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No. 18. — Vienna, 6 May 1898. — 2nd Year.

Mr. Claude Montefiore's Views.

H. In the “American Hebrew” Mr. Claude G. Montefiore makes himself heard against Zionism. The essay is highly remarkable: by reason of the person of its author, by the elegance of its form, and by its implacably lucid content. For these reasons we mean to occupy ourselves with this adversary more closely than is otherwise the case when the already familiar arguments against the Jewish national movement, refuted again and again, are held up to us.

To-day, after nearly three years of this contention, we may fairly assume that the general discussion upon the significance of Zionism is exhausted. On this side and on that, the most various shades of opinion have made themselves felt. The parties have, as it were, taken up their final positions. For those who are still undecided to-day, or insufficiently informed, the only question that can remain is which of the two camps they wish to join. Thus Mr. Claude G. Montefiore appears to us as a kind of general spokesman for the other side, who once more, with unsurpassable distinctness and in a truly grand style, sums up everything that can be brought forward against our endeavours. He is correct enough to state at the outset that he is a decided opponent of the Zionism which he undertakes to explain to the readers of the “American Hebrew.” He wishes to take no one by surprise; he does not sanctimoniously roll his eyes; neither does he distort the facts. He says: objectively the matter stands thus and thus; subjectively I, Claude Montefiore, think this and that about it. Hats off to such an enemy! But after the salute we must be permitted to close with him.

Oh, Mr. Claude Montefiore is an excellent representative man for our opponents. He is free, proud, cultivated, and, so far as the outward gifts of fortune can make one so, one of the fortunate of this earth. He lives in a land which is at present still the blessed island in the great sea of Jew-hatred. He is — what one does not, to be sure, recognize at once upon hearing his Italianate name — a perfect Englishman. He comes of a family demonstrably settled in Britain for a considerable time past, which there attained to wealth and standing. I do not know the course of his life more exactly, but from the impression he made upon me in that conversation which he himself mentions in the “American Hebrew,” he must have passed through the development of a well-bred Englishman of a well-to-do house. He is to-day some forty odd years of age; his youth therefore fell already in the better time, when Benjamin Disraeli had warmed — or should one say softened? — his brittle, abrupt countrymen towards the social equality of the Jews. The young gentlemen of Claude Montefiore's generation had a great deal to thank the Disraelian romance for. When at Eton or Harrow they made ready with the sons of English noblemen for the cricket match, when at Oxford or Cambridge they rowed and studied, they can hardly have noticed any longer that they were in misery. Involuntarily the recollection of these pretty English contests and of their educative meaning presses itself upon one when one considers the new generation which Claude Montefiore represents so excellently. These vigorous competitions present themselves to us as an imitation of, and a substitute for, those struggles of life in which the energy of the less well-provided is wont to develop. All life is indeed struggle and wager; and since an impoverishment of energy threatened precisely in the higher classes of society if the male youth did not fight and contend bodily, English education, with a grand policy, instituted such games. For the young Jews in England, to be sure, the school held in store besides bitternesses and vexations enough. Benjamin Disraeli depicted the sufferings of soul of the “foreign” boys convincingly, and the effect was not wanting. Claude Montefiore's generation was doubtless better off. How pretty and how diverting it is now to think that the rising Israelitish youths grew stranger to their true nationhood because they suffered fewer moral pains, thanks to the moving oratio pro domo of a Jewish poet. Behold, here is a case in which the solidarity of the Jews had its good sides also for the Anglo-Saxons of Mosaic faith and Italian name. They profited by the abolition of the prejudice which one of their own had carried through. At cricket in Eton or Harrow, at the rowing of Oxford or Cambridge, they wore the same colours as their fellows. The yellow badge had vanished.

And this generation, which has grown up already in cheerful well-being, which knows the struggle of life only from the parable of games, suddenly finds itself confronted with a movement of exasperated men. Jews they are, that is to say members of the people out of which Benjamin