CHAPTER IV

A MURDER-MAKING LEGEND

M. De Plehve and the Tsar can accomplish one good and blessed work, if so minded, without altering a single anti-Semitic Russian law. The Emperor can destroy, in Russia, the atrocious legend about the annual killing of Christian children by Jews as an alleged part of the Blood Atonement in Hebrew Paschal rites. In this humane and Christian task he is entitled to the co-operation of the Emperor of Austria, the King of Roumania, and the heads of other Balkan States, where this story of ritual murder is constantly circulated, and not infrequently as a part of political propaganda. There ought to be a truly Christian crusade waged against this infamous product of ancient, insensate, sectarian hate. It was the inspiration of the most horrible of the Kishineff murders; the driving of nails through the eyes of a woman, the cutting out of the tongue of a two-year-old child, and of nameless sexual mutilations. Thousands of innocent people have been done to death in the centuries through which these crimes have been the bloody fruit of a monstrous invention, born of a spirit of superstitious savagery, which no age has yet made any honest civilised endeavour to exorcise out of ignorant and fanatical Christian minds.

The Jews of Kishineff believe with all right-minded people everywhere that no one deplores these shocking crimes more than the Emperor. His humanity is beyond question in popular belief, and, should a suitable opportunity be given, or be forthcoming, while the recollection of this great stain on his country’s reputation remains in the public memory, he may be counted upon, it is to be hoped, to place on record his honest condemnation of such abominable deeds.

Let His Majesty the Tsar add this task to other noble duties with which his name is associated. A special ukase, reciting his own disbelief in the ritual-murder legend, and forbidding under severe penalties its circulation anywhere, and, by any means, in Russia; ordering that this ukase shall be read, in the Emperor’s name, in every church in the Empire, a fortnight before Easter each year for the next five years; let this be done, and the good work is virtually accomplished for Christianity, for civilisation, and for Russia, too.

A similar obligation lies upon the governments of Austria and of the Balkan States. Roumania is at present the worst of sinners in this matter. This legend is in constant circulation through the anti-Semitic press there, being used, in fact, as an argument in political campaigns for driving the Jews out of the country.

A few months ago, a Roumanian paper, the _Vocea Tutovei_ of Berlad, openly incited the populace to kill the Jews. In a series of articles, subsequently reprinted in pamphlet form, popular ignorance and passion were appealed to by stories of alleged Hebrew murders of Christian children. One extract from this organ of Roumanian opinion will illustrate at once the savage sentiments of the writer and the culpable conduct of a government which could permit such appeals to assassination to be openly made in a civilised land:

“The recent ritual murders committed by Jews in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Germany, and Russia must still be fresh in everyone’s mind. And how many children have disappeared in our own country! How many mutilated bodies have been found, while the criminals have remained undiscovered! Who are these criminals--these bloodthirsty murderers of our prattling babes? They are the fanatical Jews that infest our land. These monsters are the slayers of our Christian children. They are the criminals--the Jews who have invaded our country like locusts.

“The time for peaceful and legal restrictions is passing away. Let all good Roumanians raise their heavy sticks and kill these parasites of their country.”

Roumania is the western boundary of Bessarabia. Before the Berlin Treaty of 1878, a portion of this now Russian province belonged to Roumania. Moldavians live on each side of the frontier. The pamphlets circulated by the anti-Semites of Berlad, containing the above and other murderous appeals to fanaticism, would inevitably find their way into the Moldavian community of Kishineff, where Pavolachi Kroushevan, himself a Moldavian, was carrying on a similar bloodthirsty propaganda in the _Bessarabetz_ against the Jews of Bessarabia. The Governments which continue to permit this kind of press savagery are themselves morally responsible for the crimes which find their instigation in such writings. Nor can diplomatic denunciation, after the occurrence of deeds of infamy such as those of Kishineff, atone in any way to the outraged sense of civilised human feeling for what Leo Tolstoy rightly terms the “permitted assassinations” of innocent people. For the law or Government which encourages by indifference the circulation of these atrocious, fabricated tales of the slaughtering of Christian children by Hebrews, is either the indifferent guardian of citizens’ lives or the cowardly accomplice of a fanatical ruffianism which it is unable or unwilling to grapple with and put down.

There is another and a higher authority that can deal with the propagation of this crime-stained legend, especially in Catholic countries like Austria and Poland. This is the authority of the Holy See.

A few years ago a parish priest of Vienna revived the old story of the alleged murder of the boy Simon of Trent, for ritual purposes, by Jews in the fifteenth century. He republished particulars of what purported to be the crime so named, but unfairly suppressed the facts associated with the accusation, which would explain the whole charge away. The Jews who had confessed to the murder of the boy did so under the application of torture; a pretty common method of extorting desired “information” of trumped-up charges by the various authorities in the Middle Ages. The confession thus wrung from the accused by the application of the rack led to their execution, but it is on record that Pope Sixtus IV. denounced their conviction and death as a murder.

The reverend anti-Semite tried his hand again, in the same line, in conjunction with a renegade Jew, and came to grief. One Paul Meyer “revealed” how a Christian boy, to his (Meyer’s) own knowledge, was kidnapped and slaughtered for the purposes of Paschal rites by the hated Hebrews. The sensational story was published in an anti-Semitic Vienna newspaper. This was a deliberate challenge to inquiry and refutation. The challenge was accepted by the Jews of the city, in a prosecution of the _Vaterland_, when Meyer confessed in open court that the whole story was an invention of his own, palmed off on both the priest and the public.

An ex-professor of Hebrew in the University of Prague, an enthusiastic student of Eastern cabalistic writings, has contributed very materially to the revival in Poland, Bohemia, and Austria of these miserable inventions. He has written a work in Latin on the subject, and he gives the impression of an honest fanatic who is in the grip of a mysterious investigation. He also falls back upon a converted Jew as a guide, and is led to believe in the authenticity of certain cabalistic writings shown to him by this man, Brimamo. He quotes from one of these books, the “Ha-likkutim,” a passage which the credulous _padre_ is convinced proves the employment of the blood of Christian maidens in these unhallowed Hebrew ceremonies. This quotation is found, on critical examination, to refer to a passage in the Bible dealing with the supernatural world, in which the colour of the blood of a virgin is taken as emblematical of the Day of Judgment. There is nothing whatever beyond this in Brimamo’s work to justify the inference that Christian maidens’ blood is sometimes used in Jewish sacrifices.

In the same book Canon Röhling draws upon other cabalistic documents for suggestions and innuendoes tending to uphold his case, but in every instance in which he quotes passages to support his propositions, they are found, on close inspection, to convey no such meaning as he attempts to attach to them. There is not, in fact, a solitary authenticated instance of this sanguinary sacrifice given in his two works, “My Replies to the Rabbis,” and “The Controversy and the Human Sacrifices of Rabbinism,” both published in 1883. Still, these writings have been widely read, and have done much harm in misleading minds that look for truth and Christian guidance from clerical authors.

Can nothing effective be done to kill this legend? I quote in an appendix, some pronouncements from Bulls issued by Popes Innocent IV., Gregory X., Martin V., Nicholas V., and Paul III., all reprobating this blood accusation as being a groundless and monstrous invention, and a general pretext for the plundering of Jews. These enlightened words of denunciation were addressed to the rulers, prelates, and people of the Middle Ages, some of them so far back as six hundred years ago. Can this example not be followed now when the reputable press of all civilised countries would willingly co-operate in a just crusade against this hoary-headed, crime-stained infamy?

It has been urged that as anti-Semitism in France, Austria, and Germany is a political movement, a denunciation of the use of the murder-legend calumny would probably be misconstrued. This is a highly sensitive but very inconsistent position. Surely, when Socialism--which is a far greater and nobler political movement in each of these countries--can be vigorously condemned, on assumed moral and Catholic grounds; an agitation relying upon literature and legends, convicted of forgery and lies, and condemned again and again by the Holy See itself; and which has the killing or torture of fellow beings as its _ultima ratio_, should claim some measure of earnest repudiation and moral censure at the hands of Catholic Powers, temporal and spiritual.

His Holiness Pope Pius, the Emperor of Austria, and the Tsar could easily draw the fangs of this murder legend. To no other minds in Christendom could the consequences of this horrible calumny of long and infamous vitality be more odious or hateful. It is a reproach and disgrace to Christianity that certain notorious clerical organs in France and Austria persistently circulate these incitations to fanatical outrage, and a stain upon the political life of Austria, Roumania, and Russia, whose governments tolerate this poisonous propaganda. It is a pestiferous evil that could be readily stamped out if the wish and will to rid Europe of its baleful influence could overcome the opportunist counsels of a spiritless _entourage_, which prevent the three best and greatest potentates in Europe from realising all the evils, religious, moral, and political, that spring from this perennial source of shameless sectarian rancour, bloodshed, and crime.