THE JEWISH PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 204, 29 August 1910, Page 4

THE JEWISH PROBLEM.

"Is there a Jewish Question?" asks Mr. G. F. Abbott, in a recent issue of the "Fortnightly Review," and he proceeds j to show by way of answer that "the Jewish Question is at the present hour a fact as real and as sad as it has been at any time since the Jew first came into contact with the Gentile." Fox, w&atever be -the reason—religious bigotry, racial exclusiveness or jealousy oi superior ability and material success—'there is no doubt that in nearly all European countries tha Jews are regarded with ■bitter animosity by the people, are treated as outcasts, and subjected to fierce and cruel persecution wherever their enemies dare to inflict it. The horrors of Kishinell and Bielostok are, happily, not often parallelled; but in a more or less ferocious and extravagant form the national hatred of the Jew pervades j Europe from 'the Urals to the Atlantic sea-board. In Poland and lioumania and Bulgaria, we may naturally expect to find this "Judenhetze" expressing itself more violently than in Austria or France. But 'the Dreyfus '"affaire" revealed to the world at a glance the depth and breadth of French antagonism to the Jews, and even in England, which has been for so many years a haven of refuge for the Continental Jew, there are signs of a coming change. Mr. Al>bott quotes from an anti-Semitic I pamphlet recently i-fiued in England, a i few sentences in which the author dej cl&res that, "in language free from pasI sion, exaggeration, and abuse." ho under- ' takes to describe how "the members of a foul Asiatic breed" (here follow v.n i less than mini-teen insulting epithet?) j "have capir r ed and corrupted our Press, debased out p. ilitics, lessened our com-i mercial faun, tainted our social life, fill- I I od our cities with vice, crime., and disease, and in other ways played the ingratc and traitor to the people they b-.ltten on and the country they plague." Monstrously false as such charges are, the more fact of their publication in England indicates the extension of antiSentitic feeling to Anglo-Saxon communities. The heated debates on the Aliens Bill in the English Parliament showed how rapidly this sont.ment is I spreading, and the restrictions now being enforced agai-net alien immigration in America, being directed chiefly against! the Jews from Eastern Europe, suggest j that within a short time, the only means of escape from tyranny and persecution which the European Jews have enjoyed may at any moment be barred againet them. Those facts therefore constitute the i Jewish Problem. The Jew is to all other ! j races an alien; in many countries racial antipathy against him shows itself in an absolutely intolerable form. How is it j possible for the Jew to escape tue hardships and humiliations and perils to ! which he is thus exposed, without surrendering his racial individuality and consenting to submerge himself in the national life around him? The'only possible expedient is. as Dr. Max Nordaa has said, "A decisive efTort leading to the rebuilding of a nation on its own soil"; and so we are face to face with the problems of Zionism. The movement i toward the re-establishment of the .Jew? as a nation in Palestine dates from 1897; when Dr. Herd, an able and enthusiastic Austrian Jew, appealed to the Jews throughout the world to secure for the Jewish people "a publicly-recognised, legally secured home," and thus apply "a radical and heroic remedy" to close the long and tragic history of their wanderings. Dr. llorzl was a man of remarkable talent and, like many enthusiasts, he seemed to exercise a sort of personal magnetism over all with whom he came in contact. He interviewed the Kaiser, who promised him to use his influence with the Sultan to secure Palestine for the Jews. He interviewed Abdul Hamid, and tlie wily Turk, -while affecting to sympathise with him, .hinted that a large pecuniary consideration would help him to make up his mind. Dr. Herzl saw that Palestine \v:is for the trmo hopeless, considered the ' possibilities of Cyprus and of the Sinai Peninsula through which the Israelites 1 wandered four thousand years ago, interviewed Lord Cromer in Egypt, and finally betook himself to England. There he succeeded in enlisting the sympathetic help of Mr. Chamberlain, then at the zenith of his power, and it was the Colonial Secretary who suggested that in British East Africa a home might be ' found for the Jewish race. Through the ' efforte of Mr. Chamberlain and Lord ' Percy, the Foreign Office offered "an absolutely unpopulated, healthy and temperate region of some G,OOO square miles in area" to the Jewish Colonial Trust, and the ofTer was submitted to • the Zionist Congress in 1903. But the ■ Zionists as a body were enthusiastically [ devoted to the Palestine ideal, and when Dr. Herzl w-ho had been compelled ' to see the futility of expecting any aid " from bhe Sultan, advised them to con- : sider the British offer, they turned i fiercely upon him, and denounce him as , a renegade. Herzl died soon after. worn out by bis labours; but a small 1 minoiuty of his followers, lod by the ' well-known autbor Israel Zangwill, form t ed themselves into a "Jewish Territoria" 3 Organisation" (usually known as the » Ito) to find a home, whether in Palestine, Africa, or America, ' for the thousands of hapless Jews • who are etill pouring westward from j Eastern Europe in the hope of finding t liberty and peace. It must he remembered that there already existed a Jewish '" Colonisation Association founded by the c late Baron Hirsch, with a capital oi a £10,000,000; but though the Jewish , colonies in the Argentine, established by the 1.C.A., have been, as to-day's cable r message states, a distinct success, thf n leaders of the Ito believe that the Hirscl: t millions would be far better employee! c in concentrating the Jewish refugees ir one place than in scattering; them aboul c the globe in detached groups that car s nfver be consolidated into a nation c Zangwill and his colleagues have striver c hard to convince the Zionists that Pales tine is altogether beyond their reach and they have suggested as alternative: -> Morocco, Tripoli, Mesopotamia, only tc i- find that all these proposals were imprac ; . ticable. A riiort time since we hean that Zang'.vill was negotiating for a largi c j tract in Western Australia; and he ii firmly convinced that it is the destiny o i- the Jews to establish themselves some ~ i where as an agricultural community—r I destiny for which, hr coirtond-. they ar fitted than for the life they havi c i so long been constrained to live ii [European towns. Possibly tfie success o

the LC.A. colonies in the Argentine may! lend fresh vigour to the Jewish Terra- | tarial Organisation; but, for the moment | even Zangwill admits that, though the Jewish Problem is pressing for solution i more urgently than ever, the answer to • the great question hae not yet been j