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No. 52. — Vienna, 30 December 1898. — Second Year.

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Little Jews.

By Leo Rafaels.

The word sounds strange and unfamiliar, but it is a matter for wonder that it was not coined long ago, for the concept cries out for a name. Whoever knows the history of German unity will not seek long for the model word; the Little Germans were for decades the mockery of all men who looked beyond the church steeple of their own parish and a very little way into the day to come. A Little German held the thought of a united, great, strong Germany to be madness, impossibility, treason to the country — the application to the Little Jew is obvious. The word would thus be acceptable, if only the opposite were not so hard to name. What are those Jews to be called who feel themselves inseparable members of the great Jewish community, who have in view not merely their existence of a day, but who infer the morrow from the yesterday? If we wished to keep to the words borrowed from German history, we should have to say Great Jews — no, not for anything in the world! What the whole world calls "Great Jews," the famous bankers, are precisely the smallest of all Little Jews, save for one exception and another, which only confirms the rule.

Meanwhile, the "Great Jews" in our sense are not at a loss for a name; they are sufficiently characterised by the title of Zionists. Perhaps, then, it is permissible to retain the very apt designation "Little Jews." The species is, curiously enough, most numerously represented in those countries which have worked their way out of narrow, petty-state notions and embrace the whole globe with their gaze. Germany and England furnish a larger contingent of "Little Jews" than all the other countries of the old and the new world taken together. Germany and England! It is astonishing how we Jews, who feel and think so quickly, who find our way so rapidly into new conditions, grasp the times so hardly, so slowly, where it is a question of drawing from events the most obvious conclusions for the destinies of our own people. In the year 1871 Germany passed to the order of the day over the Little Germans — how Germany has developed in these five-and-twenty years! Every German Jew who has dealings with foreign countries knows how other peoples meet a German to-day; not always with love, certainly not — the Germans renounce that — but with consideration and respect.

In England the lesson is of much more recent date and of somewhat modified import; in essence it comes to the same thing. Gladstone's party, following a watchword of its leader, abhorred every policy which demanded a closer union of all the colonies and aimed at founding a great British world-empire. England has quite enough in Englan, said the Little Englanders; only visionaries, Utopians and suchlike foolish people look beyond the borders of the fatherland. England is great through her commerce and her industry. How so? Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield supply the world with clothing of every kind, Birmingham and Sheffield with implements of iron and steel, our shipyards with vessels of unsurpassed excellence. What need have we to go out upon adventures in foreign lands? Let all other nations indulge in that folly; we devote ourselves to industry and commerce — that is our mission.

That was a pious, comfortable, seemingly very cheap policy, and Gladstone had the majority of the pious and comfortable nation on his side. The Little Englanders were very proud of their cool, sensible policy.

A man of Oriental descent, Oriental name, Oriental appearance and Oriental imagination