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No. 26. Vienna, 26 June 1903 — 1 Thamuz 5663. 7th Year.

Our Task.

W. Our philanthropists and our charitable societies are now passing through hard times. To the misery of everyday life, from which, with much toil and ceaseless deliberation, they wrest a few hundred victims every year, there has now been added the outbreak of deep hatred and inherited barbarism in Kischenew. Now they are startled, at a loss, without a plan. This may best be seen from the fact that not for a long time have so many meetings of all these bodies been held, and not since the years 1881 and 1882 have so many schemes of rescue been proposed, as in these days.

"Never to be doing nothing," one of these self-important busybodies said to me one day, when I asked him what lasting thing the great charitable societies were actually creating for our people. And that suffices for most of them. "Never let nothing be done" is a good resolution, and if this motto is ascribed to the restless Walter Scott, he at least proved throughout his life that he did not stop at words. Our charitable societies, too, have indeed often tried to show that they mean to act upon this saying; but either they were not in earnest, or they were incapable of carrying it out. Neither of these two alternatives can be flattering to them. That they are true is proved to us once again by the events of our own day.

Since the massacres in Kischenew a new migration of the Russian Jews is beginning, slowly but irresistibly. Emigration, to be sure, has never ceased during the last two decades; but it never greatly exceeded the figures of the so-called "good" years. Now it is becoming different. Already we see the fugitives appearing daily, singly or in families, in the capitals of the Continent, and all these people have but one thing to report: that they are the first who have succeeded in escaping, but that many hundreds of their countrymen will follow them. And so indeed it is. The intervals between the arrivals of the groups grow ever shorter, the groups themselves ever larger.

The migration has begun.

That is a terrible truth. Now it must be looked courageously in the face. It would be natural to inquire who is to blame that this migration too, which could have been foreseen and had in fact been foretold, cannot be directed, well prepared, to a country ready to receive the fugitives. But the time is too grave to be spent in accusations or squandered in quarrels. That the emigrants have only the one thought, to flee from the land of endless terror, is comprehensible and was to be expected. That all the great institutions which Jewish magnanimity and Jewish compassion have created should prove insufficient is less comprehensible, but, if one has followed their activity, not to be denied. But that even corporations founded for the sole purpose of preparing emigration, organising it and bringing it to a good end — that even these corporations are still not in full activity, and once again stand wholly unprepared before a mass migration — that is not merely incomprehensible, it is simply disgraceful, and for the emigrants, unhappily, disastrous as well.

What now? The most audacious projects are springing up. Australia, Canada, the United States are the names most often mentioned. But already we learn that Russia has declared itself ready, should the United States not submit to the stream of emigrants, to place no obstacles in the way of their return. Over 6000 steamship tickets to America were sent to Russia in the very first week after the excesses in Kischenew. A ridiculous number in view of those resolved to emigrate, and yet large enough to give rise to serious difficulties. What if even this number should fail to find the hoped-for welcome upon landing? And even if that were avoided, what is to become of those who follow, of the next 6000 and 60,000? Or is emigration to Australia or Canada perhaps better prepared? What misery awaits most of these poor people in foreign lands! How many millions of money will once again be spent to no purpose, without creating even for the minority of the emigrants any prospect of better circumstances in the future!

In certain circles it is reckoned that the demonstrations of indignation directed from all the world against the murderers of Kischenew the proof of a