The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1917-04-12
THE LAST GHETTO.

THE LAST GHETTO.
Jews viii Come Into Their own Il
the New Russia. #
The future historian is going to be
no more concerned with the downfall
OF the Romanoff dynasty than with the
passing of the Bourbons of the
Stuarts. The incident Of the great
change that will bulk biggest in the
books is that early in 1917 the last
nation to prescribe people because
OF creed fell in step with the march
OF. civilization and humanity and re-
ligious persecution faded from the
earth. There will be no more pogroms,
no more Kichenev massacres, no more
Pale and no more ghettos in Russia.
The centuries-long nightmare Of the
Jews is over.
The edicts Of Pobledonatstsey
have faded into history with the Span
ish Inquisition, and the law that 4
Jew without beard was subject to
death at the hands Of the first citizen
who caught him shaved. The slaught-
er of men and women on the charge
that they used Christian blood in the
making Of Passover bread charge,
by the way that was originated by the
Romans as an excuse for killing
Christianswill never again be coun-
tenanced by a government.
Future historians will record as a
curiosity of the Twentieth century
that a Jew was put on trial for his life
on the accusation that he slew child
on the altar, as part Of his religious
observance, at the very time that Ma
than Straus was saving the lives Of
thousands Of babies by his pasteurized
milk stations and that Simon Flexner
was developing his serum to check
the ravages of disease that used to
carry off ninety out of every hundred
children that caught it.
Neither Straus nor Flexner would
have been permitted to set foot in
Russia before the czar was toppled
from his throne. That strange sur
vival among governments let its COM
mercial treaty with this country be
abrogated rather than to have the soil
of holy Russia profaned by the tread
of an American or Jewish descent, and
yet no country on the globe stood in
such dire need of the business enter
prise of the scouts Of commerce it bar
red.
The revolution means much to the
Russian Jews, but it means more to
Russia than to the people it sets free.
The brains and genius that have been
penned in the ghettos locked out of
the professions, banned from the
farms-will now be loosed to contrib
ute to the progress of the nation. The
splendid empire Of Siberia, another
Mississippi valley in potential agricul-
tural richness, will not long remain
the range of half-savage nomadic
tribes when the eager, land-hungry
prisoners Of the Pale realize that their
bars are down, for the Jews soul is a
pastoral one in it's essence. 1t is only
the grim necessity Of having his pos
session in concealable and portable
form, taught him by eighty genera
tions of raids and expulsions, that has
made the Jew the shrewdest trader in
the world.
What the Jew has done for England
Germany, France and the United
States he will do for Russia. It will
take time. You cannot expect a peo-
pie to come from the night Of oppres-
sion into the day of opportunity with
out being bewildered for space. But
the enterprise of the Russian Jew will
assert itself more and more. Gener-
alton after generation his clannish-
ness will melt before the warmth Of
tolerance, and he will repay free Rus
sia thousand-fold for taking off his
chains. Chicago Herald.