Iditarod pioneer., 1915-04-24
ATTITUDE OF THE JEWS
 DISCUSSED BY ZANGWILL


 Israel Zangwill said mot because they hate Russia less, but because they hate Prussian reaction and militarism more."
 It was in London, and 1 had been saying to the celebrated Anglo Jewish patriot and author that American Jews baked at the idea of according their moral support to any coalition of belligerents or to any cause with which Russia was identified,
 1 reminded him that we of the United States ourselves were at this time at logger heads with Russia in a matter involving inhumanty to Jews in general and our own Jewish fellow citizens in particular. l tried to make Zangwill understand that it was hard for American Jews, even those whose memories did not go back further than kishneff and Beiliss, to generate enthusl- asm for Russian arms.
 Zangwill required no such assurances from me. He has had stream of core, spondents from America raising the same pertinent point, and he gladly embraced the opportunity, he explained to argue it.
 "The question for Jews everywhere to consider" he said, "is this: What is the interest of the higher civilization in this war? We should not approach the ques- ton purely from the standpoint of Jews by race We should weigh it unselfShly from the standpoint of Jews by spirit.
 My own convictions are not born of the fact that l am either Jew by race or an EncHshman by birth They are dictated by the conscience of man of letters who is in harmony with the univcrselistic teach ing of the Hebrew prophets and who boasts that there Is not a chauvinistic corpuscle in all the blood that flows through his veins
 "When this war began remembered that I had produced, among many other works three at least which qualified me to claim for myself utter impartiality.
 During the Boer war l wrote The Man tie of EIiiah,' an indictment of the British Oom Paul's secretary, Dr Leyds, tcld me when 1 visited Kruger in his exile in the Riviera that the numbers of Harpers con taining it were read by the Boer soldiers in the field and had chcered their hearts with the thought that there were lovers of jus tice in England
 "A few years ago l wrote an indictment of everything that Kaiserism and Pruss!an miltarism stand for, The War God played by Sir Herbert Tree drama which in the Ugut bl tN'Ill> NtS EIOPiltt4C III '''toli VI the present attempt of Germany to impose its armored domination upon the world.
 Ny earlier play The Melting Pot not unknown in America, was among other things a sweeping condemnation of the Rus sian Phara h of today.
 T think, therefore. 1 can claim to ap- oroach the diagnosis of Armageddon in no myopic bigoted spirit.
 "To remind me of ki>hinctf and ritual murder pro cautions, as you and so many of my correspondents do is to bring coals to Russia. Why, my indictment of Russia The Melting Fot,' is playing Ill England at this very moment notwithstanding that Muscovy is our ally. But that very play teaches also reconciliation and forgiveness and the melting up of the past into finer future.
 '1 ou tell me the hope of liberty and free don, fer the Jew in Russia is dim and dis mal in the light of the czar's broken prom Ses in the past You say American Jews fear that Russia triumph in this war will spel even greater oppression for its Jews than anything they have suffered hitherto. Yau describe American wonder that liberal zed England could have made common cause with reactionary Russia.
 Let me deal with the last point first It is true that British conceptions of clVlhza- ten find their exact antithesis in Russia, so far as the bureaucracy Is concerned though certainly not so far as teachers like Toystoy and kropotllin, my neighbor in the country, by the way, are concerned.
 However, if we are strange and unnat ural political bedfell0ws, it Is the German menace, the military terrorism which Ger many has sought to impose upon European mankind, that has compelled Europe to or gani7e and feGcrate for its overthrow.
 Republican France alone was powerless to resist it. It allied itself with despOtic Russia in the hope that between them they might roll it back
 Then a peril which had long been merely continental and military became pan European and maritime That compelled England to affiliate itself with those others who were face to face with the German dan ger.
 q admit that we have sunk below the British level, ethically viewed, in our Rus sian alliance But it is Germany which has dragged us down to the plane of brute force.
 "The same levelIng process has brought all Europe to the lowest strata of clvllza- ton, war Tut war waged for the highest civilization, that is, freedom and political peace.
 When our victory is won, victory in which Russia will shade, another leveling process will inevitably, if not immediately, raise Russia to the strata of its democratic British and French allies
 That is the point for Jews to remember.
 Great Britain, to say nothing whatever of France, relieved from the Prussian in cubus, will be able to impose upon Russia influence for the emancipation of the Jews.
 Sir Edward Grey has already in letter to me pledged himself to encourage Russia to emancipate its Jews and his influence is to be used not simply at the close of the war, as people imagine, but at once.
 "Brtain's advice to Russia is Do 1t now But at the worst the British foreign secre- tary is bound to be a vital factor in the peace to follow the war.
 "There will be another factor which will serve the Jewish cause in the hour of peace.