who leap at any explanation,
| however monstrouS, which may be Civ
| en- In the half-penny papers, of the rea-
son of tn q poverty. This campaign
| fills me with surprise and with disgust
1t is monstrous. 1t is without common
sense, without truth and without JUS
| tice. 1t is a return to the middle ages
1t threatens that most abominable of
public crimes-a religious persecution
| Worse than that, it is undoing all that
civilization and enlightenment have
done towards the realization of what is
the ideal of us all-the federation of
man, the commonwealth of the nations
| have no words to express my abhor-
renee of 1t, and if l treat it with appar-
ent contempt, it is rather lest my adj
versaries should know the anxiety with
which their maneuvres have filled me-
| The hostility to the Jews in France
| mas been growing in intensity for q good
| while. They are decried with the same
| Virulence as thieves and murderers,
which in the early days of the present
republic, the Catholic priests used to be
denounced. In those days, says Zola,
| 1T used to be off priest that certain
| journals used to breakfast every morn
ing. Nowadays it is a Jew, the fattest
and sleeAest that can be found"
He has been 10th to believe that the
movement had any real hold upon the
| people, as he believes it has in Russia
in Germany. He has wanted to believe
that the French people are too intelli-
gent, too sensible to tolerate such an
'imbecility," as he calls it. But latter
| ly he has been surprised to see the rapid
| growth of the movement. He shall
| speak for himself once more:
The very initiation of the movement
stupefled me. What! that there should
be a return to fanaticism, an attempt
| to light up religious war in this epoch
Of ours, 100 years after the revolution,
in the heart Of our great Paris, in the
days of democracy, of universal tolera-
ton, at the very time when there is an
| immense movement being made every
where toward equality, Justice and fra
terntty! We are trying to wipe out the
frontiers of the nations, we are dream
ing of the community of the people, we
draw together into congresses the
priests of all religions so that they may
fall into each others arms we feel our
selves all brothers in the common suf-
ferings of humanity, and we wish to
work for the relief of all from the pains
OF existence by raising up a single altar
men, cunning or idiotic, come and shout
In our ears every morning: Let us
Kill the Jews. Let us devour the Jews
Let US massacre them. Let US extermi-
nate them. Let us get back to the days
of the gibbet and stake" Is it not in
| conceivable. Could anything be more
foolish? Could anything be more abo-
minable?
Eloquent, is he not, this gallant
Frenchman, who has resolved to stem
the tide of barbarism which he sees
threatening to engulf his country? He
praises the liberation of the Jews in
England which has put stop to the
race-antagonism there He ridicules the
claim of timid Frenchmen that the Jew
banker always can and does outwit the
Christian. If the Jew shows superiority
as money -getter it is because he has
been trained to il by eighteen hundred
years of persecution. The idea that there
is Jew syndicate behind the move
ment for Dreyfus he says is a hallucin-
alton. There are as many Jews against
Dreyfus as for him. In fact there is no
syndicate of Jews anywhere. The stu
pidity of French anti-Semitism makes
him ashamed of his country, but Zola
believes that French common sense will
yet triumph.
1t is worth knowing-this fact that
the insanity which Zola is so brilliantly
combating in France is nothing more
nor less than the "hypocritical social
ism, to use his happy designation of it,
which in this country takes the form of
free-Silverism, greenbackery, bimetal
1ish ctr fha aUarla sting fOraU of tho