Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-04-20
By DIR. STEPHEN S. WISE.
Written for The Zionist Publicity
Department

New York City, April 1o.-(Spe-
cial.)-Zionism has ceased to be, for
Zionism implies the necessity of a
movement in order to bring the pos
sibility of the establishment of a
Jewish or Zionist commonwealth
before the eyes of the world, Jewish
and nom Jewish. | may say without
fear of contradiction that the estab-
lishment of a Jewish Palestine under
the league of nations and with the
trusteeship that must obviously be
granted to Great Britain, is just as
truly before the mind of European
statesmen, and, above all, of Amer
lean statesmen i'll Paris, as any
other question which lies before
them today.
Let it suffice to say that the
wholly sympathetic anu favoring
attitude of Presiden, Wilson and
Colonel House and their associates
of the American peace deputation, is
shared by such European statesman
ship in England, France and Italy
and the lesser allied lands as counts.
Worlds League and independence.
Two things will come out of the
peace conference, and these two
things after all are among the main
detectives of the war, the establish
ment of a league of nations, and the
securing of independence for the
smaller nations. If the war had not
been fought in order to create such
an alliance among the civilized peo-
plies of the earth, it would have be-
come necessary for the allied ma
tons to devise a method of guar
anteeing and perpetuating the moral
and political achievements of the
war. The league of nations means
that the great nations, including our
own. England, Italy and France
which have won the war, understand
that in the future the right of peo-
pie to live is not to be determined
by the size of its army or the might
of its navy, but by its own will tc
live, the will to live predicated upon
those conditions of nationality and
history which are the test of the
reality of the claims of people 10
live its own life.
One thing upon which I wish to
comment without delay is the
grave disadvantage under which the
Jewish people rest in relation to the
peace conference through the
status Of the Russian empire. AS is
known, this involves a division of
the greatest Jewry in the world for
a time, in any event. into series of
relatively lesser Jewries, and the
consequent failure of the great Rus
sian Jewry to exercise in itself and
through a free and united Russia
that power which would have been
sure to have fallen to the lot of
Russian Jewry. This means one
thing-that the task of leadership
rests upon American Israel and the
task of supreme service falls to the
lot of the American Jew.
The Russian Tragedy.
If the Russian tragedy had been
averted, Russian and American Jew
ries would together have taken the
lead in organizing world ewry and
in securing those ends upon which
the Jewish people is bent. In the
circu instances of the breakdown and
the breakup of Russia. the chiefest
responsibility for the Jewish future
rests upon American Israel, upon
the craftsmanship of its leaders,
upon the capacity for service of all
the people.
The position of Jews in respect to
the peace conference of 1919 is a
very different thing from the status