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No. 38. | Vienna, 16 September 1904. — 7 Tishri 5665. | 8th Year.

Our War.

"We fought bravely, but the enemy was in superior force. We were obliged to withdraw." That sounds like a report of the latest battle in the struggle which has raged for months in the Far East, which has already destroyed a hundred thousand young and flourishing lives, and whose end is still not in sight. It is, however, "only" a report that we Jews have known for centuries. It is the battle bulletin that is announced to the Jewish people again and again, even when it believes itself in possession of the firmest positions, of "impregnable" strongholds. War has been waged upon us since the days of our forefathers, and the war loses nothing of its terror even though a deceptive armistice interrupts it from time to time. At most, such a truce deceives the credulous leaders as to the enemy's intentions and finds the army wholly unprepared when a surprise attack comes.

In other cases, when one adversary takes it into his head to fall upon another without a declaration of war, protest is made in the name of international law, a great action is set on foot, and the council of the nations is called to bear witness. Towards us, men feel themselves free of any such consideration. The telegraph simply reports on the following day: "Anti-Jewish excesses in Rowno, massacre of Jews in Smiela, anti-Jewish riots in Sosnowice, etc."

Nor do we wish to complain of this. There are, to be sure, still naive souls among us who stand as though stunned at every dreadful piece of news, who cannot comprehend how such atrocities should still be possible. These are the people whose understanding has been clouded with phrases about the progress of civilisation, about the approaching brotherhood of man, about the love of modern man for his neighbour. These are the people before whom the wealth or social rank of individuals among us is held up with restless zeal, to whom a moment of quiet is commended as the dawning Peace of God, who are taught that the material welfare of one section of a people, however vanishingly small it may be in proportion to the people as a whole, bears witness to the irresistible recognition of our human rights as well. These are the people who have been drilled to renounce every particularity of their own, by being led to believe that through slavish imitation of their surroundings, through servile clinging to their neighbour, they would find rest and peace and forgetfulness of the misery of their kinsmen; the people, finally, to whom men have dared to preach without shame national suicide as an honourable, nay, a necessary means of living.

But we others, we Jews who hold fast to our people, are no longer surprised by news of fresh deeds of violence against our brethren. It pains us deeply, indeed, that we are powerless to prevent their misfortune; we feel with them, indeed, how degrading it is for them and for us to be at all times defencelessly exposed to the savage instincts of our surroundings; but we are neither stunned by such calamity nor shaken in our life's work.

We know that a treacherous struggle, ever freshly kindled, is being waged against our people, against which all the statecraft of enlightened governments can accomplish nothing, because it cannot root out the sources of its existence: the coarseness and backwardness of the masses of all countries, and the dark hatred of creed and race, deliberately taught and nourished. The popular instincts, which are well able to feel actual differences but not to interpret them, still less to rise above them, are flattered by politicians, priests, teachers and poets; they are sharpened, praised, glorified, and the masses, incapable of thought, are filled with pseudo-scientific theories that breed a conceit which is ridiculous, yet in its consequences positively destructive of civilisation.

That, for the illustration and apparent justification of such theories, there must be someone upon whom they may try to look down with all their pride, whom they may trample underfoot and would treat as helots, is not to be wondered at. And since for certain governments too it is at times not unpleasant