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No. 23. — Vienna, 5 June 1903 — 10 Sivan 5663. — 7th Year

Compulsion to Love.

The Zionists are dreamers. Their policy pursues nebulous aims.

These two sentences are the brief extract of countless speeches and writings of our opponents. We are wholly free of obstinacy and intent only upon serving the best interests of our people. We therefore did not hesitate, for our own improvement, to enter the school of the sober and clear-sighted politicians. Whatever they bestowed upon the public was eagerly searched by us for measures whose execution must beyond all doubt have earned the Jews a happy future.

In this search we found some quite choice recipes, which had only one small, one minimal defect: the medicine prepared according to them always had to be taken by two if it was to work, and it was always taken by one only. For this reason the first recipe, too, was speedily flung under the table. Following its prescription, we Jews had steeped ourselves in love and kindness and came to share the proud and secure existence of our neighbours. But these had not read the recipe, had swallowed no medicine, and threw us out.

This failure in no way damped the warlike fury of our teachers against Zionism. That was a clear sign that their wisdom was not yet exhausted, and that, should the first plans fail, they had a reserve programme of sweeping success in readiness. That was necessary, if their honest intentions towards the Jews were not to be a mere assumption. The Jews of the West might, after all, be left to a continually declining but still endurable fate; no longer endurable is the cruel sight of endless misery in Roumania. And the eyes in the pictures of dead children from Kishineff, who in sweet innocence had borne witness for us with their blood, thrust a dagger into our hearts. The dreamless and clear-sighted policy of our teachers showed itself armed even for times so menacing.

With an extraordinarily heavy consumption of printer's ink, their brilliant secret was made known in Jewish and half-Jewish newspapers. One simply moved that humane Europe should teach good manners to inhumane Europe. That is to say, decent people on the far side of the Vistula and the Pruth were to combine their feelings of abhorrence for the barbarous East into so-called public opinion. The pressure of these collected feelings would then turn the feelings of the well-known Jew-haters into their opposite.

Decidedly the finest thing about this plan is that the Jews have nothing to do in it. One needs only Christians who preach and Christians who take the sermons to heart. For the moral sermons of Jews to Christians have never yet acted upon the Christians' hearts, at most upon their diaphragms. When, therefore, in the lands of civilisation deeply moved orators give words to the flaming protest of mass meetings; when the journals publish the grave complaints of scientific celebrities; when angry admonitions resound from the parliaments — then assuredly contrite Roumanians will storm Jewish workshops, this time, however, to place orders, and the Russian tchinovnik in his drunkenness will go forth not to beat the Jew but to kiss him.

In short, an excellent new recipe, except that the defect of that first one has been made not smaller but larger; again two are to take the medicine, and neither takes it; for both are Christians. The mass meetings demanded have turned into a few meagre gatherings; those who speak and write for the Jews have always been the same few advocates; and since the Tolstois and Mommsens and the Beaulieus' have often spoken for us already, the monotony does not make the effect any happier; and finally, in the records of the parliaments lies many a motion whose open or veiled point is directed against the Jews.

So it seems that we have entered a tedious school, and shall never learn by what means we Jews may obtain, if not love, then at least legal protection. Our teachers have been plying their method for years now, but it is already ripe for the lumber-room. Under its sign Dreyfus has received mercy instead of justice; under