CHAPTER XIX
ZIONISM A SURRENDER, NOT A SOLUTION[2]
Zionism is the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish history. I assert that it is wrong in principle and impossible of realization; that it is unsound in its economics, fantastical in its politics, and sterile in its spiritual ideals. Where it is not pathetically visionary, it is a cruel playing with the hopes of a people blindly seeking their way out of age-long miseries. These are bold and sweeping assertions, but in this chapter I shall undertake to make them good.
The very fervour of my feeling for the oppressed of every race and every land, especially for the Jews, those of my own blood and faith, to whom I am bound by every tender tie, impels me to fight with all the greater force against this scheme, which my intelligence tells me can only lead them deeper into the mire of the past, while it professes to be leading them to the heights.
Zionism is a surrender, not a solution. It is a retrogression into the blackest error, and not progress toward the light. I will go further, and say that it is a betrayal; it is an eastern European proposal, fathered in this country by American Jews, which, if it were to succeed, would cost the Jews of America most that they have gained of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
I claim to speak with knowledge on this subject. I have had occasion to know the Jew intimately in all the lands where he dwells in numbers, and to study his problems on his own ground, with the intensity and sympathy which were required by my duty to help in each place to formulate the plans for his immediate assistance. I was born among the Jews of Germany, and by natural association with German Jews in New York, and by repeated visits to Germany, am familiar with their life and problems. As an American of fifty-five years’ residence, as a director of the Educational Alliance and of Mt. Sinai Hospital, as president of the Bronx House and the Free Synagogue for more than ten years, and as one who has travelled on speaking tours from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to New Orleans on behalf of the American Jewish Relief Committee, I became thoroughly familiar with the American Jews. As American Ambassador to Turkey, I came into daily official contact with the Jews from all parts of the Near East, not only the Jews of Turkey and of the Turkish Protectorate in Palestine itself, but also the Jews of Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Roumania, and Bulgaria, to say nothing of the accredited representatives of the Zionist Party in Constantinople. As the head of President Wilson’s Commission, which was sent to investigate the alleged pogroms of the Jews of Poland following the Armistice in 1919, I spent several months on the ground in Poland and Galicia, and talked with thousands of Jews in every walk of life in that greatest centre of Jewish population in the world. They told me their troubles; the indignities and the perils they endured; the hatred of their neighbours because of their religion; the deliberate efforts that were being made to stifle their economic life; the political discriminations to which they were subjected; and the social barriers which did not permit them to enjoy a full life as members of their community.
I speak as a Jew. I speak with fullest sympathy for the Jew everywhere. I have seen him in his poverty--despised, hated, spat upon, beaten, murdered. My blood boils with his at the thought of the indignities and outrages to which he is subjected. I, too, would find for him, for me, the way out of this morass of poverty, hatred, political inequality, and social discrimination.
But is Zionism that way? I assert emphatically that it is not. I deny it, not merely from an intellectual recoil from the fallacy of its reasoning, but from my very experience of life: as a seeker after religious truth, as a practical business man, as an active participant in politics, as one who has had experience in international affairs, and as a Jew who has at heart the best interests of his co-religionists.
First, let me trace briefly the origins of Zionism. I shall not attempt to give a complete résumé of these origins, but shall sketch only a broad picture of the facts.
Zionism is based upon a literal acceptance of the promises made to the Jews by their prophets in the Old Testament, that Zion should be restored to them, and that they should resume their once glorious place as a peculiar people, singled out by God for His especial favour, exercising dominion over their neighbours in His name, and enjoying all the freedom and blessings of a race under the unique protection of the Almighty. Of course, the prophets meant these things symbolically, and were dealing only with the spiritual life. They did not mean earthly power or materialistic blessings. But most Jews accepted them in the physical sense; and they fed upon this glowing dream of earthly grandeur as a relief from the sordid realities of the daily life which they were compelled to lead.
Zionism arose out of the miseries of the Jews. It was offered as a remedy, a release, a plan of action which would provide a road to happiness. This is the secret of its hold upon its adherents. The promises which it offers are so dazzling that Jews everywhere have rushed to embrace its faith without stopping to examine them closely or to calculate whether they can be made good.
Zionism is not a new idea, but it gained a fresh impetus following the outbreak of wholesale massacres in Russia beginning with Kiev and Kishineff, and all through that ghastly trail of bloodshed following the recrudescence of Anti-Semitism. The Jews, in their agony and peril, sought afresh for a path toward safety. Zionism was then restated as the remedy. Theodore Herzl gained new power as its fiery apostle, and Jews the world over embraced the doctrine as a drowning man grasps at a straw. This largely accounts for the present intense agitation of the Zionists.
Let me now define Zionism more fully. To the average Jew, unread in other histories than his own, ignorant of the great currents of world progress in science, industry, and the art of government, it is a blind and simple faith in the imminence of realization of the dream I have just described of the reërection of Zion as an earthly Kingdom. By those intellectual leaders of Jewish thought who have embraced this fallacy of a panacea, Zionism is defined in more subtle and in more plausibly rational terms. There are, first, those intellectual Jews who conceive of “Zion” (that is, Jerusalem restored to the Jews) as being a physical symbol of spiritual leadership, lifted up before their eyes and inspiring them all to a common purpose; as a demonstration of Hebraic civilization; a centre from which should proceed instruction and exhortation to the Jews of all the world.
This analogy, however, is not complete. For these leaders conceive the Jews to be, not merely a religious congregation, but, besides, a nation. They think that not merely should spiritual power be centralized in Zion, but temporal power as well. In their view, the discrimination against Jews in other countries will greatly diminish, once there is erected a Jewish state in Palestine.
This nation is to be, in their theory, not only the seat of a religion and the fostering home of distinctive racial culture. It is to be, as well, an actual political entity, with territorial boundaries and a capital city, maintaining a temporal government with a ruler accrediting ambassadors to foreign courts and capitals, dealing with other governments on an equality as a sovereign state, and seeking to use the familiar instruments of diplomatic pressure to redress the wrongs of its citizens who happen to reside under the jurisdiction of “foreign” nations.
I say that this _is_ the programme of the Zionists: perhaps I should say _was_. It is true that they have, for the moment, altered the structure of their dream, to accept the compromise held out to them by the Balfour Declaration. They have stepped down from their plans for a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine: they now accept the ideal of a “National Home for the Jewish People”--to quote the words of that declaration. This is, however, only a temporary compromise--a truce. Nothing short of the full glory of their Zion will long content the ambitious apostles of Zionism.
It is worth while at this point to digress for a moment from my main argument, to point out that the Balfour Declaration is itself not even a compromise. It is a shrewd and adroit delusion.
The Balfour Declaration is: “His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, nor the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The plain sense of these plain words has been woefully misunderstood by some of the Zionist leaders, and wilfully distorted by others. They contain no promise of a Jewish state: they offer no recognition of a Jewish nation. They do, it is true, apply the obscure but pleasant name of “Jewish Home Land” to the land which the Declaration then accurately defines by its political name as “Palestine”; but it guarantees to the Jews in their Home Land only those familiar assurances of security of person and property which are the common possessions of British subjects the world over.
I have been astonished to find that such an intelligent body of American Jews as the Central Conference of American Rabbis should have fallen into a grievous misunderstanding of the purport of the Balfour Declaration. In a resolution adopted by them, they assert that the Declaration says: “Palestine is to be a national home land for the Jewish people.” Not at all! The actual words of the Declaration (I quote from the official text) are: “His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment _in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people_.” These two phrases sound alike, but they are really very different. I can make this obvious by an analogy. When I first read the Balfour Declaration I was making my home in the Plaza Hotel. Therefore I could say with truth: “My home is in the Plaza Hotel.” I could not say with truth: “The Plaza Hotel is my home.” If it were “my home,” I would have the freedom of the whole premises, and could occupy any room in the house with impunity. Quite obviously, however, I could not occupy the rooms of any other of the guests of the hotel whose leases long antedated mine.
These men would gladly entertain me as a visitor, but how they would resent and legally fight so unjustifiable an attempt as my trying forcibly to enter their premises and displace them and make their quarters my home.
This is exactly the differentiation in meaning between the Balfour Declaration and the claims of those Zionists who profess to see in it British authority for claiming Palestine as the seat of a Jewish nation. The Balfour Declaration very carefully says: “The British Government favours the establishment of a home land for the Jewish people _in Palestine_.” But this does not say that the Jews shall have the right to dispossess, or to trespass upon the property of those far more numerous Arab tenants whose right to their share in it is as good as that of the Jews and, in most cases, of much longer standing.
Palestine is a country already populated, and the British Government has no intention of evicting the Arab owners of the soil in favour of the Jews. Nor, I may add in passing, have the Arab owners any intention of selling their holdings to the Jews, for they are fully aware of the Zionist programme, are very resentful of it, and intend to use every means at their command to frustrate it.
In February, 1921, this obvious meaning of the Balfour Declaration was made officially explicit, when the complete text of the mandate for Palestine was first made public. After reiterating in the preamble the language which I have above quoted, this official transaction of the Council of the League of Nations proceeds to enumerate the specific terms under which Palestine shall be governed as a mandatary of Great Britain. The very first article of this mandate explodes completely the theory that the Allied Powers had any idea of setting up a Jewish nation. It reads: “His Britannic Majesty shall have the power to exercise as mandatory all the powers inherent in the government of a sovereign state save as they may be limited by the terms of the present mandate.” In other words, not a government of Jews over a Jewish nation, but His Britannic Majesty is declared to be the repository of “the powers inherent in a sovereign state.”
To be sure, these powers are limited by certain specific terms enumerated in the mandate. Space does not permit a quotation of them in full, but I would advise those interested to secure a copy of the mandate and to study it in the light of the claim of some Zionists that the Balfour Declaration recognizes a Jewish State. These so-called “limitations” do not really limit the sovereign power of His Britannic Majesty. They are not limitations; they are statements of the direction in which the British as mandataries pledge themselves to pay especial attention to the interests of the Jews _as a part of the body of the citizens of Palestine_. Except for these expressions of benevolent intention specifically toward the Jews, every one of the twenty-seven articles in the declaration is just as applicable to every other citizen of Palestine, whether Jew or Gentile, Mohammedan, Arab, or Christian Syriac. They are guaranties of civil liberty, freedom of conscience, equality before the law, and the like.
It was a politic move of the British Government to name a Jew as the first governing head of Palestine when the British began to function under this mandate. But this appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel was only politic, it was not political. It has no general significance.
As I have said, some of the Zionist leaders woefully misunderstood the Balfour Declaration. The terms of the mandate now leave to them no room for misunderstanding. Other Zionist leaders, however, wilfully misrepresented it. They knew that it meant what it said, but they did not dare to tell their followers what it meant. They chose rather to let them think that it was only another phrasing of their original programme of the erection of a Zionistic national sovereign state, or that it would lead to it. These misleaders, being more vociferous than their more honest colleagues, have had the ear of the great mass of Jews throughout the world. This mass now believes that Zionism, as a national ideal, is presently attainable, if, indeed, it is not actually attained already. These Zionistic apostles are culpable, in that they have failed to undeceive the masses of this error. Instead, they have capitalized this credulous faith, and are collecting funds in America and in Europe, ostensibly to finance what they call the establishment of their dream, although really, as I believe, to finance further propaganda for their unattainable ideal.
Having disposed of the fallacious assumption that Zionism has been, or is about to be attained, let me now return to my main argument, namely, that it never can be attained, and that it ought not to be attained.
Let us examine the pretensions of Zionism from three essential angles: Is it an economic fallacy? Is it a political fantasy? Is it a spiritual will-o’-the wisp?
First, its economic aspect. I assert positively that it is impossible. Zionists have been working for thirty years with fanatical zeal, and backed by millions of money from philanthropic Jews of great wealth in France, England, Germany, and America; and the total result of their operations, at the outbreak of the World War, was the movement of ten thousand Jews from other lands to the soil of Palestine. In the same period, a million and a half Jews have migrated to America.
The truth is that Palestine cannot support a large population in prosperity. It has a lean and niggard soil. It is a land of rocky hills, upon which, for many centuries, a hardy people have survived only with difficulty by cultivating a few patches of soil here and there, with the olive, the fig, citrus fruits and the grape, or have barely sustained their flocks upon the sparse native vegetation. The streams are few and small, entirely insufficient for the great irrigation systems that would be necessary for the general cultivation of the land. The underground sources of water can be developed only at a prodigious capital expense. There are thirteen million Jews in the world: the Zionist organization itself claims for Palestine only a maximum possible population of five millions. Even this claim is on the face of it an extravagant over-estimate. After careful study on the spot in Palestine, I prophesy that it will not support more than one million additional inhabitants.
Palestine is in area about equal to the state of Massachusetts; and that New England state, blest (as Palestine is not) with plentiful water, ample water-powers, abundant forestation, and a good soil, supports only four million people. This bald comparison, however, does not begin to tell the story. Massachusetts is an integral part of a tremendously prosperous nation of one hundred million souls. Distributed among forty-eight states, between which there are no political boundaries to protect, no fences to be maintained, no tariff discrimination, or unfavourable exchanges to be considered, she enjoys all the advantages of a highly industrialized community, and of established commercial intercourse with the rest of the most progressive nations in the world. If Massachusetts were situated as Palestine is situated, remote from the great currents of modern economic life; without even one of those absolutely indispensable prerequisites to commercial success, namely natural ports; without its network of railways, bringing to it cheaply the raw materials for its manufactures, and carrying from it cheaply and quickly to rich markets its manufactured articles, Massachusetts would support a population far less than its present numbers.
This is the condition of Palestine: not only must agriculture be pursued under the greatest possible handicaps of soil and water, but it is subject to the direct competition of far more favoured lands in the very agricultural products for which it is distinctive. These are the citrus fruits, almonds, figs and dates, grapes and wine. How can little Palestine compete in these products with Italy, France, and Spain, and their north African colonies, whose richer soil lies in the direct line of the great march of commerce?
A great industrial Palestine is equally unthinkable. It lacks the raw materials of coal and iron; it lacks the skill in technical processes and the experience in the arts; and, above all, it is not in the path of modern trade currents. What hope is there for Palestine, as an industrial nation, in competition with America, Great Britain, and Germany, with their prodigious resources, their highly organized factories, their great mass-production, and their superb means of transportation? The notion is preposterous.
I claim that the foregoing analysis demolishes the economic foundation of Zionism.
What of its political foundations? Is Zionism a political fantasy? I assert most emphatically that it is. The present British mandate over Palestine is a recognition, by the great powers of the world, of the supreme political interest of Great Britain in that region. It was no mere accident that it was a British army which captured Jerusalem from the Turks in the late war. The life-and-death importance of the Suez Canal to the integrity of the British Empire has for more than half a century made the destiny of Palestine as well as of Egypt a vital concern of British statesmanship. So long as the Turk was in control, the British had no cause to fear what that impotent and backward neighbour might do to interrupt the life current that flows through this jugular vein connecting India with the British Isles. But now that the Turk is in process of being dispossessed of sovereignty, and the future disposition of his territories in doubt, British statesmen can hold but one opinion concerning either Egypt or Palestine, and this opinion is, that no matter what else may befall, British influence must be omnipotent on both sides of the Suez Canal. It may be politic for them for the moment to coddle the aspirations of a numerically negligible race like the Jews. But the notion that Great Britain would for one instant allow any form of government in Palestine, under any name whatever, that was not, in fact, an appanage of the British Crown, and subservient to the paramount interests of British world policy, is too fantastical for serious refutation.
I have just said that it may be politic for the British Government to coddle the aspirations of the Jews. There are, however, profound reasons why this coddling will not take the form of granting to them even the name and surface appearance of a sovereign government ruling Palestine. In the first place, Britain’s hold upon India is by no means so secure that the Imperial Government at London can afford to trifle with the fanatical sensibilities of the millions of Mohammedans in its Indian possessions. Remember that Palestine is as much the Holy Land of the Mohammedan as it is the Holy Land of the Jew, or the Holy Land of the Christian. His shrines cluster there as thickly. They are to him as sacredly endeared. In 1914 I visited the famous Caves of Machpelah, twenty miles from Jerusalem; and I shall never forget the mutterings of discontent that murmured in my ears, nor the threatening looks that confronted my eyes, from the lips and faces of the devout Mohammedans whom I there encountered. For these authentic tombs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are as sacred to them, because they are saints of Islam, as they are to the most orthodox of my fellow Jews, whose direct ancestors they are, not only in the spiritual, but in the actual physical sense. To these Mohammedans, my presence at the tombs of my ancestors was as much a profanation of a Mohammedan Holy Place as if I had laid sacrilegious hands upon the sacred relics in the mosque at Mecca. To imagine that the British Government will sanction a scheme for a political control of Palestine which would place in the hands of the Jews the physical guardianship of these shrines of Islam, is to imagine something very foreign to the practical political sense of the most politically practical race on earth. They know too well how deeply they would offend their myriad Mohammedan subjects to the East.
Exactly the same political issue of religious fanaticism applies to the question of Christian sensibilities. Any one who has seen, as in 1914 I saw at Easter-tide, the tens of thousands of devout Roman Catholics from Poland, Italy, and Spain, and the other tens of thousands of devout Greek Catholics from Russia and the East, who yearly frequent the shrines of Christianity in Palestine, and who thus consummate a lifetime of devotion by a pilgrimage undertaken at, to them, staggering expense and physical privation; and who has observed, as I have observed, the suppressed hatred of them all for both the Jew and the Mussulman; and who has noted, further, the bitter jealousies between even Protestant and Catholic, between Greek Catholic and Roman--such an observer, I say, can entertain no illusions that the placing of these sacred shrines of Christian tradition in the hands of the Jews would be tolerated. The most enlightened Christians might endure it, but the great mass of Christian worshippers of Europe would not. They regard the Jew not merely as a member of a rival faith, but the man whose ancestors rejected their fellow Jew, the Christ, and crucified Him. Their fanaticism is a political fact of gigantic proportions. A Jewish State in Palestine would inevitably arouse their passion. Instead of such a State adding new dignity and consideration to the position of the Jew the world over (as the Zionists claim it would do), I am convinced that it would concentrate, multiply, and give new venom to the hatred which he already endures in Poland and Russia, the very lands in which most of the Jews now dwell, and where their oppressions are the worst.
The political pretensions of Zionism are fantastic. I think the foregoing paragraphs have demonstrated this.
Is Zionism a spiritual will-o’-the-wisp? I assert with all the vigour of my most profound convictions that it is. Its professed spiritual aim is the reassertion of the dignity and worth of the Jew. It is a mechanism designed to restore to him his self-respect, and to secure for him the respect of others. The means by which it proposes to accomplish this have been described above. How pitifully inadequate these means are has been demonstrated.
The effort of the Jews to attain their legitimate spiritual ambitions by means of a political mechanism needs hardly further to be controverted in the negative, or destructive, sense. I prefer to meet this issue on positive and constructive grounds. My answer to the spiritual pretensions of Zionism is the positive answer that the solution has already been discovered--the way out has been found. The courageous Jew, the intellectually honest Jew, the forward-looking Jew, the Jew who has been willing to fight for his rights on the spot where they were infringed, has won his battle, and has found all the glorious freedom which Zionism so impractically describes. The brave Jews of England did not surrender their cause. They did not seek a moral opiate in an Oriental pipe-dream of retreat to a cloud-land Zion pictured by fancy on the arid hills of Palestine. They stayed in England; they fought on English soil for their rights as men. Their courage enlisted the admiration of the nobler spirits among the English, and it allied to them such Britons as Macaulay and George Bentinck, whose splendid eloquence and political acumen assisted in the repeal of the Jewish Disabilities in 1858. This epochal legislation gave the Jews every right enjoyed in Britain by the Christians. It made possible the splendid political career of Beaconsfield (for many years Prime Minister of Great Britain), and the brilliant experience of Sir Rufus Isaacs (now Earl Reading) who has progressed through the highest political honours of the nation as Lord Chief Justice, Ambassador to America, and Viceroy of India.
Do not forget that in this victorious struggle the Jew made no compromise whatever with his conscience. He did not abandon his racial, religious, or cultural heritage.
The courageous and wise Jews of France and Italy have fought this same battle to this same victorious conclusion.
But this book will be read chiefly by Americans: such influence as it may wield will be particularly upon American minds. Need I elaborate the argument in its American setting? The facts lie upon the surface for the dullest eyes to see them. Nowhere in the world has so glorious an opportunity been offered to the Jew. Generous America has thrown wide the doors of opportunity to him. The Jew possesses no talents of the mind or spirit that cannot find here a free field for their most complete expression.
Does he seek political office? Jews in this country have been or are members of every legislature, including the Senate of the United States; ambassadors representing the person of the President at foreign courts; officers of the judiciary in every grade from justice of the peace to justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Does he seek freedom of conscience? He may freely choose his mode of worship, from the strictest of orthodox tabernacles to the most liberal of free synagogues.
Does he seek a field for business talent? The evidence of opportunity in this direction is so overwhelming that it need not here be wearyingly recapitulated. The progress of Adolph S. Ochs from a printer’s devil in Knoxville, Tenn., fifty years ago, to owner of the greatest newspaper in the greatest city in the world, is characteristic of dozens of like successful Jewish careers in this country; and it is emblematic of hundreds of thousands of Jewish careers less spectacular but equally momentous in their own degree.
Does he seek social position? Here, indeed, his path is made more difficult. But the social barriers are not insurmountable. Where they seem so, calm judgment will reveal that the social environment where this irrational prejudice exists is not worthy of the entrance of the Jew. Leave the intolerant to associate with their own kind. The Jew who has raised himself to the highest level will have put himself beyond the reach of prejudice, and he will find himself welcomed in the highest Christian circles.
The enlightened Jews of America have found the true road to Zion. To them Zion is no mere political mechanism existing by the political sufferance of the greater Powers. It is not defined by geographical boundaries, circumscribing an arid plot of ground which their ancestors of two thousand years ago conquered from its aboriginal inhabitants and occupied for a brief, though glorious, period before they, in turn, were driven onward by a new conqueror. To them, Zion is a region of the soul. To them, it is an inner light, set upon the hill of personal consciousness, inspiring them as individuals to fight, each for himself, the battle of life where he meets it; demanding in virtue of his own worth the respect of those about him; winning through to the dignity and position to which his native gifts and his self-developed character entitle him. This is the only true Zion. All other definitions of it are unreal.
The proudest boast of all these men, and my proudest boast, is: “I am an American.” None of us would deny our race or faith. We are Jews by blood. We are Jews, though of various sects, by religion. But as for me (and here I am sure I speak for a vast body of Jews in the United States), if I were pressed to define myself by any single appellation, I would unhesitatingly select the one word _American_. Neither I nor the humblest worshipper in the most orthodox congregation can hope for anything from Zionism that is not already ours in virtue of our participation in the freedom of America. And neither of us need make the smallest compromise with any conviction that we hold dear. I have found it more convenient (as well as quite within the approval of what I regard as my somewhat more enlightened conscience) to cast off the other symbols of the Hebraic faith, such as the Kosher observances, the untouched beard, and the distinctive dress; but there are thousands of Russian Jews in the United States to-day who retain these excrescences of antiquity, with only a small inconvenience that is certainly very far short of persecution. From observation and experience I know full well that these same orthodox devotees will themselves become enlightened--if not they, then certainly their children--and will perceive, as I and others have perceived, that the Mosaic admonitions were purely temporal devices, expedient truly for the age in which they were promulgated, useful until modern sanitation and modern education did their work, but now become empty of those first values.
Here lies the crux of my affirmative argument against Zionism. We anti-Zionist Jews of America have found that the spiritual life, after whatever formula of faith, in modern times can be most fully enjoyed by those people who accept the beneficent progress which the world at large has made in science, industry, and the art of government. We have learned the folly of persisting in the sanitary regulations taught by Moses, in this age when all civilized peoples have the benefit of the more advanced sanitary knowledge of Lister, Pasteur, Metchnikoff, and Flexner. We have learned the folly of persisting in a distinctive style of clothing, beard, and locks (imposed upon the Jews extraneously as a badge of slavery and oppression), and of ascribing a spiritual significance to such a costume in this age when saints like Montefiore and Baron Edmond de Rathschild, the great patrons of Palestine, have found sanctity not incompatible with the ordinary dress of those about them. We have come to see that the worship of the God of Israel, the acceptable obedience to His will, is not contingent upon the Clothes one wears, upon the meat one eats. His kingdom is the soul of man. In that boundless temple He receives the priceless sacrifices of the true believer. That time and place and mode are most acceptable to Him in which the human spirit brings its richest offerings.
It follows, then, that the Jew everywhere (in Poland and Russia, as well as in France and America) can acceptably serve the God of his fathers and still enter fully into the life about him. We in America refuse to set ourselves apart in a voluntary ghetto for the sake of old traditional Observances.
I have often used a figure of speech--it was brought to my mind by meeting the rug-makers in Turkey--as follows: The Jew has been content, in most lands and down the ages, to be the fringe of the carpet, the loose end over which every foot has stumbled, where every heel has left its injuring impression on the disconnected individual strands. What the Jew should do is, to become a part of the pattern of the carpet itself: weave himself into the very warp and woof of the main fabric of humanity; and gain the strength which comes from a coördinated and orderly relation to the other strands of human society. His peculiar beauties (his peculiar talents), which in the fringe are soiled and hidden, take on new value when they become part of the main carpet; and they find their glory in lending to the pattern a unique splendour and a special lustre.
I, for one, will not forego this vision of the destiny of the Jews. I do not presume to say to my co-religionists of Europe that they shall accept my programme. But neither do I intend to allow them to impose their programme upon me. They may continue, if they will, a practice of our common faith which invites martyrdom, and which makes the continuance of oppression a certainty. I have found a better way (and when I say _I_, it is to speak collectively as one of a great body of American Jews of like mind). In the foregoing pages I have given my reasons for opposing Zionism. They make plain why I asserted at the beginning of this chapter that Zionism is not a solution; that it is a surrender. It looks backward, and not forward. It would practically place in the hands of a few men, steeped in a foreign tradition, the power to turn back the hands of time upon all which I and my predecessors of the same convictions have won for ourselves here in America. We have fought our way through to liberty, equality, and fraternity. We have found rest for our souls. No one shall rob us of these gains. We enjoy in America exactly the spiritual liberty, the financial success, and the social position which we have earned. Any Jew in America who wishes to be a saint of Zion has only to practice the cultivation of his spiritual gifts--there is none to hinder him. Any Jew in America who seeks material reward has only to cultivate the powers of his mind and character--there are no barriers between him and achievement. Any Jew in America who yearns for social position has only to cultivate his manners--there are no insurmountable discriminations here against true gentlemen. The Jews of France have found France to be their Zion. The Jews of England have found England to be their Zion. We Jews of America have found America to be our Zion. Therefore, I refuse to allow myself to be called a Zionist. I am an American.
APPENDIX
REPORT OF THE MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES TO POLAND
AMERICAN COMMISSION TO NEGOTIATE PEACE, MISSION TO POLAND.
_Paris, October 3, 1919._
_To the American commission to negotiate peace._
GENTLEMEN: 1. A mission, consisting of Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Brig. Gen. Edgar Jadwin, and Mr. Homer H. Johnson, was appointed by the American commission to negotiate peace to investigate Jewish matters in Poland. The appointment of such a mission had previously been requested by Mr. Paderewski, president of the council of ministers of the Republic of Poland. On June 30, 1919, Secretary Lansing wrote to this mission:
It is desired that the mission make careful inquiry into all matters affecting the relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish elements in Poland. This will, of course, involve the investigation of the various massacres, pogroms, and other excesses alleged to have taken place, the economic boycott, and other methods of discrimination against the Jewish race. The establishment of the truth in regard to these matters is not, however, an end in itself. It is merely for the purpose of seeking to discover the reason lying behind such excesses and discriminations with a view to finding a possible remedy. The American Government, as you know, is inspired by a friendly desire to render service to all elements in the new Poland--Christians and Jews alike. I am convinced that any measures that may be taken to ameliorate the conditions of the Jews will also benefit the rest of the population and that, conversely, anything done for the community benefit of Poland as a whole will be of advantage to the Jewish race. I am sure that the members of your mission are approaching the subject in the right spirit, free from prejudice one way or the other, and filled with a desire to discover the truth and evolve some constructive measures to improve the situation which gives concern to all the friends of Poland.
2. The mission reached Warsaw on July 13, 1919, and remained in Poland until September 13, 1919. All the places where the principal excesses had occurred were visited. In addition thereto the mission also studied the economic and social conditions in such places as Lodz, Krakau, Grodno, Kalisch, Posen, Cholm, Lublin, and Stanislawow. But automobiling over 2,500 miles through Russian, Austrian, and German Poland, the mission also came into immediate contact with the inhabitants of the small towns and villages. In order properly to appreciate the present cultural and social conditions, the mission also visited educational institutions, libraries, hospitals, museums, art galleries, orphan asylums, and prisons.
3. Investigations of the excesses were made mostly in the presence of representatives of the Polish Government and of the Jewish communities. There were also present in many cases military and civil officials and, wherever possible, officials in command at the time the excesses occurred were conferred with and interrogated. In this work the Polish authorities and the American Minister to Poland, Mr. Hughes Gibson, lent the mission every facility. Deputations of all kinds of organizations were received and interviewed. A large number of public meetings and gatherings were attended, and the mission endeavoured to obtain a correct impression of what had occurred, of the present mental state of the public, and of the attitude of the various factions toward one another.
4. The Jews first entered Poland in large numbers during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when they migrated from Germany and other countries as the result of severe persecutions. Their language was German, which subsequently developed into a Hebrew-German dialect, or Yiddish. As prior to this immigration only two classes or estates had existed in Poland (the owners and the tillers of the soil), the Jewish immigrant became the pioneer of trade and finance, settling in the towns and villages. As time went on it became generally known throughout Europe that Poland was a place of refuge for the Jews, and their numbers were augmented as a result of persecutions in western Europe. Still more recently, as a result of the expulsion of the Jews from Russia, on account of the enforcement of the pale of settlement, and of the May laws of 1882, their number was further increased.
5. Notwithstanding the fact that Poland has been a place of refuge for the Jews, there have been anti-Jewish movements at various times. The present anti-Semitic feeling took a definite political form after the Russian revolution of 1905. This feeling reached an intense stage in 1912, when the Polish National Democratic Party nominated an anti-Semite to represent Warsaw in the Russian Duma and the Jews cast their vote for a Polish Socialist and carried the election. The National Democratic Party then commenced a vigorous anti-Semitic campaign. During the German occupation this campaign was temporarily reduced. At the end of the Great War the chaotic and unnatural state of affairs in which Poland found itself gave good ground for a condition of social unrest, which, together with the world-stimulated tendency toward national self-determination, accentuated the feeling between Jewish and non-Jewish elements. The chauvinistic reaction created by the sudden acquisition of a long-coveted freedom ripened the public mind for anti-Semitic or anti-alien sentiment, which was strongly agitated by the press and by politicians. This finally encouraged physical manifestations of violent outcroppings of an unbalanced social condition.
6. When, in November, 1918, the Austrian and German armies of occupation left Poland there was no firm government until the arrival of Gen. Pilsudski, who had escaped from a German prison, and it was during this period, before the Polish Republic came into being, that the first of the excesses took place. (The mission has purposely avoided the use of the word “pogrom,” as the word is applied to everything from petty outrages to premeditated and carefully organized massacres. No fixed definition is generally understood.) There were eight principal excesses, which are here described in chronological order.
(1) Kielce, November 11, 1918.
Shortly after the evacuation of the Austrian troops from Kielce the Jews of this city secured permission from the local authorities to hold a meeting in the Polski Theatre. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss Jewish national aspirations. It began shortly before 2 o’clock and filled the theatre to overflowing. During the afternoon a small crowd of Polish civilians, largely composed of students, gathered outside of the theatre. At 6.30 p. m. the meeting began to break up, and when only about 300 people remained in the theatre, some militiamen entered and began to search for arms. A short while thereafter, and while the militiamen were still in the building, a crowd of civilians and some soldiers came into the auditorium and drove the Jews toward the stairs. On the stairs there was a double line of men armed with clubs and bayonets, who beat the Jews as they left the building. After the Jews reached the street they were again beaten by a mob outside. As a result of this attack four Jews were killed and a large number wounded. A number of civilians have been indicted for participation in this excess, but have not as yet been brought to trial.
(2) Lemberg, November 21-23, 1918.
On October 30, 1918, when the Austrian Empire collapsed, the Ukrainian troops, formerly in the Austrian service, assumed control of the town. A few hundred Polish boys, combined with numerous volunteers of doubtful character, recaptured about half the city and held it until the arrival of Polish reinforcements on November 21. The Jewish population declared themselves neutral, but the fact that the Jewish quarter lay within the section occupied by the Ukrainians, and that the Jews had organized their own militia, and further, the rumour that some of the Jewish population had fired upon the soldiery, stimulated amongst the Polish volunteers an anti-Semitic bias that readily communicated itself to the relieving troops. The situation was further complicated by the presence of some 15,000 uniformed deserters and numerous criminals released by the Ukrainians from local jails, who were ready to join in any disorder, particularly if, as in the case of wholesale pillage, they might profit thereby.
Upon the final departure of the Ukrainians, these disreputable elements plundered to the extent of many millions of crowns the dwellings and stores in the Jewish quarter, and did not hesitate at murder when they met with resistance. During the ensuing disorders, which prevailed on November 21, 22, and 23, 64 Jews were killed and a large amount of property destroyed. Thirty-eight houses were set on fire, and owing to the paralysis of the fire department, were completely gutted. The Synagogue was also burned, and large numbers of the sacred scrolls of the law were destroyed. The repression of the disorders was rendered more difficult by the prevailing lack of discipline among the newly organized Polish troops, and by a certain hesitation among the junior officers to apply stern punitive measures. When officers’ patrols under experienced leaders were finally organized on November 23, robbery and violence ceased.
As early as December 24, 1918, the Polish Government, through the ministry of justice, began a strict investigation of the events of November 21 and 23. A special commission, headed by a justice of the supreme court, sat in Lemberg for about two months, and rendered an extensive formal report which has been furnished this mission. In spite of the crowded dockets of the local courts, where over 7,000 cases are now pending, 164 persons, 10 of them Jews, have been tried for complicity in the November disorders, and numerous similar cases await disposal. Forty-four persons are under sentences ranging from 10 days to 18 months. Aside from the civil courts, the local court-martial has sentenced military persons to confinement for as long as three years for lawlessness during the period in question. This mission is advised that on the basis of official investigations the Government has begun the payment of claims for damages resulting from these events.
(3) Pinsk, April 5, 1919.
Late in the afternoon of April 5, 1919, a month or more after the Polish occupation of Pinsk, some 75 Jews of both sexes, with the official permission of the town commander, gathered in the assembly hall at the People’s House, in the Kupiecka Street, to discuss the distribution of relief sent by the American joint distribution committee. As the meeting was about to adjourn, it was interrupted by a band of soldiers, who arrested and searched the whole assembly, and, after robbing the prisoners, marched them at a rapid pace to gendarmerie headquarters. Thence the prisoners were conducted to the market place and lined up against the wall of the cathedral. With no light except the lamps of a military automobile the six women in the crowd, and about 25 men, were separated from the mass, and the remainder, 35 in number, were shot with scant deliberation and no trial whatever. Early the next morning 3 wounded victims were shot in cold blood when it was found that they were still alive.
The women and other reprieved prisoners were confined in the city jail until the following Thursday. The women were stripped and beaten by the prison guards so severely that several of them were bed-ridden for weeks thereafter, and the men were subjected to similar maltreatment.
It has been asserted officially by the Polish authorities, that there was reason to suspect this assemblage of bolshevist allegiance. This mission is convinced that no arguments of bolshevist nature were mentioned in the meeting in question. While it is recognized that certain information of bolshevist activities in Pinsk had been received by two Jewish soldiers, the undersigned is convinced that Maj. Luczynski, the town commander, showed reprehensible and frivolous readiness to place credence upon such untested assertions, and on this insufficient basis took inexcusably drastic action against reputable citizens whose loyal character could have been immediately established by a consultation with any well known non-Jewish inhabitant.
The statements made officially by Gen. Listowski, the Polish group commander, that the Jewish population on April 5 attacked the Polish troops, are regarded by this mission as devoid of foundation. The undersigned is further of the opinion that the consultation prior to executing the 35 Jews, alleged by Maj. Luczynski to have had the character of a court-martial, was by the very nature of the case a most casual affair with no judicial nature whatever, since less than an hour elapsed between the arrest and the execution. It is further found that no conscientious effort was made at the time either to investigate the charges against the prisoners or even sufficiently to identify them. Though there have been official investigations of this case none of the offenders answerable for this summary execution have been punished or even tried, nor has the Diet commission published its findings.
(4) Lida, April 17, 1919.
On April 17, 1919, the Polish military forces captured Lida from the Russian Bolsheviks. After the city fell into the hands of the Poles the soldiers proceeded to enter and rob the houses of the Jews. During this period of pillage 39 Jews were killed. A large number of Jews, including the local rabbi, were arbitrarily arrested on the same day by the Polish authorities and kept for 24 hours without food amid revolting conditions of filth at No. 60 Kamienska Street. Jews were also impressed for forced labour without respect for age or infirmity. It does not appear that anyone has been punished for these excesses, or that any steps have been taken to reimburse the victims of the robberies.
(5) Wilna, April 19-21, 1919.
On April 19 Polish detachments entered the city of Wilna. The city was definitely taken by the Poles after three days of street fighting, during which time they lost 33 men killed. During this same period some 65 Jews lost their lives. From the evidence submitted it appears that none of these people, among whom were 4 women and 8 men over 50 years of age, had served with the Bolsheviks. Eight Jews were marched 3 kilometers to the outskirts of Wilna and deliberately shot without a semblance of a trial or investigation. Others were shot by soldiers who were robbing Jewish houses. No list has been furnished the mission of any Polish civilians killed during the occupation. It is, however, stated on behalf of the Government that the civilian inhabitants of Wilna took part on both sides in this fighting, and that some civilians fired upon the soldiers. Over 2,000 Jewish houses and stores in the city were entered by Polish soldiers and civilians during these three days, and the inhabitants robbed and beaten. It is claimed by the Jewish community that the consequent losses amounted to over 10,000,000 rubles. Many of the poorest families were robbed of their shoes and blankets. Hundreds of Jews were arrested and deported from the city. Some of them were herded into box cars and kept without food or water for four days. Old men and children were carried away without trial or investigation. Two of these prisoners have since died from the treatment they received. Included in this list were some of the most prominent Jews of Wilna, such as the eminent Jewish writers, Jaffe and Niger. For days the families of these prisoners were without news from them and feared that they had been killed. The soldiers also broke into the synagogue and mutilated the sacred scrolls of the law. Up to August 3, 1919, when the mission was in Wilna, none of the soldiers or civilians responsible for these excesses had been punished.
(6) Kolbuszowa, May 7, 1919.
For a few days before May 7, 1919, the Jews of Kolbuszowa feared that excesses might take place, as there had been riots in the neighbouring towns of Rzeszow and Glogow. These riots had been the result of political agitation in this district and of excitement caused by a case of alleged ritual murder, in which the Jewish defendant had been acquitted. On May 6 a company of soldiers was ordered to Kolbuszowa to prevent the threatened trouble. Early in the morning of May 7 a great number of peasants, among whom were many former soldiers of the Austrian Army, entered the town. The rioters disarmed the soldiers after two soldiers and three peasants had been killed. They then proceeded to rob the Jewish stores and to beat any Jews who fell into their hands. Eight Jews were killed during this excess. Order was restored when a new detachment of soldiers arrived late in the afternoon. One of the rioters has since been tried and executed by the Polish Government.
(7) Czestochowa, May 27, 1919.
On May 27, 1919, at Czestochowa, a shot fired by an unknown person slightly wounded a Polish soldier. A rumour spread that the shot had been fired by the Jews, and riots broke out in the city in which Polish soldiers and civilians took part. During these riots five Jews, including a doctor who was hurrying to aid one of the injured, were beaten to death and a large number were wounded. French officers, who were stationed at Czestochowa, took an active part in preventing further murders.
(8) Minsk, August 8, 1919.
On August 8, 1919, the Polish troops took the city of Minsk from the Russian Bolsheviks. The Polish troops entered the city at about 10 o’clock in the morning, and by 12 o’clock they had absolute control. Notwithstanding the presence in Minsk of Gen. Jadwin and other members of this mission, and the orders of the Polish commanding general forbidding violence against civilians, 31 Jews were killed by the soldiers. Only one of this number can in any way be connected with the bolshevist movement. Eighteen of the deaths appear to have been deliberate murder. Two of these murders were incident to robberies, but the rest were committed, to all appearances, solely on the ground that the victims were Jews. During the afternoon and in the evening of August 8 the Polish soldiers, aided by civilians, plundered 377 shops, all of which belonged to Jews. It must be noted, however, that about 90 per cent. of the stores in Minsk are owned by Jews. No effective attempt was made to prevent these robberies until the next morning, when adequate officers’ patrols were sent out through the streets and order was established. The private houses of many of the Jews were also broken into by soldiers and the inhabitants were beaten and robbed. The Polish Government has stated that four Polish soldiers were killed while attempting to prevent robberies. It has also been stated to the mission that some of the rioters have been executed.
7. There have also been here and there individual cases of murder not enumerated in the preceding paragraphs, but their detailed description has not been considered necessary inasmuch as they present no characteristics not already observed in the principal excesses. In considering these excesses as a whole, it should be borne in mind that of the eight cities and towns at which striking disorders have occurred, only Kielce and Czestochowa are within the boundaries of Congress Poland. In Kielce and Kolbuszowa the excesses were committed by city civilians and by peasants, respectively. At Czestochowa both civilians and soldiers took part in the disorders. At Pinsk the excess was essentially the fault of one officer. In Lemberg, Lida, Wilna, and Minsk the excesses were committed by the soldiers who were capturing the cities and not by the civilian population. In the three last-named cities the anti-Semitic prejudice of the soldiers had been inflamed by the charge that the Jews were Bolsheviks, while at Lemberg it was associated with the idea that the Jews were making common cause with the Ukrainians. These excesses were, therefore, political as well as anti-Semitic in character. The responsibility for these excesses is borne for the most part by the undisciplined and ill-equipped Polish recruits, who, uncontrolled by their inexperienced and ofttimes timid officers, sought to profit at the expense of that portion of the population which they regarded as alien and hostile to Polish nationality and aspirations. It is recognized that the enforcement of discipline in a new and untrained army is a matter of extreme difficulty. On the other hand, the prompt cessation of disorder in Lemberg after the adoption of appropriate measures of control shows that an unflinching determination to restore order and a firm application of repressive measures can prevent, or at least limit, such excesses. It is, therefore, believed that a more aggressive punitive policy, and a more general publicity for reports of judicial and military prosecutions, would have minimized subsequent excesses by discouraging the belief among the soldiery that robbery and violence could be committed with impunity.
8. Just as the Jews would resent being condemned as a race for the action of a few of their undesirable coreligionists, so it would be correspondingly unfair to condemn the Polish nation as a whole for the violence committed by uncontrolled troops or local mobs. These excesses were apparently not premeditated, for if they had been part of a preconceived plan, the number of victims would have run into the thousands instead of amounting to about 280. It is believed that these excesses were the result of a widespread anti-Semitic prejudice aggravated by the belief that the Jewish inhabitants were politically hostile to the Polish State. When the boundaries of Poland are once fixed, and the internal organization of the country is perfected, the Polish Government will be increasingly able to protect all classes of Polish citizenry. Since the Polish Republic has subscribed to the treaty which provides for the protection of racial, religious and linguistic minorities, it is confidently anticipated that the Government will whole-heartedly accept the responsibility, not only of guarding certain classes of its citizens from aggression, but also of educating the masses beyond the state of mind that makes such aggression possible.
9. Besides these excesses there have been reported to the mission numerous cases of other forms of persecutions. Thus, in almost every one of the cities and towns of Poland, Jews have been stopped by the soldiers and had their beards either torn out or cut off. As the orthodox Jews feel that the shaving of their beards is contrary to their religious belief, this form of persecution has a particular significance to them. Jews also have been beaten and forced from trains and railroad stations. As a result many of them are afraid to travel. The result of all these minor persecutions is to keep the Jewish population in a state of ferment, and to subject them to the fear that graver excesses may again occur.
10. Whereas it has been easy to determine the excesses which took place and to fix the approximate number of deaths, it was more difficult to establish the extent of anti-Jewish discrimination. This discrimination finds its most conspicuous manifestation in the form of an economic boycott. The national Democratic Party has continuously agitated the economic strangling of the Jews. Through the press and political announcements, as well as by public speeches, the non-Jewish element of the Polish people is urged to abstain from dealing with the Jews. Landowners are warned not to sell their property to Jews, and in some cases where such sales have been made, the names of the offenders have been posted within black-bordered notices, stating that such vendors were “dead to Poland.” Even at the present time, this campaign is being waged by most of the non-Jewish press, which constantly advocates that the economic boycott be used as a means of ridding Poland of its Jewish element. This agitation had created in the minds of some of the Jews the feeling that there is an invisible rope around their necks, and they claim that this is the worst persecution that they can be forced to endure. Non-Jewish labourers have in many cases refused to work side by side with Jews. The percentage of Jews in public office, especially those holding minor positions, such as railway employees, firemen, policemen, and the like, has been materially reduced since the present Government has taken control. Documents have been furnished the mission showing that Government-owned railways have discharged Jewish employees and given them certificates that they have been released for no other reason than that they belong to the Jewish race.
11. Furthermore, the establishment of coöperative stores is claimed by many Jewish traders to be a form of discrimination. It would seem, however, that this movement is a legitimate effort to restrict the activities and therefore the profits of the middleman. Unfortunately, when these stores were introduced into Poland, they were advertised as a means of eliminating the Jewish trader. The Jews have, therefore, been caused to feel that the establishment of coöperatives is an attack upon themselves. While the establishment and the maintenance of coöperatives may have been influenced by anti-Semitic sentiment, this is a form of economic activity which any community is perfectly entitled to pursue. On the other hand, the Jews complain that even the Jewish coöperatives and individual Jews are discriminated against by the Government in the distribution of Government-controlled supplies.
12. The Government has denied that discrimination against Jews has been practiced as a Government policy, though it has not denied that there may be individual cases where anti-Semitism has played a part. Assurances have been made to the mission by official authorities that in so far as it lies within the power of the Government this discrimination will be corrected.
13. In considering the causes for the anti-Semitic feeling which has brought about the manifestations described above, it must be remembered that ever since the partition of 1795 the Poles have striven to be reunited as a nation and to regain their freedom. This continual effort to keep alive their national aspirations has caused them to look with hatred upon anything which might interfere with their aims. This has led to a conflict with the nationalist declarations of some of the Jewish organizations which desire to establish cultural autonomy financially supported by the State. In addition, the position taken by the Jews in favour of article 93 of the Treaty of Versailles, guaranteeing protection to racial linguistic and religious minorities in Poland has created a further resentment against them. Moreover, Polish national feeling is irritated by what is regarded as the “alien” character of the great mass of the Jewish population. This is constantly brought home to the Poles by the fact that the majority of the Jews affect a distinctive dress, observe the Sabbath on Saturday, conduct business on Sunday, have separate dietary laws, wear long beards, and speak a language of their own. The basis of this language is a German dialect, and the fact that Germany was, and still is, looked upon by the Poles as an enemy country renders this vernacular especially unpopular. The concentration of the Jews in separate districts or quarters in Polish cities also emphasizes the line of demarcation separating them from other citizens.
14. The strained relations between the Jews and non-Jews have been further increased not only by the Great War, during which Poland was the battle ground for the Russian, German, and Austrian Armies, but also by the present conflicts with the Bolsheviks and the Ukrainians. The economic condition of Poland is at its lowest ebb. Manufacturing and commerce have virtually ceased. The shortage, the high price, and the imperfect distribution of food, are a dangerous menace to the health and welfare of the urban population. As a result, hundreds of thousands are suffering from hunger and are but half clad, while thousands are dying of disease and starvation. The cessation of commerce is particularly felt by the Jewish population, which are almost entirely dependent upon it. Owing to the condition described, prices have doubled and tripled, and the population has become irritated against the Jewish traders, whom it blames for the abnormal increase thus occasioned.
15. The great majority of Jews in Poland belong to separate Jewish political parties. The largest of these are the Orthodox, the Zionist, and the National. Since the Jews form separate political groups it is probable that some of the Polish discrimination against them is political rather than anti-Semitic in character. The dominant Polish parties give to their supporters Government positions and Government patronage. It is to be hoped, however, that the Polish majority will not follow this system in the case of positions which are not essentially political. There should be no discrimination in the choice of professors and teachers, nor in the selection of railroad employees, policemen, and firemen, or the incumbents of any other positions which are placed under the civil service in England and the United States. Like other democracies, Poland must realize that these positions must not be drawn into politics. Efficiency can only be attained if the best men are employed, irrespective of party or religion.
16. The relations between the Jews and non-Jews will undoubtedly improve in a strong democratic Poland. To hasten this there should be reconciliation and coöperation between the 86 per cent. Christians and the 14 per cent. Jews. The 86 per cent. must realize that they can not present a solid front against their neighbours if one-seventh of the population is discontented, fear-stricken, and inactive. The minority must be encouraged to participate with their whole strength and influence in making Poland the great unified country that is required in central Europe to combat the tremendous dangers that confront it. Poland must promptly develop its full strength, and by its conduct first merit and then receive the unstinted moral, financial, and economic support of all the world, which will insure the future success of the Republic.
17. It was impossible for the mission, during the two months it was in Poland, to do more than acquaint itself with the general condition of the people. To formulate a solution of the Jewish problem will necessitate a careful and broad study, not only of the economic condition of the Jews, but also of the exact requirements of Poland. These requirements will not be definitely known prior to the fixation of Polish boundaries, and the final regulation of Polish relations with Russia, with which the largest share of trade was previously conducted. It is recommended that the League of Nations, or the larger nations interested in this problem, send to Poland a commission consisting of recognized industrial, educational, agricultural, economic, and vocational experts, which should remain there as long as necessary to examine the problem at its source.
18. This commission should devise a plan by which the Jews in Poland can secure the same economic and social opportunities as are enjoyed by their coreligionists in other free countries. A new Polish constitution is now in the making. The generous scope of this national instrument has already been indicated by the special treaty with the allied and associated powers, in which Poland has affirmed its fidelity to the principles of liberty and justice and the rights of minorities, and we may be certain that Poland will be faithful to its pledge, which is so conspicuously in harmony with the nation’s best traditions. A new life will thus be opened to the Jews and it will be the task of the proposed commission to fit them to profit thereby and to win the same appreciation gained by their coreligionists elsewhere as a valued asset to the commonwealths in which they reside. The friends of the Jews in America, England, and elsewhere who have already evinced such great interest in their welfare, will enthusiastically grasp the opportunity to coöperate in working out any good solution that such a commission may propound. The fact that it may take one or two generations to reach the goal must not be discouraging.
19. All citizens of Poland should realize that they must live together. They can not be divorced from each other by force or by any court of law. When this idea is once thoroughly comprehended, every effort will necessarily be directed toward a better understanding and the amelioration of existing conditions, rather than toward augmenting antipathy and discontent. The Polish nation must see that its worst enemies are those who encourage this internal strife. A house divided against itself can not stand. There must be but one class of citizens in Poland, all members of which enjoy equal rights and render equal duties.
Respectfully submitted.
HENRY MORGENTHAU.
AMERICAN COMMISSION TO NEGOTIATE PEACE
_Warsaw, 10 August, 1919._
MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:
In compliance with your request to submit to you in writing the suggestions I made to you last evening, I desire to state that the interest of President Wilson and the citizenry of the United States was not only to investigate the various occurrences during and after the occupation of some of the cities in your country as well as the alleged persecutions of the Jews, but also to ascertain the entire matter so objectively, impartially, and disinterestedly, as to enable the commission correctly to diagnose the difficulties and suggest a remedy.
Although our investigations are by no means completed, I have discovered that some of the main causes of your troubles are the inevitable results of conditions that your country has gradually drifted into, and are due to the fact that the release of the various sections of your country from them, to the objectionable rule by foreign potentates, came so suddenly that it found them unprepared to face and successfully grapple with the complicated problems resulting therefrom.
Poland, having at last had all her dreams realized, her ambitions more than gratified, finds herself economically prostrate on her back, yet too proud to ask for outside assistance. Her splendid pride has at all times to be considered by anyone who wishes to be of any use to the country. I feel that Poland possesses great resiliency, and has much latent potentiality, and all she requires is to be given some confidence in herself, and to be shown how to “help herself.” The new, proud Polish republic not only requires personal liberty, but as much freedom as possible from obligations to others for the exercise of the same. I firmly believe that when she is enabled to do this, she will ungrudgingly grant to her minorities the same privilege.
I am anxious to show Poland how she can rise from her prostrate position and discover that she has adequate strength, with very little propping, to start a brisk walk toward the goal she is aiming for--self-reliant, successful independence. It has occurred to me that if in her earliest steps she will permit her good friends, the other members of the League of Nations, to assist her with tender sympathy and unselfish, fraternal feeling, that she will be astonished at the rapidity of her progress. You need to have proclaimed for your government, your people, and the world, that your associates believe in you and want you to become a strong country, and are anxious to have you promptly develop that strength, for reasons too obvious to mention.
It has occurred to me that what you require is a proper currency system, and sufficient funds to enable you to secure adequate raw material and fuel that will justify your factories in starting off at full speed and not having to fear an early suspension of their activities. And you will have to establish some institution that will restore confidence in your population who, as I am reliably informed, are at present hiding, and therefore not using, a substantial part of your liquid financial resources.
A corporation should be organized with $150,000,000 capital, the right to subscribe should be divided, one-third to Poland, one-third to the United States, and one-third to England, France, Italy, etc. The stock should be paid in in instalments, particularly as to those shares subscribed for by Polish capital, as it is desirable that the Poles be given sufficient time so as to secure personally the benefits of the tremendous rise in the value of your marks which would result from the creation of this company. For this purpose I suggest five or six instalments, extending over a year or longer. The sum of $50,000 or $60,000 should be spent for publicity for subscriptions in all of your newspapers, and great stress should be laid on the fact that the mass of your people is to receive the preference in the allotment of stock. A systematic campaign something like our Liberty Loan campaigns, should be organized so as to create the proper sentiment in the country, to encourage rivalry between your various large cities, and rouse the patriotism of all your citizens. Care should be taken in the constitution of these committees so as to make them platforms for the promotion of better feeling amongst your people. All subscriptions of $100 or less should be allotted in full. This would satisfy your population that it was to be a genuine Polish people’s institution.
After a dividend of six per cent. is paid on the stock, the balance of the profits should be divided equally between the stockholders and the State. The profits paid to the State to be in lieu of all taxes. This would work both ways: it would satisfy the people that the State is to have its share, and it would satisfy the investors that they could not be subjected, in any possible changed form of government of Poland, to excessive taxation.
The establishment of such a corporation would at once create a large permanent credit for Poland. This corporation could assume the responsibility of contracts for large quantities of cotton, wool and produce, ships, and all necessary requirements for Poland’s resumption of activities.
Branches of the corporation should be established in all the large cities. I believe from conversations I have had with representative men in Wilno that they would subscribe largely to the stock, because I told them that although America would very likely be willing to participate in the creation of a large central institution for Poland with its headquarters at Warsaw and branches in the larger cities, it would certainly not be interested in a local institution in Wilno. It has occurred to me that cities like Wilno, Lemberg, Cracow and Lodz, etc., would vie with each other in subscribing to this institution if they were told that the capital allotted to their district would depend upon their subscriptions. It would be safe to say to them that there would be two dollars of foreign capital for every dollar that they would subscribe.
It seems highly important that England be interested in this corporation, because if the United States suggests its organization we must promptly assure all other countries, including the neutrals during the recent war, that America expects no commercial advantage over any other country in Poland.
I deem it very desirable that the stock owned by foreigners should contain a provision that the Polish Government, or a syndicate of which they would approve, would have the right at any time to buy the stock from the owners at from $125 to $150 per share. This would serve a double purpose: it would do away with any desire on the part of the Poles to have control of the institution from the very start, because they would know that at any time they could secure the same, and it would enable them to feel that this important concern could be made entirely Polish whenever their strength justified it; and the foreign owners would, on the other hand, feel that they would receive a proper compensation for their risk, and they would have rendered a fine service, not only to Poland, but to the entire world in accelerating the development of Poland’s economic strength.
I have carefully canvassed the available material in the United States for the president of this institution, and suggest to you that we secure Secretary of the Interior, Franklin K. Lane. There are few men in the United States that more deservedly possess the admiration and approval of all Americans. He is a man who is entirely free from any financial alliances, and therefore cannot be criticized on that score. Incidentally, it would be of the greatest service to your government to have one of the greatest experts in the science of government accessible to your cabinet and functionaries. As you no doubt remember, he has not only successfully administered that great Department of the Interior, but also was member and chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States. He was selected by President Wilson as one of the commissioners that was sent to Mexico, and for other commissions. I have every reason to feel that President Wilson, although reluctantly, would consent to Secretary Lane’s responding to this call.
I think that the mere announcement of the contemplation of such an institution will electrify your people, and will replace the present pessimism with an optimism that will astound all of us.
If you and your associates in the government of Poland approve of the suggestion, our commission is ready and anxious to help you and such representatives of England, France, Italy, and other countries as you may invite to join us, promptly to work out the details and make this thought a living thing.
With kindest personal regards, Yours very truly, HENRY MORGENTHAU.
HON. IGNACE PADEREWSKI, _President of the Council of Ministers, Warsaw_.
MANDATES OR WAR?[3]
WORLD PEACE HELD TO BE MENACED UNLESS THE UNITED STATES ASSUMES CONTROL OF THE SULTAN’S FORMER DOMINIONS
I am one of those who believe that the United States should accept a mandate for Constantinople and the several provinces in Asia Minor which constitute what is left of the Ottoman Empire.
I am aware that this proposition is not popular with the American people. But it seems to me to be a matter in which we do not have much choice. Nations, like individuals, are constantly subject to forces which are stronger than their wills. The responsibilities which nations inherit, like the responsibilities to which individuals fall heir, are frequently not of their own choosing. The great European conflict in August, 1914, seemed to be a matter that did not immediately concern us. In two years we learned that it was very much our affair. The impelling forces of history drew us in, and led us to play a decisive part. If we could not keep out of this struggle, it is illogical to suppose that we can avoid its consequences.
One of the most serious of these consequences and the one that perhaps most threatens the peace of the world is a chaotic Turkey. Unless the United States accepts a Turkish mandate the world will again lose the opportunity of solving the problem that has endangered civilization for 500 years.
The United States has invested almost $40,000,000,000 in a war against militarism and for the establishment of right. We must invest three or four billions more in an attempt to place on a permanent foundation the nations to whose rescue we came. An essential part of this programme is the expulsion of the Turk from Europe and the establishment as going concerns of the nations which have been so long subject to his tyranny. Unless we succeed in doing this we can look for another Balkan war in a brief period, perhaps five years.
Another Balkan war will mean another European war, another world war. It is for the United States to decide whether such a calamity shall visit the world at an early date. If we assume the mandate for Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire probably we can prevent it; if, as so many Americans insist, we reject this duty, we shall become responsible for another world conflagration.
Perhaps the most ominous phase of world politics to-day is that new voices are interceding in behalf of the Sultan and his distracted domain. The Government at Constantinople is making one last despairing attempt to save the bedraggled remnants of its empire. It has reorganized its Cabinet, putting to the fore men who are expected to impress Europe favourably; but it is not punishing the leaders who sold out to Germany and murdered not far from a million of its Christian subjects. The new Sultan has given interviews to the press, expressing his horror at the Armenian massacres, and promising that nothing like them shall ever occur again. More ominous than these outgivings is the fact that certain spokesmen in behalf of the Turk are making themselves heard in the allied countries. Again it is being said that what Turkey needs is not obliteration as a State, but reform.
Probably the financial interests which look upon Turkey as a field for concessions are largely responsible for this talk; the imperialistic tendencies of certain European countries are blamable to a certain extent, for, strange as it may seem, there are still many people in England, France, and Italy who urge that the Turk, bad as his instincts may be, is better than the Oriental peoples whom he holds in subjection.
If we listen to these arguments, and to the fair promises of the Turkish Government, we shall put ourselves into the position of a society which fails to protect itself against the habitual criminal. Every civilized society nowadays sees to it that constant offenders against decency and law are put where they can do no harm. Yet the Turk is the habitual criminal of history, the constant offender against the peace and dignity of the world, and if we permit him to remain in Europe, and to retain an uncontrolled sovereignty, it is easy to foresee the time when a regenerated Russia will again be dependent on him for a commercial outlet, so that the dangerous situation of the old world-order will be duplicated and perpetuated. We cannot hope sanely for peace unless America establishes at Constantinople a centre from which democratic principles shall radiate and illuminate that dark region of the world.
If we look at the Near Eastern situation we perceive that Italy and Greece are reaching out to such distances for territory and power that both, if their ambitions are gratified, will find themselves not only unable to govern the new lands they have acquired, but will be greatly weakened at home through expenditures in the maintenance of troops and governments in their colonies. The danger is not only that the Balkans will be more Balkanized than ever, but that Russia, too, will be Balkanized. The only safety lies in setting up a beneficent influence through a strong government in Constantinople, which would counteract the intrigues and contentions of embittered rivals.
A brief survey of the history of Turkey in Europe will suffice to make clear the danger of accepting in this late day any promises of reform from that quarter. I have always thought that the final word on Turkey was spoken by an American friend of mine who had spent a large part of his life in the East, and who, on a visit to Berlin, was asked by Herr von Gwinner, the President of the Deutsche Bank, to spend an evening with him to discuss the future of the Sultan’s empire. When my friend came to keep this appointment he began this way:
“You have set aside this whole evening to discuss the Ottoman Empire. We do not need all that time. I can tell you the whole story in just four words: _Turkey is not reformable!_”
“You have summed up the whole situation perfectly,” replied Von Gwinner.
The reason why this conclusion was so accurate was that it was based, not upon theory, but upon experiment. The history of Turkey for nearly a hundred years has simply amounted to an attempt to reform her. Every attempt has ignominiously failed. Up to fifteen years ago Great Britain’s policy in the Near East had as its controlling principle the necessity of maintaining the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire. The folly of this policy and the miseries which it has brought to Europe are so apparent that I propose to discuss the matter in some detail, particularly as it is only by studying this attitude of the past that we can approach the solution of the Turkish problem of the present.
From 1853 to 1856 Great Britain and France fought a terrible, devastating war, the one purpose of which was to maintain the independence of Turkey. At this time the British public had before them the Turkish problem in almost the same form as that which it manifests to-day. As now, the issue turned upon whether they should regard this question from the standpoint of civilization and decency, or from the standpoint of national advantage and political expediency.
The character of the Turk was the same in 1853 that it is now; he was just as incapable politically then as he is to-day; his attitude toward the Christian populations whom the accident of history had placed in his power was identically the same as it is now. These populations were merely “filthy infidels,” hated by Allah, having no rights to their own lives or property, who would be permitted to live only as slaves of the mighty Mussulman, and who could be tortured and murdered at will. All European statesmen knew in 1852 that the ultimate disappearance of the Ottoman Empire was inevitable; all understood that it was only the support of certain European powers that permitted it to exist, even temporarily.
It was about this time that Czar Nicholas I applied to Turkey the name “sick man of the East,” which has ever since been accepted as an accurate description of its political and social status. The point which I wish to make here is that that phrase is just as appropriate to-day as it was then. The Turk had long since learned the great resources of Ottoman statesmanship--the adroit balancing of one European power against another as the one security of his own existence.
Yet, there was then a school of statesmanship, headed by Palmerston, which declared that the preservation of this decrepit power was the indispensable point in British foreign policy. These men were as realistic in their policies as Bismarck himself. Outwardly they expressed their faith in the Turk; they publicly pictured him as a charming and chivalrous gentleman; they declared that the stories of his brutality were fabrications; and they asserted that, once given an opportunity, the Turkish Empire would regain its splendour and become a headquarters of intelligence and toleration. Lord Palmerston simply outdid himself in his adulation of the Turk. He publicly denounced the Christian populations of Turkey; the stories of their sufferings he declared to be the most absurd nonsense; he warned the British public against being led astray by cheap sentimentality in dealing with the Turkish problem.
To what extent Palmerston and his associates believed their own statements is not clear; they were trained in a school of statesmanship which taught that it was well to believe what it was convenient to believe. The fact was, of course, that the British public was under no particular hallucinations about the Turk. But its mind was filled with a great obsession and a great fear. The thing that paralyzed its moral sense was the steady progress of Russia.
This power, starting as a landlocked nation, had gradually pushed her way to the Black Sea. There was something in her steady progress southward that seemed almost as inevitable as fate. That Russia was determined to obtain Constantinople and become heir to the Sultan’s empire was the conviction that obsessed the British mind. Once this happened, the Palmerston school declared, the British Empire would come speedily to an end. It is almost impossible for us of this generation to conceive the extent to which this fear of Russia laid hold of the British mind. It dogged all the thoughts of British statesmen and British publicists. There appeared to be only one way of checking Russia and protecting the British fireside--that was to preserve the Turkish Empire. England believed that, as long as the Sultan ruled at Constantinople, the Russian could never occupy that capital and from it menace the British Empire.
Thus British enthusiasm for Turkey was merely an expression of hatred and fear of Russia. It was this that led British statesmen to disregard the humane principles involved and adopt the course that apparently promoted the national advantage. The English situation of 1853 presented in particularly acute form that question which has always troubled statesmen: Is there any such thing as principle in the conduct of a nation, or is a country justified always in adopting the course that best promotes its interests or which seems to do so? As applied to Turkey it was this: Was it Great Britain’s duty to protect the Christians against the murderous attacks of the Mohammedans, or should she shut her eyes to their sufferings so long as this course proved profitable politically?
I should be doing an injustice to England did I not point out that the British public has always been divided on this issue. One side has always insisted on regarding the Turkish problem as a matter simply of expediency, while another has insisted on solving it on the ground of justice and right. The party of humanity existed in the days of the Crimean war. Their leaders were Richard Cobden and John Bright--men who formed the vanguard in that group of British statesmen who insisted on regarding public questions from other than materialistic standpoints.
Cobden and Bright saw in the Ottoman question, as it presented itself in 1853, not chiefly a problem in the balance of power, but one that affected the lives of millions of human beings. It was not the threatened aggression of Russia that disturbed them; their eyes were fixed rather on the Christian populations that were being daily tortured under Turkish rule. They demanded a solution of the Eastern question in the way that would best promote the welfare of the Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, and Jews, whom the Sultan had maltreated for centuries. They cared little for the future of Constantinople; they cared much for the future of these persecuted peoples. They therefore took what was, I am sorry to say, the unpopular side in that day. They opposed the mad determination of the British public to go to war for the sake of maintaining the Turkish Empire.
The greatest speech John Bright ever made was against the Crimean War. “That terrible oppression, that multitudinous crime which we call the Ottoman Empire,” was his description of the country which Palmerston so greatly admired. Richard Cobden had studied conditions at first hand and had reached a conclusion identically the same as that of my friend whom I have already quoted--that is, that Turkey was not reformable. He ridiculed the fear that everywhere prevailed against Russia, denied that Russia’s prosperity as a nation necessarily endangered Great Britain, declared that the Turkish Empire could not be maintained, and that, even though it could be, it was not worth preserving.
“You must address yourselves,” said Cobden, “as men of sense and men of energy to the question--What are you to do with the Christian population? For Mohammedanism cannot be maintained, and I should be sorry to see this country fighting for the maintenance of Mohammedanism.... You may keep Turkey on the map of Europe, you may call the country by the name of Turkey if you like, but do not think that you can keep up the Mohammedan rule in the country.”
These were about the mightiest voices in England at that time, but even Cobden and Bright were wildly abused for maintaining that the Eastern question was primarily a problem in ethics. In order to preserve this hideous anachronism England fought a bloody and disastrous war. I presume most Englishmen to-day regard the Crimean War as about the most wicked and futile in their national existence. When the whole thing was over, a witty Frenchman summed up the performance by saying: “If we read the treaty of peace, there are no visible signs to show who were the conquerors and who the vanquished.” There was only one power which could view the results with much satisfaction; that was Turkey. The Treaty of Paris specifically guaranteed her independence and integrity. It shut the Black Sea to naval vessels, thus protecting Turkey from attack by Russia. Worst of all, it left the Sultan’s Christian subjects absolutely in his power.
The Sultan did, indeed, promise reforms--but he merely promised them. Despite experience to the contrary, the British and French diplomats blandly accepted this promise as equivalent to performance. It is painful to look back to this year 1856; to realize that France and England, having defeated Russia, had a free hand to solve the Ottoman problem, and that they refrained from doing so. That absurd prepossession that this oriental empire must be preserved in Europe simply as a buffer state against the progress of Russia entirely controlled the minds of British statesmen--and millions of Christian people were left to their fate.
What that fate was we all know. The Sultan’s promises of reform, never made in good faith, were immediately disregarded. Pillage, massacre, and lust continued to be the chief instruments used by the Sublime Porte in governing its subject peoples. Again the Sultan maintained his throne by playing off one European power against another. The “settlement” of the Eastern problem which had been provided by the Crimean War lasted until 1876.
These twenty years were not quiet ones in the Ottoman dominions; they were a time of constant misery and torture for the abandoned Christian populations. Great Britain and France learned precisely what the “integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire” meant in 1876, when stories of the Bulgarian massacres again reached Europe. Once more Europe faced this everlasting question of the Turk in precisely the same form as in 1856. Again the British people had to decide between expediency and principle in deciding the future of Turkey. Again the British public divided into two groups. Palmerston was dead, but his animosity to Russia and his fondness for the Turk had become the inheritance of Disraeli. With this statesman, as with his predecessor, Turkey was a nation that must be preserved, whatever might be the lot of her suffering Christians. The other part, that played by Cobden and Bright in 1856, was now played by Gladstone.
“The greatest triumph of our time,” said Gladstone in 1870, “will be the enthronement of the idea of public right as the governing idea of European politics.” And Gladstone now proposed to apply his lofty principles to this new Turkish crisis. Many of us remember the attitude of the Disraeli Government in those days. We are still proud of the part played by two Americans, McGahan, a newspaper correspondent, and Schuyler, the American Consul at Constantinople, in bringing the real facts to the attention of the civilized world.
Until these men published the results of their investigations the Disraeli Government branded all the reports of Bulgarian atrocities as lies. “Coffee-house babble” was the term applied by Disraeli to these reports, while Lord Salisbury, in a public address, lauded the personal character of the Sultan. But these two Americans showed that the Bulgarian reports were not idle gossip. They furnished Gladstone his material for his famous Bulgarian pamphlet, in which he propounded the only solution of the Turkish problem that should satisfy the conscience of the British people. His words, uttered in 1876, are just as timely now as they were then.
“Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying away themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yugbashis, their Kaimakans and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned.”
Gladstone’s denunciation stirred the British conscience to its depths. The finer side of the British character manifested itself; the public conscience had made great advances since 1856, and the masses of the British people began to see the Ottoman problem in its true light. Consequently, when Russia intervened in behalf of the Bulgarians and other persecuted peoples, England did not commit the fearful mistake of 1853--she did not go to war to prevent the intervention. British public opinion at first applauded the Russian armies; when, however, the Czar’s forces approached Constantinople, the old dread of Crimean days seized the British public once more. Again Englishmen forgot the miseries of the Christians and began to see the spectre of Russia seated at Constantinople. Again Great Britain began to prepare for war; the British fleet passed the Dardanelles and anchored off Constantinople. England again declared that the safety of her empire demanded the preservation of Turkey, and gave Russia the option of war or a congress at which the treaty she had made with Turkey should be revised.
Russia accepted the latter alternative, and the Congress of Berlin was the result. This Congress could have freed all the subject peoples and solved the Eastern question, but again civilized Europe threw away the opportunity. At this Congress England, in the person of Disraeli, became the Sultan’s advocate, and again the Sultan came out victorious. Certain territories he lost, it is true, but Constantinople was left in his hands and a great area of the Balkans and the larger part of Asia Minor. As for the Armenians, the Syrians, the Greeks, and the Macedonians, the world once more accepted from Turkey promises of reform. Thus Gladstone and the most enlightened opinion in England lost their battle, and British authority again became the instrument for preserving that “terrible oppression, that multitudinous crime which we call the Ottoman Empire.”
Had it not been for the Congress of Berlin it is possible that we should never have had the world war. The treaty let Austria into Bosnia and Herzegovina and so laid the basis for the ultimatum of July 22, 1914. It failed to settle the fate of Macedonia, and so made inevitable the Balkan wars. By leaving Turkey an independent sovereignty, with its capital on the Bosphorus, it made possible the intrigues of Germany for a great Oriental empire. No wonder Gladstone denounced it as an “insane covenant” and “the most deplorable chapter in our foreign policy since the peace of 1815.”
“The plenipotentiaries,” he said, “have spoken in the terms of Metternich rather than those of Canning.... It was their part to take the side of liberty--as a matter of fact, they took the side of servitude.”
The greatest sufferers, as always, were the Christian populations. The Sultan treated his promises of 1878 precisely as he had treated those of 1856. It was after this treaty, indeed, that Abdul Hamid adopted his systematic plan of solving the Armenian problem by massacring all the Armenians. The condition of the subject peoples became worse as years went on, until finally, in 1915, we had the most terrible persecutions in history.
The Russian terror, if it ever was a terror, has disappeared. England no longer fears a Russia stationed at Constantinople and threatening her Indian Empire. The once mighty giant now lies a hopelessly crippled invalid, utterly incapable of aggressive action against any nation. What her fate will be no one knows. What is certain, however, is that the old Czaristic empire, constantly bent on military aggression, has disappeared for ever. When we look upon Russia to-day and then think of the terror which she inspired in the hearts of British statesmen forty and sixty-two years ago the contrast is almost pitiful and grotesque. The nation that succeeded Russia as an ambitious heir to the Sultan’s dominions, Germany, is now almost as powerless.
Moreover, the British conscience has changed since the days of the Crimean and Russo-Turkish wars. The old-time attitude, which insisted on regarding these problems from the standpoint of fancied national interest, is every day giving place to a more humanitarian policy. Gladstone’s idea of “public right as the governing idea of European politics” is more and more gaining the upper hand. The ideals in foreign policy represented by Cobden and Bright are the ideals that now control British public opinion. There are still plenty of reactionaries in England and Europe that might like to settle the Ottoman problem in the old discredited way, but they do not govern British public life at the present crisis. The England that will deal with the Ottoman Empire in 1919 is the England of Lloyd George, not the England of Palmerston and Disraeli.
For the first time, therefore, the world approaches the problem of the Ottoman Empire, the greatest blight in modern civilization, with an absolutely free hand. The decision will inform us, more eloquently than any other detail in the settlement, precisely what forces have won in this war. We shall learn from it whether we have really entered upon a new epoch; whether, as we hope, mediæval history has ended and modern history has begun.
If Constantinople is left to the Turk; if the Greeks, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Arabs and the Jews are not freed from the most revolting tyranny that history has ever known, we shall understand that the sacrifices of the last four years have been in vain, and that the much-discussed new ideals in the government of the world are the merest cant. Thus the United States has an immediate interest in the solution of this problem. The hints reaching this country that another effort may be made to prop up the Turk are not pleasing to us. We did not enter this war to set up new balances of power, to promote the interests of concessionaries, to make new partitions of territory, to satisfy the imperialistic ambitions of contending European powers, but to lend our support to that new international conscience that seeks to reorganize the world on the basis of justice and popular rights. The settlement of the Eastern question will teach us to what extent our efforts have succeeded.
If this mistake of propping up the Sultan’s empire is not to be made again, either that empire must be divided among the great powers--a solution which is not to be considered for reasons which it is hardly necessary to explain--or one of these great powers must undertake its administration as a mandatory. The great powers in question are the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. Of these only the first two are capable of assuming this duty. Lord Curzon has told me personally that for political and economic reasons Great Britain cannot assume the Ottoman mandate. Lloyd George has said essentially the same thing. And Stéphane Lauzanne, who speaks in a semi-official capacity for France, said, in an interview, Nov. 1, with a correspondent of the _Times_:
“In the offer of a mandate to her, America should see more than the selfish desire of Europe to involve her in European affairs. It is true she fears to be the centre of intrigues and difficulties. She fears distant complications. However, the question is nobler and higher than that. America is an admirable reservoir of energy. She holds the secret of that which is best in our modern life--to build largely and to build quickly. She has youth; she has power; she has wealth; she has that which she calls efficiency. We in Europe are old, poor, enfeebled, divided. It would be prodigiously interesting if America, after she has given us of her power, of her money and her material, should give us also an example.
“And what an example it would be if America were to accept the mandate for Constantinople! Here is a city which is one of the marvels of Europe and of the world, which is the jewel of the Orient, and which after twenty centuries of European civilization remains the home of wickedness and corruption. Every one disputes possession of its hills and harbours, and no one tries to make of it a great modern city which, rid of international intrigues and rid of politics, would be the shining pole of Europe. Only America can transform Constantinople; only America can establish herself there without suspicion of bad faith and without jealousy; only America can civilize the capital of Islam.
“To do that America has no need of regiments of soldiers or of cannon. She has need only of her workers and her constructors. A Hoover or a Davison would be enough. And America is full of Hoovers and Davisons.”
* * * * *
I recognize the tremendous problems which confront us in our own country. Those problems must and will be solved. But the day is past when the individual citizen can permit absorption in his personal affairs to exclude the consideration of the community’s or the nation’s well-being. A new social conscience has manifested itself. And it is equally true that the United States, as a member of the League of Nations, must take an active and altruistic interest in world affairs, however pressing our own problems may seem. The European situation, indeed, is really a part of them. Our associates in the war cannot drift into bankruptcy and despair without involving the United States in the disaster. The losses we would suffer in money would be the least distressing, should the world fall into the chaos which is threatening. If we cannot solve our own problems and at the same time help Europe solve hers we must be impotent indeed.
So much, then, for the general principles involved; what are the practical details of such a mandate? Last May, William Buckler, Professor Philip M. Brown, and myself joined in a memorandum to President Wilson outlining briefly a proposed system of government for the Ottoman dominions. This so completely embodies my ideas that I reprint it here, with two slight omissions:
* * * * *
“The government of Asia Minor should be dealt with under three different mandates, (1) for Constantinople and its zone, (2) for Turkish Anatolia, (3) for Armenia. The reason for not uniting these three areas under a single mandate is that the methods of government required in each area are different. In order, however, to facilitate the political and economic development of the whole country, these three areas should be placed under one and the same mandatory power, with a single governor in charge of the whole, to unify the separate administrations of the three states.
“Honest and efficient government in the Constantinople zone and in Armenia will not solve the problems of Asia Minor unless the same kind of government is also provided for the much larger area lying between Constantinople and Armenia, i. e., Turkish Anatolia. Constantinople and Armenia are mere fringes; the heart of the problem lies in Anatolia, of which the population is 75 per cent. Moslem.
“The main rules to be followed in dealing with this central district are:
“1. That it should not be divided up among Greeks, French, Italians, &c.
“2. That the Sultan should, under proper mandatory control, retain religious and political sovereignty over the Turkish people in Anatolia, having his residence at Brusa or Konia, both of which are ancient historic seats of the Sultanate.
“3. That no part of Anatolia should be placed under Greeks, even in the form of a mandate. The Greeks are entitled by their numbers to a small area surrounding Smyrna. Under no circumstances should Greece have a mandate over territory mainly inhabited by Turks.
“The above solution of the problem of Asia Minor means refusal to recognize secret deals such as the Pact of London and the Sykes-Picot Agreement and especially the Italian claims to a large territory near Adalia. If Greeks and Italians, with their standing antagonism, are introduced into Asia Minor, the peace will constantly be disturbed by their rivalry and intrigues. Italy has no claim to any part of Anatolia, whether on the basis of population, of commercial interests, or of historic tradition.
“No solution of the Asia-Minor problem which ignores the fact that its population is 75 per cent. Turkish can be considered satisfactory or durable. The only two countries having any prospect of successfully holding a mandate over Anatolia are Great Britain and the United States.
“The large missionary and educational interests of the United States in Anatolia must be adequately protected, and it is illusory to imagine that this can be done if Anatolia is subjected to Greek, French, or Italian sovereignty.
“Only a comprehensive, self-contained scheme such as that above outlined can overcome the strong prejudices of the American people against accepting any mandate. To cure the ills of Turkey and to deliver her peasantry from their present ignorance and impoverishment requires a thorough reconstruction of Turkish institutions, judicial, educational, economic, financial, and military.
“This may appeal to the United States as an opportunity to set a high standard, by showing that it is the duty of a great power, in ruling such oppressed peoples, to lead them toward self-respecting independence as their ultimate goal.”
* * * * *
The Armenians are wholly unprepared to govern themselves or to protect themselves against their neighbours. Mere supervision will not be adequate. What the Armenian State requires is a kind of receivership, and we should take it over in trust, to manage it until it is time to turn it over when it is governmentally solvent and on a going basis. Anatolia should be under a separate management and have its own parliament; its executive should be a deputy governor under a governor general at Constantinople. The three governments should have a common coinage, similar tariff requirements, and unified railroad systems; and in other respects should be federated somewhat as states in this country are.
The commercial importance of such an arrangement is enormous, for Constantinople must continue as Russia’s chief outlet to the world, and it is the gateway to the East. The commercial policy would, of course, be an open-door policy. All nations would have equality of opportunity in trade and would be free in regard to colonization. As a matter of fact, the commercial situation is of little importance to us. Prior to the war our foreign trade amounted to only about 6 per cent. of our total trade; and although it increased during the war to about 11 per cent., it is likely to recede soon to the neighbourhood of 8 per cent. It will consist largely of raw materials, such as wheat, cotton, copper, and coal, which other nations must get from us, whether or no. Foreign trade is a mere incident; our prosperity is not what we are fighting for.
It need not require the extension of large credits from us to put these nations on a sound footing. They could be financed by bond issues issued in each case against the resources of the territories involved. If the United States held the mandates, there would be no difficulty, I apprehend, in floating such issues. And as for the policing necessary, that need be very small, provided a man of strong will and quick decision, fertile in resources and of unshakable determination, were assigned to the Governorship General at Constantinople. The opportunity would be a great one for an American completely imbued with our institutions. The succession of able pro-consuls whom we have sent to the Philippines shows that we shall not lack such men.
We shall surrender our mandates over these three territories when we have finished our work. We shall not necessarily leave them all at the same time; we shall turn each one over to its people when the public opinion of the world, expressed in the League of Nations, has decided that it is capable of directing its own affairs. It might be necessary for us to remain in Constantinople longer than elsewhere, and there is reason to suppose that Constantinople will become the Washington of the Balkans and perhaps of Asia Minor, the central governing power of the Balkan confederation. But if left without the guidance and help of outside intelligence and capital, those peoples will necessarily continue to retrograde. They must have security of property if they are to have an incentive to labour. Unless they have that, the blight of southeastern Europe will remain, and the Turks, originally a marauding band of conquerors, who have held a precarious and undeserved footing for more than five hundred years on European soil, will continue to menace its peace and safety. If ever there was a chance to put them out, we have that chance now. The United States is the only government which can undertake the purification of the Balkans without incurring ill-will and jealousy. We need not indulge in overpolite phrases. This is the only nation which can accept these mandates and maintain international good feeling. It is absolutely our fault if the Turk remains in Europe.
The difficulties inherent in this situation can be cured only at the source. The League of Nations, when it comes into being, must not operate exclusively through a central agency at Geneva, because it cannot learn in that way the real difficulties and the wants of dependent peoples. That can be done only in the most direct way, through representatives on the spot. The people, moreover, want to be heard. They are wonderfully relieved after they have had their say. That fact has its touch of pathos, perhaps to some a touch of the ridiculous; but it is a factor of the human equation which we cannot afford to ignore. And if we supply American tribunals, disinterested and just, before which these peoples can state their grievances and their aspirations, we will have taken a long step toward their pacification and stabilization.
INDEX
Abdul Hamid, kept prisoner, 184
Abraham & Straus, incident of formation of firm, 34
Adler, Dr. Cyrus, objects to Jew serving on commission to investigate Polish pogroms, 353
Adler, Dr. Felix, leader of a new movement, 95, 129
Admission to the Bar, 29
Adrianople, Governor of, hospitable reception given by, 192
Agincourt, visit to ancient battleground, 266
Albright, Charles P., 26
Alexander, Andrew, building erected for, 55
Alexander, James W., fights to retain control of Equitable Insurance Co., 80
Alexandria, visit to, 219
Algef, Dr., 15
Ali Kuli Khan, at Peace Conference, 326
Ali Mehemmid, visit to, 223
Allen, Edward W., at Roosevelt’s fusion meeting, 280
Alter, Rabbi, visit to, near Warsaw, 374
America’s true mission in Turkey, 203
American Chamber of Commerce for the Levant, speech at, 198
American troops, arrival in France, restores flagging energy of the people, 256; visit to, on British front, 266; Sir Douglas Haig’s impressions of, 273
Anderson, Charles P., sails for International Red Cross Conference, 310; in conference with Henry P. Davison, 313
Anderson, U. S. District Attorney, sends deputies to New Hampshire to enforce election laws, 246
Arabian night, arranged by Governor of Nabulus, 231
Arif Pasha, 224
Armenia, report on, 337
Armistice, earlier than expected, 299
Armstrong Committee, the Insurance investigation, 64, 66, 71
Arnold, Olney, Consular Agent at Cairo, 219, 220
Aronstam, Charles S. account of Roosevelt’s forming fusion ticket for New York municipal election, 280; tenders nomination for President of Board of Aldermen, 281; declined, 282
Arthur of Connaught, Prince, met on British front, 269
Atterbury, Gen. W. W., asked to accept Director-Generalship of Associated National Red Cross, 318
Askenazy, pronounced Assimilator, 366
Astor, John Jacob, dealings with, 46
Astor, William Waldorf, 46; real estate transactions with, 54, 55
Aupin, Count, meeting with, 330
Baker, Elbert H., prophesies Wilson would carry Ohio by large majority, 245
Baker, J. E., takes party of labour leaders to British front, 267
Baker, Newton D., assures committee of high Democratic majority in Ohio, 245; letter declining to speak for League to Enforce Peace, 300
Baker, Ray Stannard, at Peace Conference, 324
Baldwin, Edward R., sails for International Red Cross Conference, 310
Balfour, Arthur J., New York City’s reception to, 253; at luncheon given by, in Paris, 341
Balfour Declaration, misunderstood by Zionists, 389
Ball, Alwyn, Jr., realty dealings through, 55; aids in forming real estate trust company, 57
Baltimore Convention, Wilson’s nomination at, 146
Baltimore _Sun_, favours Wilson at Baltimore Convention, 146
Bamberger-Delaware Gold Mine, investment in, 51
Bannard, Otto, defeated by Judge Gaynor, 279
Bar, admission to the, 29
Baring Brothers, influence of their failure on real estate transactions, 48
Barth, Herr, remark that Roosevelt could never remain out of politics, 281
Barton, Dr. James L., 175
Baruch, Bernard M., valuable aid in securing campaign contributions, 242
Bauman, Mr., 51
Beattie, C. J., met on British front, 267
Beecher, Henry Ward, 15
Behning, Henry, law case of, 31
Bell, George W., with Mitchel on campaign, 285
Bellows, Henry W., 15
Bennett, James Gordon, aids in sale of lots, 48; encounter with pugilist indirect cause of siding against Tammany, 113
Berkowitz, Dr. Henry, not in favour of Zionist plans, 349
Biddle, General, commanding American troops on British front, 266
Big Business, era of, 133
Biggs, Dr. Hermann M., sails for International Red Cross Conference, 310
Billinski, M., talks on Jewish question, 374, 376
Black, Mr., 72
Blass, Robert, sings at Conried’s funeral, 104
Bliss, Cornelius N., Jr., on committee for financing the Red Cross, 249
Bliss, Dr. Howard, invited on Palestine trip, 214; at Samaritan ceremonies, 229; at Arabian night, 231, 232
Bliss, General, on possibilities of another war, 335
Bliss, George, real estate transactions with, 48, 49
Bloomingdale & Co., position with, 18
Blumstein, Louis M., real estate sold to, 42
B’nai Brith Lodge, at Constantinople, 205
Bompard, M., French Ambassador at Constantinople, 183
Bonné, Mrs. Josephine, 99
Borah, antagonistic to Wilson, 130
Brackett, Edgar T., presents argument for impeachment at Sulzer trial, 172
Brady, Anthony N., interested in formation of real estate trust company, 59
Brady, Peter, member “Committee of Safety,” 107
Bratiano, Roumanian premier, at Peace Conference, 326, 327
Briand, Aristide, meeting with, 330; proposes to pay war debt by sale of lottery tickets in America, 331
Bridgeport, Alabama, unfortunate investments at, 50
British front, trip to, 266
Broad Exchange Bldg., purchase of plots for site, 87
Bronx House, Settlement work at, 105, 106
Brooklyn, emigration to, 5, 7
Brown, Dr. Arthur Judson, 175
Brown, Dr. Elmer R., in campaign of League to Enforce Peace, 301
Brown, Prof. Philip M., in study of Armenian question, 337
Bryan, William Jennings, candidacy against Wilson, 138; the “cocked-hat” letter, 140; at Jackson Day Dinner, 142; hazy ideas of diplomacy, 174
Bryant, Lieut.-Col. M. C., executive secretary Mission to Poland, 335; acts as secretary, 381
Bryant, William Cullen, 15
Bryce, Viscount, invited on Palestine trip, 216; his thirst for facts, 227; at the Samaritan ceremonies, 230; at Arabian night, 231
Buchman, Albert, architect, 51
Buckler, William H., study of Turkish problem with, at Peace Conference, 323; in study of the Turkish question, 336, 337
Bureau of Public Information, beginnings of, 252
Burleson, Albert S., assistance during campaign, 154; appointed Postmaster-General, 159; in difficulties over New York Postmastership, 237, 239
Butler, Benjamin F., 26
Butler, Prescott Hall, Boreel Bldg. purchased through, 87
Butzel, Mr., acquaintance with, 25
Cairo, arrival at, 220
Campaign of 1916, financing, 236, 241
Cannes, International Red Cross Conference at, 313
Carpenter, Prof. William H., speaks at Conried’s funeral, 105
Carroll, John F., 9
Caruso, Enrico, engaged by Conried from phonograph records, 101
Celluloid Piano Key Co., connection with, 32; investments in, 41
Central Realty Bond & Trust Company, organization, 57 _et seq._; transactions of, 86; merged into Lawyers’ Title Insurance Company, 89
Chadbourne, Thomas L., Jr., valuable aid in securing campaign contributions, 242; at War Publicity meeting, 252
Channing, Dr., extract from “Self-Denial” sermon, 16
Charters, General, on British front, 268
Childs, William Hamlin, at War Publicity meeting, 253
Chinese delegation to Peace Conference, dinner given by, 324; their hopeless position, 325
Choate, Joseph H., attorney for the Astors, 45; presiding at New York City’s welcome to Joffre, Viviani, and Balfour, 254
City College, preparation for, 9; entrance, 11; withdrawal from, 13
Clark, Champ, candidacy against Wilson, 138; at Jackson Day Dinner, 142; at Baltimore Convention, 146; over-confidence costs nomination, 147; at the Sea Girt notification, 148
Clemenceau, at signing of Peace Treaty, 336
Cobb, Frank I., aids Wilson cause at Baltimore by New York _World_ editorial, 146; at the Sulzer dinner, 168; collaboration with on article showing Germany planned the war, 296
Coblenz, speech at, on the next war, 332, 335; state of mind of the residents, 333
Cochran, Bourke, acquaintance with, 25
Coggeshall, Edward W., entertains proposition for increasing capital of Lawyers’ Title Company, 67, 69
Colby, Bainbridge, retained by Alexander in Equitable contest, 80, 81; on Board of Directors, Metropolitan Opera Company, 101; campaign for Wilson, 245
College for Girls, Constantinople, 204, 207
Columbia Law School, attendance at, 27
“Committee of Safety,” creation of, 107
Conkling, Roscoe, 113
Conried, Heinrich, backing secured for Metropolitan Opera venture, 99; engages Caruso from phonograph records, 101; death, and impressive funeral, 104
Constantinople arrival at, 177; tactics toward the “diplomatic set,” 179; first impressions of, 186
Cooke, Jay, in Panic of 1873, 20
Cooper Union, address at, showing necessity of complete defeat of Germany, 298
Cox, Governor, nominated for Presidency by state “bosses,” 121
Crane, Charles R., helps finance Wilson campaign, 145; approves selection of headquarters for 1916 campaign, 236; at dinner given by Chinese delegation to Peace Conference, 324
Crawford, L. Cope, met on British front, 267
Crimmins, John D., 22; real estate ventures of, 41, 42; interested in formation of real estate trust company, 58; at the Sulzer dinner, 168
Croker, Richard, acquaintance with, 113
Crowell, Ass’t Sec’y of War, at dinner to, in Paris, 337
Cullen, Judge Edgar M., presiding at Sulzer impeachment, 172
Cummings, Homer S., friendship with, 154; as the Demosthenes of the Democratic Party, 306
Currie, Sir Arthur, lunch with on British front, 268; description of battle of Lens, 269
Curtis, Dr. Holbrook, 103
Curtis, Miss, met at Cannes, 327
D’Abernon, Lord, at Balfour luncheon in Paris, 341
D’Ankerswaerd, 188
Dana, Charles A., 15
Daniels, Josephus, friendship with, 154; appointed Secretary of the Navy, 159; hopeless of success of 1916 campaign, 235; at McCormick luncheon, 242; sails on the _Leviathan_, 310
Dardanelles, Major Tibbetts tells experiences, 268
Davies, J. Clarence, in the “Subway Boom,” 87
Davies, Joseph E., friendship with, 154
Davison, Henry P., selected as Chairman of Committee for financing the Red Cross, 250; dinner given Red Cross delegates in Paris, 312; cable from, requesting attendance at International Red Cross Conference, 308; organizing and directing spirit of International Red Cross Conference, 316; entreated to make Red Cross his life work, 316; mistake of permitting other than American as Director-General, 319; proposes dinner to Governors of the League of Red Cross Societies, 320; speaks at the dinner, 321
Democracy--a master-passion, 351
Deutsch, Bernard, 106
Djemal, Colonel, 187
Dmowski, Roman, at Paderewski dinner, 356; explains his Anti-Semitism, 357
Dodge, Bayard, on Palestine trip, 214
Dodge, Cleveland H., helps finance Wilson campaign, 145; aid to Robert College, 208; invited on Palestine trip, 214; on committee for financing the Red Cross, 249
Doheny, Edward L., contributes large sum to campaign fund, and gets it back by election bets, 242
Domremy, visit to, 260
_Dora_, trip to Hamburg on, 22
Doremus, Professor, 12
Draper, Mrs. William K., speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 321
Dreier, Miss Mary, member “Committee of Safety,” 107
Drummond, Sir Eric, speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 321
Duel, Dr. Arthur B., with Mitchel on campaign, 285
Dwight, Prof. Theodore W., 29
Easter sacrifice of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, 228
Eclectic Life Insurance Co., failure in Panic of 1873, 21
Edison, Thomas A., at McCormick luncheon, 242
Educational Alliance, Director of, 105
Egan, Dr. Maurice Francis, at Copenhagen Legation, 19
Egypt, Kitchener’s explanation of Great Britain’s policy in, 226
Ehrich, William J., association with in realty ventures, 42
Einhorn, Rabbi, 15, 128
Elizabeth, Princess, at dinner with, 326
Elkus, Abram I., work with factory investigation committee, 108; helps finance Wilson campaign, 145
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 15
Emerson Society, organized, 98
Enver Pasha, Turkish Minister of War, 185; direct dealings with, 197; asks advice, 202; of much interest to Kitchener, 225
Equitable Insurance Co., the investigation, 79 _et seq._
Esher, Lord, arranges trip to British front, 266
Evarts, William M., attorney for the Astors, 45
Farley, Terrence, 41
Federal Reserve Act, prevents concentration and control of capital, 83
Filene, Edward A., in campaign of League to Enforce Peace, 301; at dinner given by Chinese delegation to Peace Conference, 324
Finley, Dr. John H., 11
Fisk and Hatch, in Panic of 1873, 20
Flower, Roswell P., 118
Ford, Henry, drives a hard bargain, 242
Fosdick, Raymond B., aids in preparing National Committee budget, 153
Foss, Mr., at Jackson Day Dinner, 142
Fox, Mortimer J., on trip to Constantinople, 177
Franco-Prussian War, influences sentiment in favour of Germans in New York, 8
Frascara, Count, speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 321
Fraser, Lovat, met on British front, 267
Free Synagogue, resignation from, 293
Freedman, Andrew, connection with Richard Croker, 115
French front, visit to, 259
Fuller Construction Co., financing of, 71
Garfield, President, influence of assassination on real estate market, 41
Garrels, Consul, 219
Gates, Dr., president of Robert College, 204, 208
Gawa, Prof. Arata Nina, speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 321
Gaynor, William J., an opponent, 34
George, Lloyd, seeks Wilson’s favour through Admiral Grayson, 331; at signing of Peace Treaty, 336
Germans, early prejudice against, in New York, 8
Germany: entering on career of Imperialism, 23
Gibson, Hugh, asked to report on Poland’s treatment of Jews, 352; at Paderewski dinner, 356
Giers, Michel de, Russian Ambassador at Constantinople, 183
Gildersleeve, Henry A., acquaintance with, 25
Glass, Franklin P., at conference over Wilson’s “cocked-hat” letter, 140
Glass, Senator Carter, reason for his appointment as secretary of Democratic National Committee, 244
Godkin, Lawrence, 15
Goelet, Robert, on Board of Directors of Metropolitan Opera Company, 100
Gold mine, investment in, 51
Goldsmith, Abraham, partnership with, 33, 42
Goodhart, Capt. Arthur L., Counsel with Mission to Poland, 355; at reception in Warsaw, 365
Gould, George J., on Board of Directors Metropolitan Opera Company, 100
Gouraud, General, Pershing renews acquaintance of, at Verdun, 266
Grabski, conference with, on conditions in Poland, 358
Grand Central Station, construction of, 8
Grasty, Charles H., aids Wilson at Baltimore Convention, 146
Grayson, Admiral, telegram to, regarding Wilson’s attitude toward Lane as Director-General of International Red Cross, 318; dinner with Lloyd George, 332
Greeley, Horace, 15
Green, Andrew H., appointed Comptroller of City of New York, 113
Greene, Colonel Warwick, declines membership of commission to investigate treatment of Jews in Poland, 352, 354
Gregory, Attorney General, sends deputies to New Hampshire to enforce election laws, 247
Gregory, Eliot, on Board of Directors Metropolitan Opera Company, 101
Grew, Joseph C., cables to obtain American opinion of Jew serving on commission to investigate Polish pogroms, 353
Groshents, M., patriot of Thann, 261
Grosscup, Mr., 139
Grant, Hugh J., interested in formation of real estate trust company, 58; aids in financing of Fuller Construction Co., 71; advises purchase of Bareel Bldg., 86; had no fear of panic, 88; interested in Underwood Typewriter Company, 91
Guggenheim, Daniel, 100
Guggenheimer, Randolph, 100
Guizat, Count de Witt, entertained by, on trip to French front, 262
Gutherz, Dr., 3
Haig, Sir Douglas, arranges meeting with Sir Arthur Currie, 269; why he did not capture Lens, 271; record of meeting with, 271
Hall, A. Oakey, Mayor of New York City under Tweed, 109
Hall, Dr., quotation from, 16
Hamburg, trip on sailing vessel to, 22
Hamlin, Dr., work at Robert College, 208
Hammerstein, Oscar, realty dealings with, 43
Hammill, Dr. Samuel M., sails for International Red Cross Conference, 310
Hankey, Sir Maurice, at Balfour luncheon in Paris, 341
Hanna, Mark, in control of Republican Party, 122
Harbord, Major-General, meeting with in France, 273; induced to accept Armenian Mission, 337; helps select military member of mission to Poland, 354
Harbord Commission to Armenia, negotiations for appointment, 336, 337, 338; report giving reasons for and against America accepting Armenian mandate, 343
Harriman, E. H., financing of Union Pacific, 77; attitude toward Equitable controversy, 82
Hartman, Judge Anthony, 39
Hartman, Miss Rosina, studies under, 10
Harvey, Col. George, disagreement with Wilson, 149
Haskell, Col. William N., appointed to head resident commission to Armenia, 342
Havemeyer, Henry O., realty ventures, 42; interested in formation of real estate trust company, 58
Hays, Will H., success as Republican National Chairman, 126
Hearst, William Randolph, at Jackson Day Dinner, 142
Heins, Louis F., 116
“Hell’s Kitchen,” experiences with tenants in, 40
Henderson, General David, becomes Director-General of International Red Cross, 320; speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 321
Henry Street Settlement, 105
Herrick, Myron T., urges acceptance of Ambassadorship to Turkey, 161
Hilton, Frederick M., transaction with, 86
Hilton, Hughes & Co., difficulties of, 36
Hirsch, Solomon, 162
Hirsdansky, Simon, 106
Hoffman, John T., made Governor by Tweed, 109, 110
Holley, Abner B., instructor in mathematics, 10
Hollis, Senator, at dinner given by Chinese delegation to Peace Conference, 324
Holt, Dr. L. Emmett, sails for International Red Cross Conference, 310
Holy Land, visit to the, 212
Homer, Mme., sings at Conried’s funeral, 104
Hoover, Herbert, meeting with in Paris, 312; recommends appointment of Harbord Armenian Mission, 338; not in favour of America accepting mandate over Armenia, 340; urges Wilson to appoint commission to investigate treatment of Jews in Poland, 352; State dinner given to, by Paderewski, 377
Hoskins, Dr. Franklin, invited on Palestine trip, 214; at Caves of Machpelah, 218; profound Biblical scholar, 227; at Samaritan ceremonies, 229; at Arabian night, 231
House, Colonel, Wilson’s confidence in, 154; approves selection of headquarters for 1916 Campaign, 236; his relationship with President Wilson, 239; at Peace Conference, 327; at signing of Peace Treaty, 336
Houston, Secretary, applauds campaign of League to Enforce Peace, 300
Hudspeth, Judge, 121, 139
Hughes, Chas. Evans, conducts insurance investigation, 79, 83; at War Publicity meeting, 252; urges Mitchel’s reëlection at City Hall Park mass meeting, 284; signs cable to Wilson appealing for help for Armenia, 340; speaks at Madison Square Garden meeting of protest against treatment of Jews in Poland, 352
Hughes, Congressman, 139
Huntington, Collis P., real estate dealings with, 52
Hyde, Henry B., organizes Equitable Life Insurance Co., 79
Hyde, James Hazen, head of Equitable Life Insurance Co., 66; insurance irregularities, 78; personal weakness, 79; efforts in Paris to assist in World War, and work with the Red Cross, 84
Ibrahim Bey, 189
Ickelheimer, Henry R., 100
International Red Cross Conference, 310
Izzett, General, 187
Jackson, Charles A., 120
Jackson Day Dinner, of 1912, Wilson’s success at, 138
Jacob-ben-Aaron, High Priest of Samaritans, 228
Jadwin, General Edgar, on commission to investigate treatment of Jews in Poland, 352; selected by Pershing, 354; at Paderewski dinner to Hoover, 378
Jarlsberg, Count Wedel, speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 321
Jarvie, James N., on board of directors of real estate trust company, 61; opponent of Havemeyer, 65, 69; interested in Underwood Typewriter Co., 91
Jastrow, Prof. Morris, not in favour of Zionist plans, 349
Jaubert, Captain, in charge of trip to French front, 259
Jews, influence of, discrimination against, in failure of Hilton, Hughes & Co., 38; send commission to Peace Conference, 348; opportunities boundless in America, 399
Jews, atrocities against, in Poland, 351; Hugh Gibson asked to report on, 352; Wilson appoints commission to investigate, 352; objections against Jew serving on commission, 353
Jewish members of Polish Parliament, 361
Jewish question, the, article in New York _Times_, 289
Joffre, Marshal, New York City’s reception to, 253; pleads for sight of American uniforms in Paris, 256; meeting at his Paris headquarters, 262
Johnson, Frederick, 116
Johnson, George F., 116
Johnson, Homer H., at dinner given by, in Paris, 337; on commission to investigate treatment of Jews in Poland, 352
Johnson, Joseph, appointment as Postmaster prevented, 238
Joline, Adrian H., “cocked-hat” letter from Wilson, 140
Jones Estate, Joshua, purchase of lots in, 47
Jordan, Thomas N., 68
Judson, Dr. Henry Pratt, dinner to, 299
Juilliard, A. D., on board of directors of real estate trust company, 61, 66, 69
Kahn, Congressman Julius, on committee to present views of American Jews on Zionism to Peace Conference, 350
Kahn, Otto H., on Board of Directors Metropolitan Opera Company, 100
Kahri Jeh Janisi, oldest mosque in Constantinople, 187
Kelly, John, succeeds Tweed as Tammany leader, 112
Kennedy, John S., aid to Robert College, 208
Kenyon, Cox & Co., in Panic of 1873, 20
Kerenski, at Peace Conference,323
Kergolay, Count, speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 320
Khedive of Egypt, provides for welcome at Alexandria, 219; official call on, 221; as a modern business man, 222
Kiernan, Lawrence D., 9
Kilpatrick, Frank, realty dealings with, 45
Kilpatrick, Walter, realty dealings with, 45
Kingsbury, John A., member “Committee of Safety,” 107
Kitchener, Lord, meeting with, in Egypt, 210; anomalous position in Egypt, 220; meeting with, 221; luncheon with, 224
Knickerbocker Real Estate Co., dealings with, 42
Knox Bldg, purchase of, 87
Koenig, Samuel S., at Sulzer dinner, 168
Kuhn, Loeb & Co., rise in banking circle, 77
Kurzman, Ferdinand, in law office of, 12; reëmployment by, 18; method of dispossessing undesirable tenant, 39
Lachman, Samson, 33; realty ventures with, 42; elected Judge of Sixth District Court, 120
Lachman, Morgenthau & Goldsmith, formation of partnership, 34; withdrawal from the firm, 56
Lamont, Dan, his friendship with Grover Cleveland, 118
Lamont, Thomas, at dinner given by Chinese delegation to Peace Conference,324
Landman, Rabbi Isaac, on committee to present views of American Jews on Zionism to Peace Conference, 350
Lane, Franklin K., donation to campaign fund, 242; writes Red Cross proclamation, 251; approves campaign of League to Enforce Peace, 300; proposed as Director-General of International Red Cross, 318; considered for head of corporation to finance Poland, 381
Lansing, Secretary of State, at Paderewski dinner, 356; letter of instructions to Mission to Poland, 359
Lansing, Mrs., at signing of Peace Treaty, 336
Lauzanne, Stéphane, arranges luncheon with Bunau Varilla, 330
Lawyers’ Mortgage Company, increase of capital stock, 70, 71
Lawyers’ Title Company, increase of capital stock, 67-71
League to Enforce Peace, work against future wars, 300; travelling in campaign of, 301; pronouncement on the League of Nations Covenant, 303
Leisenring, John, 26
Leishmann, John G. A., meeting with at Aix-les-Bains, 85
Lens, General Currie’s description of battle, 269; why Sir Douglas Haig refrained from capturing, 271
Lenox, James, 22
Letoviski, Major, leader of Jewish massacre at Pinsk, 369
Lewin, Rabbi, on Jewish question in Poland, 375
Liberty Loan, and United War Work Drives, travelling in behalf of, 295
Lloyd, Bishop Arthur Selden, 175
Lodge, Henry Cabot, signs cable to Wilson appealing for help for Armenia, 340
Loeb, Solomon, realty ventures, 42
Loewi, Valentine, 30
Lord, Dr. Robert, at Peace Conference, 324
Low, Sydney, met on British front, 267
Lowell, President in campaign of League to Enforce Peace, 301; in a foot race with, 302
Macauley, Captain, of the _Scorpion_, 219
Machpelah, Caves of, visit to, 213, 217
Mackay, Clarence H., on Board of Directors Metropolitan Opera Company, 100
Mackaye, Dr., 175
Macy, R. H., & Co., business secured by Isidor Straus and his sons, 36
Mahmoud Tahgri Bey, acting Governor of Alexandria, 219
Mahmoud Tewfik Hamid, 232
Mahmoud Pasha, 189
Malcolm, Ian, speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 320
Mallet, Sir Louis, British Ambassador at Constantinople, 183; renewal of acquaintance with, 336
Malone, Dudley Field, at conference over Wilson’s “cocked-hat” letter, 140; brings message from Wilson on McCombs-Newton rupture, 145
Mannes, David, 106
Mannheim, early life in, 1, 333
Manning, Dan, 118
Mardighian, Osman, 187
Marie, Princess, at dinner with, 326
Marling, Alfred E., 175
Marsh, Benjamin C., Secretary Committee on Congestion of Population in New York City, 107
Marshall, T. R., at Jackson Day Dinner, 142
Marshall, Louis, at Sulzer dinner, 168; objects to Jew serving on Commission to investigate Polish pogroms, 353
Martin, Riccardo, sings at Conried’s funeral, 104
Meyer, Peter F., 48; connection with Richard Croker, 113
Metaxa, Dr., arranges meeting with Venizelos, 328
Metropolitan Opera Company, formed for Conried, 100
Metropolitan Opera House, gathering on President Wilson’s return from Paris, 304
Miller, Cyrus C., elected Borough President of the Bronx, 118
Mitchel, John Purroy, in the Postmastership controversy, 237; campaign for preparedness irritating to President Wilson, 238; at War Publicity meeting, 252; has good business offer but decides to remain in politics, 279; asks advice on Mayoralty campaign, 278; elected Mayor of City of New York, 283; asks advice as to running again, 283; his death in his country’s service, 286
MacDowell, Miss, in Settlement work, 105
MacNulty, Mr., 35
McAdoo, William G., in Wilson’s campaign, 137; drops his business to aid Wilson’s candidacy, 154; appointed Secretary of the Treasury, 159; apprehensive of outcome of 1916 campaign, 235; dejection at unfavourable election returns, 246
McAneny, George A., considered for Mayor on fusion ticket, 280; not a vote-getter, 281
McCall, Mr., power in finance, 78
McCombs, William F., in charge of Wilson campaign, 137, 139; controversy with Byron Newton, 145
McCormick, Chancellor, on Palestine trip, 215
McCormick, Vance, bosses object to, 121; named Chairman of Democratic Campaign Committee, 241; dinner to Henry Ford, Thos. A. Edison, and Josephus Daniels, 242; on committee for financing the Red Cross, 249
McCurdy, Richard A., incensed at not being asked to participate in capital increase of Lawyers’ Title Company, 69; power in finance, 78; misuse of insurance funds, 83
McCurdy, R. H., on Board of Directors of Metropolitan Opera Company, 100
McIntire, Alfred, 19, 30
McIntyre, William H., on Board of Directors Metropolitan Opera Company, 101
McManus, Thomas F., 116
Mohammed V, a weakling, 184
Moncheur, Baroness, 188
Montefiore, Claude, representing Jews of France at Peace Conference, 350
Moore, Judge, 121, 122
Moore, Mrs. Philip North, in campaign of League to Enforce Peace, 301
Morgan, J. Pierpont, his power in finance, 76
Morgan, Miss Anne, member “Committee of Safety”, 107
Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., at Sea Girt, 148
Morgenthau, Mrs., arrival in Turkey, 194
Morgenthau Company, Henry, formation, 89
Morton, Levi P., real estate transactions with, 48; assists at auction sale, 49
Mott, John R., conversation with, on after-the-war work, 316
Mt. Sinai Hospital, on Board of Directors, 105
Munsey, Frank, at War Publicity meeting, 253
Murphy, Arthur D., defeated for Borough President of Bronx, 116
Murphy, Charles F., selected by Croker to head Tammany, 116
Murphy, Major, with Red Cross in France, 86
Nabulus, Governor of, arranges an Arabian night, 231
Nahoun, Chief Rabbi, 205
New York, arrival in, 6, 7
New York _Sun_, comment on heading of _Red Cross Magazine_ article, 289
New York _Times_, article on the Jewish question, 289; Washington despatch to, 293; publishes speech made at dinner of Executive Committee of Wise Centenary Fund, 294; article, “Emperor William Must Go,” 297; article, “A Vision of the Red Cross After the War,” 308; article on departure as delegate to International Red Cross Conference, 308
New York _World_, article showing Germany planned the war, 296
Newton, Byron, controversy with McCombs, 145
Nilsson, Christine, 12
Norton, Chas. D., on Committee for financing the Red Cross, 249
Norton, Patrick, excavation contractor, 51, 52
Nugent, difficulty with, over tickets for Jackson Day Dinner, 139
O’Connor, Charles, 29
O’Gorman, Senator James A., at Jackson Day Dinner, 142; friendship with, 154; transmits Wilson’s offer of Ambassadorship to Turkey, 159; fearful of Wilson’s reëlection in 1916, 235
O’Toole, Morgan, 27
Ochs, Adolph S., as example of opportunity, 400
Ogden, D. B., entertains proposition to increase capital of Lawyers’ Title Company, 67
Olcott, Frederick P., interested in formation of real estate trust company, 58; a power in finance, 65; aids in increasing capital of Lawyers’ Title Company, 68; in railroad reorganizations, 78; questioned as to attitude if panic should ensue, 88
Ottendorfer, Oswald, realty transactions with, 45
Otto, Major Henry S., with Mission to Poland, 355
Outerbridge, E. H., urges acceptance of nomination for President of the Borough of Manhattan, 278; urges Mitchel’s reëlection at City Hall Park mass meeting, 284
Paderewski, asks Wilson to appoint commission to investigate treatment of Jews in Poland, 352; gives dinner at the Ritz, 355; efforts to assure people he was not Anti-Semitic, 377; gives state dinner to Hoover, 377; impressions of, at dinner to Hoover, 379; holds up financing of Poland, 381
Paderewska, Mme., at dinner given to Hoover, 378
Page, Thomas Nelson, meeting with in Paris, 255
Page, Walter Hines, introduced by Woodrow Wilson, 136
Painlevé, meeting with, 85; at review of first American troops in France, 256; dining with, 257
Palestine, visit to, 212; prominent Jews not in favour of Zionist project of National home, 349; true meaning of Balfour Declaration, 389; significance of Sir Herbert Samuel’s appointment, 392; not suitable for colonization, 393
Pallavicini, Marquis, Austrian Ambassador at Constantinople, 182
Panic of 1873, 20
Parish, Henry, realty dealings with, 55
Park, Trenor W., 53
Parker, Judge Alton B., at Jackson Day Dinner, 142; of counsel at Sulzer impeachment, 172
“Parsifal,” difficulties encountered in production, 102
Parsons, John E., realty ventures, 42
Patri, Angelo, 106
Patrick, Dr. Mary Mills, president Constantinople College for Girls, 204, 207
Patrick, Mason M., considered for Mission to Poland, 355
Peabody, Charles A., realty dealings through, 55
Peace Conference, impressions of, 322
Peace Treaty, signing of, 336
Pears, Sir Edwin, 188
Peet, Dr. W. W., work in Constantinople, 205; missionary activities, 211; gives information on Palestine, 213; invited to accompany party, 214; at Arabian night, 231
Penrose, Senator, assumes leadership of Republican machine, 125; willing to wreck party’s chances to injure Roosevelt, 150
Perlmutter, Rabbi, calls on Mission at Warsaw, 361
Perkins, George W., member “Committee of Safety,” 107; at War Publicity meeting, 253
Perkins, Major, with Red Cross in France, 86
Perkins, Miss Frances, member “Committee of Safety,” 107
Persian delegation to Peace Conference, their hopeless position, 325
Pershing, General, meeting with in Paris, 255; lauded by Joffre, 264; letter from, explaining postponement of dinner, 264; his description of battle of Verdun, 265; meeting with at headquarters in France, 273; at signing of Peace Treaty, 336; selects military member of Mission to Poland, 354
Phillip, Hoffman, Conseiller and First Secretary, American Embassy, Constantinople, 177, 187
Philipson, Rev. Dr. David, not in favour of Zionist plans, 349
Phillips, L. J., 48
Phœnix Insurance Co., position with, 18
Pilsudski, Dictator of Poland, 115; not in favour of Mission to Poland, 360; at reception in Warsaw, 364; “no pogroms, nothing but unavoidable accidents,” 371; talks with on Jewish question, 372, 375; change of attitude toward Commission, 378; his story of his rise to power, 378
Pinchot, Amos, member “Committee of Safety,” 107
Pinsk, investigations in, 369
Platt, Frank, retained by Alexander in Equitable Insurance contest, 80, 81
Plaza Hotel, purchase of, 87
Plumb, Preston, 26
Poincaré, President, at review of first American troops in France, 256; at signing of Peace Treaty, 336
Poland, atrocities against the Jews, 351; question of Jewish nationalism in, 351; plan to finance, 380
Poland, Mission to, formation of, 352; ideal to be accomplished, 358; Lansing’s letter of instructions, 359; arrival in Warsaw, 360
Politics, first entry into, 111
Politis, M., arranges meeting with Venizelos, 328
Polk, Frank L., doubt of success of 1916 campaign, 235
Pomerene, Atlee, at Jackson Day Dinner, 142
Ponydreguin, General, dinner with at Gondrecourt, 259
Post, James H., aids in formation of real estate trust company, 58
Postmastership at New York, contention regarding, 237
Power, Judge Maurice J., “discoverer” of Grover Cleveland, 118
Prendergast, William A., at War Publicity meeting, 253; slated for Comptroller on fusion ticket, 280
Pryor, Gen. Roger A., 29, 30
Pyne, Percy R., retires from presidency of National City Bank, 76
Quekemeyer, Captain, American representative on trip to French front, 266
Radcliffe, General, met on British front, 269
Rappard, Dr., William, speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 321
Raymond, Henry T., 15
Reading, Lord, address before Merchants’ Association in New York, 298
Real Estate, ventures in, 39
Red Cross, financing the, insisting on aiming for large sum, 249; article “A Vision of the Red Cross After the War,” 308; the International Conference, 308
_Red Cross Magazine_ article on Turkish massacres, 288
Redfield, Congressman, appointed Secretary of Commerce, 154, 159
Reilly, John, buys lots on route of Subway, 50
Rice, Edwin T., 93
Richardson, Captain, ’Forty-niner, 4
Robert College, Constantinople, 186, 204, 208
Rockefeller, William, how he obtained stock of Northern Pacific, 71
Rockefeller, Mrs. John D., Jr., activities in war work, 299
Rosalsky, Judge Otto, at Sulzer dinner, 168
Rosenwald, Julius, on committee for financing the Red Cross, 250
Roosevelt, Franklin D., doubt of success of 1916 campaign, 235
Roosevelt, Theodore, deference to Mark Hanna, 123; coaches Taft for campaign, 124; split in Republican party forfeits election, 150; Joffre anecdote of, 264; calls meeting of New York Progressives to agree on fusion slate, 280; his first demonstration of power, 282; urges Mitchel’s reëlection at City Hall Park mass meeting, 284, 285
Root, Elihu, associated with in difficulties of Hilton, Hughes & Co., 37; policy of business and politics, 37; consulted on Equitable controversy, 82; signs cable to Wilson appealing for help for Armenia, 340
Rose, William R., 54
Roumania, question of Jewish nationalism in, 351
Roux, Dr. Émile, at International Red Cross Conference, 315
Rubenstein, Rabbi, recounts history of Vilna excesses against Jews, 362
Russell, Colonel, sails for International Red Cross Conference, 310
Russell, Judge Horace, retained by, 36
Ryan, Thomas, 39
Said Halim, Prince, Grand Vizier, 221, 225
Samaritans, visit to the tribe on Mount Gerizim, 228
Samuel, Sir Herbert, significance of appointment as first governing head of Palestine, 392
Sassoon, Sir Philip, private secretary of Sir Douglas Haig, 272
Sayre, Dr., on Palestine trip, 216
Schiff, Jacob H., on Board of Directors Metropolitan Opera Company, 100; gives evidence against Sulzer at impeachment trial, 173; misfortune at a dinner, 299; advises attendance at International Red Cross Conference, 308
Schmavonian, A. K., attaché at American Embassy, Constantinople, 178, 187; on Palestine trip, 215, 231; on trip to French front, 259; to British front, 266
Schurz, Carl, on Independent politics, 135
Schwab, Chas. M., buys stock in Fuller Construction Co., 72
Sebastiyeh, visit to, 231
Seligman, Joseph, refused accommodations in Saratoga hotel, 38; president Society for Ethical Culture, 95
Senior, Max, not in favour of Zionist plans, 349
Settlement work, in Manhattan and the Bronx, 105
Seymour, Harriet, 106
Shaffer, Chauncey, in law office of, 24
Sharp, Ambassador, at review of first American troops in France, 256
Shaw, Peggy, maintaining soldiers’ theatre and rest room at Treves, 333
Shufro, Jacob, 106
Sibert, General, in command at Gondrecourt, 259
Siegel-Cooper & Company, opening New York Store, 54
Sigerson, Michael, 111
Simon, Robert E., in the “Subway Boom,” 87; partnership with, 89
Sinclair, General, met on British front, 269
Singer Sewing Machine Co., in Constantinople, 203
Skrzynski, M., at reception in Warsaw, 365; at luncheon, 376
Slocum, Gen. Henry W., 118
Smith, Alfred E., chairman of factory investigating committee, 108; recommended for New York Postmastership, 240
Smith, J. Henry, on Board of Directors Metropolitan Opera Company, 101
Society of Ethical Culture, formation, 95
Southack, Frederick, aids in forming real estate trust company, 57
Southmayd, Henry M., attorney for the Astors, 45
Spanish-American War, influence of, on real estate transactions, 54, 56
Speer, Mrs. Emma Bailey, in war work, 299
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, construction of, 8
Stanchfield, John B., of Counsel at Sulzer impeachment, 172
Standard Oil Co., in Constantinople, 203
Stanislawa, investigations at, 367
Stanley, Sir Arthur, instrumental in selection of Englishman as Director-General of International Red Cross, 319
Stewart, A. T., & Co., 36
Stillman, James, on Executive Committee of real estate trust company, 61; a power in finance, 65; interested in increasing capital of Lawyers’ Title Company, 68, 70; aids in financing of Fuller Construction Co., 71; becomes president of National City Bank, 76; attitude toward Equitable controversy, 81; offers backing in case of panic, 88; wise advice of, 180
Stimson, Henry L., Chairman “Committee of Safety,” 108
Stone, Senator, call on Wilson’s campaign managers, 143; at the Sulzer dinner, 168
Storrs, Richard S., 15
Stowell, Edgar, 106
Straight, Willard D., at War Publicity meeting, 253
Straus, Isidor, incident of formation of firm Abraham & Straus, 34; secures business of R. H. Macy & Co., 36
Straus, Nathan, early friendship with, 3; dry goods business of, 35, 36
Strauss, Charles, transactions with, 89
Strong, Colonel, plans for International Red Cross preferred by Davison, 312, 315; at Cannes, 327
Subway, routes being laid out for, 47
Sulzer, William, experiences with, 155; inaugurated Governor of New York, 162; dinner given to, 163; beneficial legislation and wise appointments, 164; defies Tammany Hall, 167; the Café Boulevard Dinner, and “the wish-bone speech,” 168; impeached and removed from office, 170
Sykes, Josephine, 99
Syrian Protestant College, visit to, 233
Taft, William H., coached for campaign by Roosevelt, 124; work for League to Enforce Peace, 301, _et seq._; speech on the Covenant at Metropolitan Opera House gathering, 305; advises attendance at International Red Cross Conference, 308
Talaat Bey, real ruler of Turkey, 185, 187, 191; arranges reception at Adrianople, 192; direct dealings with, 197; asks advice, 198; looks to comfort of party on Palestine trip, 231
Talbot, Dr., Fritz B., sails for International Red Cross Conference, 310
Talmage, T. De Witt, 15
Tariff, Protective, a blow to family fortunes, 4
Taussig, Professor, at dinner given by Chinese delegation to Peace Conference, 324
Thalman, Ernest, 100
Thann, visit to, on trip to the front, 261
Tibbetts, Major, met on British front, 268
Tilden, Samuel J., effects downfall of Tweed Ring, 111
Tilton, Henry, 30
Tourtel, H. B. met on British front, 267
Townroe, Captain, conducts trip to British front, 266
Townsend, Col. C. M., met, after many years on British front, 267
Tsulski, Dr., conference with, on conditions in Poland, 358
Tumulty, Joseph, at conference over Jefferson Day Dinner tickets, 139; at Sea Girt notification, 148
Turkish question, study of, 336
Tweed Ring, contact with, 109
Underhill, Senator, at Jackson Day Dinner, 142
Underwood, John T., transactions with, 90; tenders John Purroy Mitchel vice-presidency of his company, 279
Underwood, Oscar, candidacy against Wilson, 138
Underwood Typewriter Co., capitalization of, 90
“Union for Higher Life,” member of, 97
Van Dyke, Dr. Henry, in campaign of League to Enforce Peace, 301
Vanderbilt, Alfred G., on Board of Directors Metropolitan Opera Company, 100
Varilla, Bunau, at luncheon with, 330
Vendôme, Duc de, acquaintance with at Peace Conference, 326, 327
Vendôme, Duchess of, met at Cannes, 327
Venizelos, at Peace Conference, 328; discussion with on Smyrna question, 329
Vesnitz, representing Jugo-Slavia at Peace Conference, 327
Vilna, investigations in, 370
Vimy Ridge, visited during battle of Lens, 271
Viviani, René, New York City’s reception to, 253
Von Moltke, General, at launching of Germany’s first battleship, 24
Webb, Gen. Alexander S., 12
Whitall, Dr. Samuel S., influence of, 15
Wadsworth, Eliot, on committee for financing the Red Cross, 249
Wagner, Robert E., vice-chairman of factory investigation committee, 108; recommended for New York Postmastership, 240
Wald, Lillian D., and Henry Street Settlement, 105; introduces Sidney Webb, 120
Wallace, Dr. Louise B., dean of Constantinople College for Girls, 204
Wallace, Hugh C., friendship with, 154
Wanamaker, John, succeeds to original business of A. T. Stewart & Co., 38
Wangenheim, Baron, complains against American ammunition, 24; German Ambassador at Constantinople, 182
Washburn, Dr., work at Robert College, 208
Waterlow, Lady, met at Cannes, 327
Watson, Dr. Charles Roger, 175
Webb, Sidney, interview with an American political “boss,” 120
Weber, M., patriot of Thann, 261
Wechsler & Abraham, incident of dissolution of partnership, 34
Weitz, Dr. Paul, emissary of German and Austrian Ambassadors, 181
Welch, Dr. William H., sails to attend International Red Cross Conference, 310; on Council of National Defense, 311; speech at dinner to Governors of the League of the Red Cross Societies, 321
Wells, Rollo, friendship with, 154
Wertheim, Jacob, aids in financing Underwood Typewriter Co., 92
Wertheim, Maurice, 92
White, George, member of Democratic National Committee, 122
White, Henry, arranges meeting with Venizelos, 329
White, Richard Grant, study under, 98
Whiting, Richard, makes flashlight photographs of Samaritan ceremonies, 228
Whitman, District Attorney, at Sulzer dinner, 168; slated for Mayor of New York on fusion ticket, 280, 281
Whitney, H. P., on Board of Directors of Metropolitan Opera Company, 100
Whitney, William C., fight against Kelly, Tammany leader, 112
Willcox, William R., at War Publicity meeting, 252
Williams, Dr. Talcott, anecdote of Woodrow Wilson, 307
Williams, John Sharp, signs cable to Wilson appealing for help for Armenia, 340
Wilson, George Grafton, in campaign of League to Enforce Peace, 301
Wilson, Joseph, devotion to his brother Woodrow, 154
Wilson, President Woodrow, presented with typewriter, 93; defies state bosses, 122; why attracted to, 128, 129; at the Free Synagogue Dinner, 130; taking Borah’s measure, 130; Presidential candidacy, 132; the hope of political regeneration, 135; introduces Walter Hines Page, 136; explanation of the “cocked-hat” letter, 140; speech at Jackson Day Dinner, 143; comment on Champ Clark-Col. Harvey episode, 149; Campaign of 1912, 150; asks reconsideration of refusal to accept chairmanship of Finance Committee, 152; elected President, 159; asks acceptance of Ambassadorship of Turkey, 160; instructions on leaving to assume post of Ambassador to Turkey, 175; reëlection in 1916, not thought possible by party leaders, 234; attitude toward New York Postmastership appointment, 238; renominated at St. Louis Convention, 241; election night returns seem to show defeat, 246; election assured, 248; report to on trips to battle fronts, 274; letter advising exposure of German intrigue, 297; at Metropolitan Opera House gathering, 304; attitude toward Lane as Director-General of International Red Cross, 318; the hope of the Peace Conference, 323; at signing of Peace Treaty, 336; discuss Polish Mission with, and propose Armenian Mission to, 338; cable to from America proposing this Mission, 339; appoints commission to investigate treatment of Jews in Poland, 352; insists on having a Jew on commission to investigate Polish pogroms, 354
Wilson, Mrs. Woodrow, claims the President’s typewriter, 93; at signing of Peace Treaty, 336
Winthrop, Henry Rogers, on Board of Directors of Metropolitan Opera Company, 100
Wise, Dr. Stephen S., speaks at Conried’s funeral, 105; urges acceptance of Ambassadorship to Turkey, 162; acquaints President Wilson with his plans for Zionism, 293
Wise Centenary Fund, Isaac M., speech at dinner of Executive Committee, 294
“Wish-bone speech” at Sulzer dinner, 169
Woerishoefer, Carola, 107
Wolff, Lucien, representing Jews of England at Peace Conference, 350
Woman’s activities in the war, 299
Women in Turkey, their position, 195
Woodruff, Lieutenant-Governor, at Roosevelt’s fusion meeting, 280
Wood, Sir Henry, 188
_World_, New York, danger of defection, owing to Postmastership appointment, 238, 240
Yeaman, George H., 19, 30
Young Turks, government a failure, 196
Zermoysky, Countess, at reception in Warsaw, 364
Zionism, article in New York _Times_, 289; a fallacy in Poland, 383; a surrender not a solution, 385; its economic aspect, 393; its political foundations, 395; a spiritual will-o’-the-wisp, 398
Zionists, their Nationalistic plans not favoured, 349; present their case to Mission at Warsaw, 363
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Appendix No. 3, which contains this report.
[2] This chapter was written in June, 1921, and most of it was published in the _World’s Work_ for July, 1921.
[3] Reprinted from the New York _Times_ of November 9, 1919. Copyright, 1919, by the New York Times Company.