Jehovah’s chosen people have often been regarded with peculiar interest by the Anglo-Saxons, if not always treated with marked favour; yet even among them, this feeling has gradually undergone a change, until, their coming has become a cause for special inquiry by the English Parliament and one of the chief difficulties of the whole immigrant problem, as it affects our cities.

I have had peculiar opportunities to note the development of these changes, and believe that the Jew has been too optimistic regarding his future in the United States; while the Gentile is too pessimistic as to the gravity of the Jewish problem.

A clergyman in the city of New York whose fame is international, who is in constant contact with the best type of Jews, startled me not long ago by saying that the Jewish problem in the city of New York was in a most acute stage. In analysing his own feelings, he said: “No matter what you do, you’re up against it; no matter how you prepare yourself to act the brother towards them, they won’t let you succeed. You can’t love them and you don’t dare hate them.”

Mr. Robert Watchorn, the ex-commissioner of immigration, told me that after an address in which he minimized the problem of immigration, a well-known citizen of New York came to him and said that in twenty years Kisheneff will have its counterpart on the East Side.

One of the most liberal Jewish rabbis in this country, whose addresses teem from the most extreme optimism as to the future of his race in America, will be amazed to hear that because he was invited to preach the baccalaureate sermon in a Western state institution of learning, a large number of the class absented itself from that service. In commenting upon it, I heard one of the number say to another, in unacademic, campus language: “Tough luck, boy. They’ve invited a Sheeny to preach our baccalaureate. It’s an insult to the class!”

The fact that twenty per cent. of the students at Columbia University are Jews, has led a number of Western boys to say to me: “We won’t go to Columbia. There are too many Jews there.”

No less brutally frank expressions I have heard in the shops in which I have worked, and in hotel lobbies where I have loitered; so that while I may not regard the Jewish problem as the most serious in the general one of immigration, I certainly regard it as one of the most sensitive to approach and one of the most difficult to solve.

I usually ask four questions regarding every immigrant group, and the answer determines, in my own mind at least, the desirability of its coming to the United States. The four questions are:

First, Do we need them? By that, I mean, will they perform some useful function which is necessary and which the earlier comers cannot or will not perform? This is entirely an industrial question and can be safely answered only by the economist, who knows the field in all its bearings.

My conviction, based upon no such accurate knowledge, is that we most need those groups which live by their muscle, rather than by their wits; the toiler, rather than the trader. If my theory is correct, this would exclude many Jews; although I am sure that they have performed many important functions in the industrial sphere, both in the realm of manual labour and out of it. Some such discrimination seems to me fair, for it would bar classes, rather than races, and would affect equally other commercial people, such as the Greeks, Armenians and Syrians.

Whether or not this first question is fundamentally sound, of one thing I am sure. Half the ill feeling against the Jews would vanish if they would give themselves in any large numbers to the mechanical trades and to agriculture.

Second, Does the group which seeks admission have the same economic ideals which characterized the earlier groups?

This refers to standards of living as well as to standards of making the living.

The Jew answers well to the first part of the question; in fact, better than the Latin or the Slav. Although he may be compelled to eat plain and coarse food, he craves the richer and daintier fare; if he has to live in a tenement on the East Side, he does it with an eye to a flat in Harlem; for the Jew has never ceased looking for the “land flowing with milk and honey,” or longing for the “flesh-pots of Egypt.” His standard of living is not low, but as some one has said: “elastic.” He may eat red herring to-day, but to-morrow he will eat carp with garlic sauce; that is, if he can afford it.

He will control his historic appetite in order to “get on,” and it is the subordination of health and decency to this desire which often makes him an economic problem, if not a menace.

But when he has attained, he is no miser. His children must have the best education, and his wife the most expensive clothing; he will save his children from the sweat shop if he can, and his wife whether he can or not. He is not willing to live off his children or on the town; although he is not always above living on his more fortunate brethren, whom he thus gives a chance to earn the divine favour by bestowing alms; he rarely sinks into pauperism.

The agencies which minister to pleasure, the theatre, the concert hall and vaudeville, would lose a fair share of their patronage if Jews were excluded from them.

The Jew is neither a total abstainer, nor is he intemperate, and his expenditure for alcohol, compared with that of the Irish, is about as one to a hundred. None dreads the coming of Jews into a neighbourhood more than the saloon-keeper, and some of the vilest localities in New York have been made fairly decent by the expansion of the Ghetto.

One of the most difficult questions to answer is, whether Jewish ideals of making a living accord with those which characterize the older groups. The popular judgment is that they do not. It is commonly charged that the Jew degrades the industries upon which he enters; that as a competitor he is unscrupulous and as an advertiser, dishonest. “Jewing down” is a phrase too well known in commercial life to need interpretation.

Whether it is the “quality of the Jewish mind” which has created this judgment, as Professor Shaler indicates, or whether it is the quality of his moral nature, I am not in a position to determine. All I can say with a sense of assurance is, first, that the business morality of the Jew not only compares favourably with other commercial groups which are coming to the United States, but is generally admitted to be higher than that of the Greeks and Armenians.

Second, That the so-called Jewish business ethics, which in reality are Oriental and not essentially Jewish, and are also prevalent on the continent of Europe, do not compare favourably with the straightforward business methods traditional in America.

Third, That the Jew has adopted these American standards in the lines of business which he controls, and that in every city he is counted among its most substantial and reliable business men.

Fourth, That although the methods used by large numbers of Jews in business are often questionable, as is often the business itself, they have a remarkably clear record in the sphere of high finance, and that it is most fortunate for the well-being of the Jews in America that the so-called “Captains of Industry” are a native product.

Roughly speaking, then, the charges that the Jew is an unfair competitor in the industries and in business may be true; yet if the case were put to a jury which could to some degree free itself from prejudice, the result would probably be a disagreement. What could not be easily denied is, that the sense of truth in the Jew from the east of Europe, notably from Poland, is low.

I quote Mr. H. S. Lewis of London, a Jew, and an unprejudiced authority.[2] “One is sometimes tempted to conclude in despair that the bulk of the Polish immigrants have no sense of truth whatever. No more painful spectacle can be witnessed than the hearing of a summons at an East-End police court, where the parties concerned are foreign Jews. Obvious perjury on the slightest provocation is committed in case after case. The comments of Judge Bacon at the Whitechapel County Court on this fact have been at times severely criticised by the Jewish press. His generalizations may have been too sweeping, being based on his experience of petty litigation, where the seamy side of life is necessarily prominent. At the same time, his remarks have been based on a substantial substratum of truth. It is the experience of most visitors among the foreign poor for charitable societies, that although absolute imposture is exceptional, falsehoods with regard to the details of cases are constantly met with.

“It is to this taint of untruthfulness that most of the other defects of the foreign Jews are to be traced. I fear that it cannot be denied that their standard of business morality is often defective. A statement of this kind may be regarded as unfair, and it is, of course, difficult to put it to any exact test. An illustration is, however, afforded by a return of convictions, periodically issued in the minutes of the London County Council, for the use of false weights and measures and kindred offenses. Judging by the names of the offenders, an altogether undue proportion of them appear to be foreign Jews.

“We meet also in East London with far too many cases where the Bankruptcy laws are evaded by persons who pass through the courts and reappear in business with suspicious celerity and without apparent loss.”

The testimony of Rev. Max Wertheim of Ada, Ohio, ought to have some weight—it concerns the Americanized Jew. He was a rabbi at Dayton, Ohio, and after passing through various religious crises, became a Baptist, and is now doing devoted work on a small salary. Naturally, he has not received the most generous treatment from his former co-religionists, and would hardly flatter them. In answer to my question whether he found any difference in business standards between his Jewish and his Christian flocks, he unhesitatingly said that there was no difference.

More weighty is the testimony which Prof. Graham Taylor gave recently before a Christian Brotherhood. “I know as good Christians among the Jews as among the churches.”

I am quite sure that basically there is no difference; although I should characterize some Jewish methods as mean, and those of some Gentiles as dangerous. In making this distinction, however, I realize that “wooden nutmegs,” high-bottomed fruit boxes, sun-kissed apples at the top of the barrel and gnarled ones at the bottom, as well as other tricks of the native trade, are mean enough; while the methods of the theatrical trust, the adulteration of foods and drugs, the white slave trade and other questionable forms of business engaged in by both Jew and Gentile, may be called both mean and dangerous.

It is also interesting to note that in the great industrial struggle the Jew is represented largely on the capitalistic side; but on the other hand, some of the strongest leaders in the labour unions and many of the Socialists of the rank and file are Jews; consequently the vox populi may condemn them for being both.

The third question is: Does the group possess ethnic qualities that will prevent normal assimilation, and therefore will increase race friction already dangerously strong?

Disagreeable as is the Jewish type when very pronounced, it is undergoing such rapid changes where the environment is favourable, that it does not present a serious barrier to assimilation. The issues of intermarriage are exceptionally good and the resultant types normal. Yet in spite of the vanishing type, the Jews are a peculiar people and will long remain so. Their historic inheritance and their religious traditions, no less than their attitude towards the Gentiles and the attitude of the Gentiles towards them, will naturally keep them a group apart. The hostile attitude on both sides ought not to be strengthened, and I believe that for a period at least, Jewish emigration from the east of Europe should cease. Not because I believe the Russian Jew inferior, but merely because he is numerous and the ethnic and cultural difference between him and the native is so marked as to aggravate an antipathy already intense; this the Jews themselves feel.

A Jewish merchant, who lives in a certain town in the Middle West, told me that strong Anti-Semitic feelings were aroused in the community by the arrival there of Russian Jews, and that as soon as they moved away the feeling vanished.

Another Jewish merchant told me that in visiting various places with a view to locating his business, his first inquiry was: “Are there any Russian Jews in the town?” He said that business for the Jew is better where there are no Russian Jews.

The feeling of the Americanized Jew towards this new immigrant was thus expressed by one of them: “We have to stand by them, but we wish they hadn’t come.”

My fourth question refers to the attitude of the groups towards our social and political ideals.

If the family ideal is the basis of our social and political life, it is certainly safe in the keeping of the Jew, who, if he errs at all in that direction, errs in making the well-being of the community or state, secondary to the well-being of his family.

In spite of the fact that divorce, according to the rabbinic law, is easily obtained, almost as easily as in some of our Western states, it is rarely resorted to. Sexual immorality, wife desertion and divorce, become more common among the Jews only under stress of changed economic and religious environment.

The criminal record of the Jew is still good; although he is under suspicion of merely being too shrewd to be caught.

In the so-called lesser and meaner crimes, such as receiving stolen goods and pocket-picking, he has almost a monopoly; while in burglary and murder his record is fairly clean.

At present there are no reliable statistics on this point, and there is much chance of juggling with figures, for friend and foe alike.

The report of the Commission of Immigration of the state of New York presents a table of foreign born white offenders in the state’s prisons in 1904, but unfortunately does not classify the Jews as such. However, if one took the entire number of criminals tabulated under the countries from which the Jews come, namely: Austria, Hungary, Russia and Poland, and counted all as Jews—a procedure manifestly unfair, even then the prison population of the state of New York contains over twelve per cent. more Irish than all the natives from these four countries, who of course are not all Jews, but represent different faiths.

In lieu of reliable statistics, therefore, I must trust to my own experience. I have found that grosser criminality among the Jews is a more abnormal phenomenon than among most of the newer immigrant groups. In my intimate acquaintance with a number of Jewish communities in Europe, I know some as large as 10,000 souls, where such crimes as theft, robbery and murder are never committed; yet where cheating, fraudulent bankruptcy and receiving stolen goods are not uncommon.

The Jew has done himself almost irreparable injury by his protest against the reading of the Bible, and Christmas exercises in the public schools and in his attitude towards Sunday laws. In both cases he has shown himself intolerant, and has alienated staunch friends whose help and sympathy he may need in the day of tribulation. As a citizen and patriot, he is everywhere giving evidence of his devotion; while in the struggle for the coming of a better day in the government of our cities and of the state, he has done his full share; indeed, among the newer immigrant groups, he has furnished to that cause by far the largest quota.

There are several points at which the Jew does not satisfactorily answer the questions I ask. He provides far too large a number of those, who, as a class, seem unnecessary at the present stage of our economic development; he presents too solid a differentiated group, will retard proper adjustment and increase existing race antagonisms. His attitude towards the manifestation of the religious spirit in our public schools, his intolerance towards certain religious practices which are fundamentally ethical and social, but not necessarily sectarian, will more and more alienate those Americans who have been most hospitable towards him and upon whose good will he is dependent, economically and socially, if not politically.

These, I think, are the sore spots of the problem; and if the Jew is as shrewd as he is painted, he will look to their healing; while if the American is as charitable as I think him to be, he will give the Jew full time for reconvalescence.

XX

FROM FIFTH AVENUE TO THE GHETTO

The feast began for me, when my eyes rested on the splendid architecture of the palatial residence, its furnishings, marbles and pictures, which appealed to my artistic sense and almost reproduced the atmosphere of the refinement and culture of those lands in which they had their birth. In the winter garden where fountains played, and rare flowers nodded their bedewed heads, filling the air with fragrance, I forgot the squalor of the East Side and the darkness and dampness of that raw, February day.

With the luncheon I was less pleased; for frankly, I prefer noodle soup and Gulyas to French snails and terrapin.

To my plebeian palate the snails tasted like mucilage flavoured with garlic, and the terrapin like fricasseed Turkish towels.

Of more importance than the menu was my host, whose every word betrayed the consciousness of his power and his ignorance of those lesser folk, as whose champion he had invited me to be his guest.

“What can be done to stay the power of Socialism?”

“How can we keep out Black Hands and Anarchists?”

To him, immigrants, Socialists and Anarchists were synonymous terms. My speech was not yet dulled by the luncheon or my brain clouded by the smoke of his Havana cigars, and I gave him such plain answers as I might have given after lunching on noodle soup and Gulyas.

My words were as unpalatable to him as his snails and terrapin were to me; for I told him that Anarchists live in brown stone houses and that Socialism is being fed and nourished on Fifth Avenue. Our views were as far apart as our bank accounts, and to argue with him seriously would have been as useless as it would have been poor taste. He became more human as the luncheon progressed from its airy and aristocratic entrées to the more democratic and substantial roast beef and potatoes.

When we reached pumpkin pie, one of the few connecting links with his humble past, he had quite lost his critical sternness, and asked my advice upon so delicate a matter as how to give his wayward sons a grappling place for the upbuilding of character.

I suggested work in the Settlements; but he regarded them with suspicion, declaring that they are irreligious and a breeding place for Socialism. He listened with indifference to my defense of these institutions which I regard as among the most valuable agencies we have for the common good. I suggested some public service for the community or the state.

“Politics?” he asked quizzically; “it’s a dirty game. I want my boys to help me take care of the interests I have.”

I did not know what those interests were, nor did I care to inquire, and luncheon being over, I rose to take leave.

“Where are you going?” asked my host, rather abruptly.

“To the East Side,” I replied.

He wondered whether I was not afraid to go there, and when I told him that I felt safer in the Ghetto at night than I should feel two blocks west of his palace, he asked whether he might accompany me.

Knowing the free and easy ways of the Ghetto I assured him a hearty welcome; so we left his home together and took the car for Houston Street and Avenue B to attend the Gulyas banquet to be given by the “Bolsover Sick and Benefit Association,” in its hall on Houston Street.

Sunday afternoon is the day on which the East Side looks its best. Its squalor is temporarily hid beneath the festal garb of the rest day; the children are still clean after their weekly scrubbing, and the mothers sit on the stoops, gossiping and watching with the Old World timidity their agile flocks playing in the middle of the street, also fairly clean in comparison with its condition on the busier work days, when the refuse of push-carts and ash cans covers it.

My millionaire host evidently found pleasure in this human mass. He saw children who seemed happier than his own; for although they had fewer pleasures, they had no governess to dog their footsteps, no maid to keep them from exertion and no fear of microbes or bacteria.

Here in the Ghetto all the unrestrained child nature asserted itself, and being children they had no thought for the morrow and having been born in America, they were boisterously happy.

My host decided that after all humanity on Houston Street is not so different from that on Fifth Avenue. The women, especially the younger ones, were gowned as fashionably although less extravagantly; pony coats being the style on Fifth Avenue were also found on Houston Street, and most of the women who paraded both streets looked very much as if they belonged to the same herd.

Hats were as expansive if not as expensive in this hemisphere of the social world as in his own; while pride and social prejudice were common properties of both.

Our entrance into the lodge room, on the fourth floor, over a Kosher restaurant, was announced by the outer guard, after which a committee came out to meet us. Then pledging us to secrecy we were escorted to places of honour at the right and left of the Grand Master of the lodge.

The small room was completely filled by over one hundred members, and after the business under discussion was finished, we were duly introduced and addresses of welcome were made by officers and prominent members.

I doubt that my fellow guest ever listened to addresses which he enjoyed more than those he then heard, spoken in broken yet picturesque language; and I am sure he never before realized that such lofty sentiments lodged in such humble hearts and amid such forbidding surroundings.

These hundred and more men, we were told, were bound together in fellowship to help one another when unemployed, to support and nurse one another when sick, to pay the last honours to the dead and to protect the widows and the orphans.

And that was not all. It is the object of this lodge to work for mutual intellectual improvement, and although politics are tabooed, the lodge strives to develop noble, patriotic ideals among its members.

Of the men who spoke, I have known some from their childhood, and all of them since their arrival in the United States.

It will not break the pledge of secrecy to say a word about these men, typical immigrants from Hungary.

The Grand Master was born in a Jewish home in which the best traditions of the Hebrew faith were adhered to. I have been there many a time carrying messages from son to parent, and it was always a delight to meet the saintly old father and mother who have never ceased being homesick for their boy. He has gone through a hard school in America, from sweat shop to laundry; and now he is a letter carrier.

The Past Grand Master is a wood-worker who tried business, but failed and is now back at his bench.

Another is a metal worker, and his calloused hands prove that he obeys the Divine injunction, and earns his bread by the sweat of his brow.

The man who proposed our being made honorary members of the lodge had entered the University of Vienna, suffered moral bankruptcy and ran away to America. He is a cloak presser.

The man who seconded his motion is a waiter, the prodigal son of a rich father, brought low by his iniquities; but kept from utter ruin by the fellowship of these men.

I know the record of them all; good and bad records, like those of other groups of men; but every one of them is now earning his daily bread and is contributing something to the wealth and the weal of the great city.

My millionaire friend frankly confessed that he had never seen a “bunch” of men which impressed him more favourably than these—and well they might impress him; for they all looked like toilers. Labour had bent their forms, parched their skin and shadowed their eyes.

It was a long meeting, until far into the night. Several times the outer guard had announced that the Gulyas was ready; but not even the odour of its rich sauce which pervaded the building could stop the flow of eloquence, once set in motion, or curb the eagerness with which rival candidates battled for office.

At last the Grand Master smote his desk with his gavel for the last time and the “meetunk” was adjourned.

In proper order and ceremoniously, we were conducted to the basement of the Kosher restaurant. The steaming Gulyas was on the tables, beer and wine awaited the thirsty guests and the banquet began even before all the members of the Bolsover Association were fairly seated.

My companion looked askance at the bowls of Gulyas with its red gravy; but it wooed his appetite through his nostrils and he gained sufficient courage to take a piece of the well cooked meat with its dripping sauce. Then I saw him eat as I had not eaten of his French snails and terrapin. The members of the Society drank their modest measures of beer and Hungarian wine as toast followed toast.

It had been my privilege not long before to have a conference with President Roosevelt, and as I rose to toast the chief magistrate of the United States, I repeated a few of his trenchant sentences. “Elyen! Elyen!” the men shouted when I mentioned his name; and when I said that the President had expressed to me the hope that we strangers should so live that the country which gave us “sanctuary,” a place to work in and to live in, might be proud of us—the enthusiastic “Elyens!” seemed unending. After the banquet, the man who had successfully run for the secretaryship invited us to come into his home, not far away. My host, having had a taste of the East Side and wanting more, readily accepted the invitation.

We found this home in the second story of a tenement house on East Ninth Street. We entered through the kitchen, and in the one other room, living room, sleeping room and nursery combined, was the man’s wife with their three daughters. The youngest was in bed, the older one was reading, while the oldest was entertaining friends—two or three girls and a young man, her “steady company.” The room was crowded, but clean, and my Fifth Avenue friend sat down and looked at the novel picture before him.

The young people chatted about the recent ball of the Bolsover Sick and Benefit Association, of clothes and beaux; very much as they talk of balls and clothes and beaux on Fifth Avenue.

Refreshments were offered us, and then the father told of his good fortune in having been elected secretary of his lodge. Every one was delighted; but the younger daughter, this little Jewish child, said: “Papa, why don’t you run for president, once?”

He replied: “My child, don’t you knows that I gets paid for being secretary, and gets nothing for being president?”

Upon which, this child of the Ghetto faced her father half angrily, crying: “Why, papa, don’t you know that honour is more than money?”

We left the tenement house together and walked across to Broadway, all along that gaily lighted thoroughfare, illy named the White Way. Theatres and concert halls were being emptied, and we were jostled by the crowds. My friend spoke never a word until we reached the marble steps of his home. Then, pressing my hand, he said, with almost a tenderness in his voice: “Honour is more than money.”

XXI

FROM LAKE SKUTARI TO LAKE CHAUTAUQUA

One cannot say that the Balkan would have been a peaceful nook had it not been for these Ghegs and Tosks, as the two main divisions of the Albanians are called; but certainly, the history of Turk, Greek and Southern Slav would have been different had it not been for the Albanians’ clinging tenaciously to ancient rights, and their many struggles against continuous oppression.

The new régime in Turkey feels this Albanian iron in its veins, for one of the leaders in the new parliament is of this race, as are many of the most virile editors of Turkish newspapers. Both officers and privates in the army which wrought the overthrow of the Sultan are of these same people, who regard themselves as superior to the Turks and to whom no greater insult can be given than to call them by the name of their oppressors.

In my travels through the Balkan, I have often passed through some portion of Albania, which is a narrow strip of land along the Adriatic, between Montenegro and Greece, with much of its interior inaccessible. Its savage state was encouraged by Turkey, which maintained there a borderland against the power and ideals of the West.

Every village was an armed camp, every house a fortress. Tribal warfare never ceased; neither the holy seasons of the Church nor harvest time knew the blessings of peace. Every Albanian was a soldier or brigand and sometimes both, loyal to those to whom he had sworn loyalty; but the musket was law between him and the stranger, and the bullet its executor.

Trained for slaughter, the Albanians spurned common theft, but did not shrink from murder, for pillage or for revenge. The last time I saw them at home, was on the shores of Lake Skutari, retreating to their native mountains in the Albanian Alps, after having pillaged a Montenegrin village, one of the few prosperous enough to make a raid worth while. They were resting on a rocky hillside, and as I attempted to take a snapshot, they resisted religiously, good Mohammedans that they were, by emptying their rifles after me, doing no more damage than frightening my worn-out team into a gallop.

To say that the next time I saw them, was in the prayer-meeting room of a Congregational church, describes graphically the difference between then and now; for it was a docile, conventional looking company of men that I met; their fierce mustachios shaved or cropped, their muscular bodies clothed in the commonplace garments of our civilization. Their eager, black eyes alone spoke of the hot, Albanian blood in their veins not yet chilled in our cool, workaday atmosphere.

Neither Gheg nor Tosk ever had a chief like the one who led them that night in singing the “Shcipetari” song, the battle hymn of Albania; for he who wore the red skullcap of the chief and beat time as they sang, whose placid face was lighted by a deeper passion than their own, was an American,—Arthur Baldwin, Patent Attorney and lover of common folks.

One by one he had gathered them as they drifted into the city by the lake. “Dagos” they were called; homeless, neglected and treated with scorn. One after another they swore fealty to their new chief, until now every one of them acknowledges the sovereignty of his passion over them.

Half savage as the Albanian is, he has a fine feeling for womanhood. Woman is man’s fortress; for he is safe from the enemy’s bullets when in her company, and she may kill the man who has broken his troth with her.

While the men are loyal to Mr. Baldwin, they feel for Mrs. Baldwin a sacred awe, and well she deserves their reverence; for she has been mother and sister to these homeless youths and has taught them the English language by a method of her own.

Most of the Albanians in Jamestown, and many of those who have scattered east and west from there, carry with them Mrs. Baldwin’s letters, which are the English lessons for the week, combined with cordial greetings, a word of good cheer, and advice.

In the prayer-meeting room of that church of the pilgrims, these newest of the pilgrims sang that night their national hymn.

The music is savagely martial, although the words are commonplace; for the Albanian, like the rest of us, is thanking God that he is not as other people, especially the detested Greeks and Bulgarians.

After the singing, the men danced. Shades of the Puritan ancestors! Dancing in a prayer-meeting room! But inasmuch as these were semi-civilized people, the dance was decent and full of religious symbolism. The men swayed their agile bodies to the wild notes, bent the knee, then two by two joined hands, forming a cross; thus making their dance an act of worship.

Then I spoke to them of their mountain home and of this one; of their old tribulations and their new opportunities; of their old feuds and their new friendships. When I finished, they crowded around me and pressed my hand, because they had found one who knew them, their fierce nature and their unsurpassed devotion to their native land. I could not help thinking of their brothers who, ten years before, chased me along the shore of Lake Skutari with guns.

While I am sure that Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin would not desire praise for the work they are doing among these people, the methods they have used and the spirit which has animated them are so remarkable as to deserve emulation. Their basis of approach to the Albanians was undisguised and unadulterated friendship. They liked common folks. As other people on the shores of Lake Chautauqua liked automobiles or steam yachts of particular makes, so among folks, the Baldwins liked Albanians. Being their friends, they wanted to do them good, and what they most needed was ability to understand English; so they taught them English and with the new language they have given them the atmosphere of home and impressed upon them the need of character to save them from the new temptations.

Wiser than some others who have attempted to do good to strangers, they restrained their religious ardour and left Greek Orthodox and Mohammedan undisturbed in their faith, except as by their example they taught them that love is more effective than its symbols and deeds more vital than creeds. Neither have they tried to deaden the old patriotism; and the one great, starry virtue of the Albanian which is almost unparalleled, is his devotion to his country.

After I had spoken that night, I was escorted to a restaurant kept by one of them, and there over the steaming coffee we talked of Albania’s griefs and hopes.

Mr. Baldwin knew every nook and corner of the country and its history. He spoke of Albania as if he had been cradled among those far-away mountains, instead of on the placid plains of the Middle West. He deplored the fact that they had no schools in which their own speech was taught, that religion held them apart, through factions of Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Mohammedans; and he talked of Scanderberg, their national hero, as if he were speaking of Washington or Lincoln.

Mr. Baldwin had invited me to Jamestown, to counsel with his men, who are doing the most menial tasks to earn money for Albania. At that time all was dark in Turkey, and a visionary alone could have held out hope for an autonomous Albania.

Practical American that I have become, I told them to save their money, start bank accounts and become prosperous Americans. They knew better; at least they had more faith. They were then training a man in an American college, for political and social leadership; a young Albanian noble, who spoke eight languages, had faith in God and man and, above all, in Albania.

Until long past midnight I talked of peace while they talked of war; I spoke of submission, while they talked of resistance; I thought I knew Turkey and the Turk, while they had faith in Albania and the Albanians. The recent developments prove that their faith was better than my knowledge.

When the Jamestown Albanians scattered as far east as Natick, Mass., and as far west as St. Louis, Mo., their old friends aroused interest in them everywhere. In Natick, Mass., a devoted pastor, Rev. Morris H. Turk, has matched the Jamestown work for these “twentieth century pilgrims” as he calls them. He has learned enough Albanian to lead in devotions, and has fitted out a chapel with chancel, altar and pictures.

“We began,” he says, “where the Greek Orthodox church left off. We secured some Albanian hymn-books from Monastir, and thus we were enabled to conduct a somewhat formal religious service, largely in the Albanian language. Socials, entertainments, receptions, picnics and other diversions supplement the religious and educational work done at Natick.

“The results have been remarkable. Two of the men are fitting for college, a dozen or more have blended completely into the parish life, and best of all, a hundred or more have had the uplift of friendliness and acquaintance with our American ideals.”

Mr. Turk is making a tour of Albania this summer for the express purpose of rendering his service to these people more effective; to see life from their view-point and to acquire a better knowledge of their difficult language.

Mr. Guy J. Fansher writes from Boston, where he has become interested in them: “Their love of country is very strong and, like the old Hebrew prophets in Israel and Judah, we find it necessary to carry on whatever religious work we may wish to do side by side with their love of country. This same love of country has been evidenced in their translating of the Orthodox Church ritual into the Albanian and using that in their church service monthly in a rented hall.

“I found the men apt to stay indoors too closely, so during the winter gave them work in gymnastics, using dumb-bells, basket-ball, etc. We had some flash-light pictures taken of these classes, which the boys were eager to buy and send home.

“The men are close readers of the daily papers, soon get interested in politics (were strong for Taft), get out naturalization papers as soon as possible, and are proud to be in America. They soon learn to dress in neat suits of brown which is very becoming to them with their dark skin and hair.

“The men seem to have good control of their habits, seldom drinking to excess; the cigarette is always with them, however; the social vice is not theirs to any great degree; they are neat about their rooms and do not crowd together as the Italians or Jews. These things have rather assisted our work among them; their exceeding shyness has been hard to overcome; they must be led, not driven.”

“They must be led, not driven,” and Mr. Baldwin adds: “They must be trusted, not suspected; loved, and not merely tolerated.”

The events in Turkey have surprised every one who has an interest in the Balkan question. The young Albanian noble, already referred to, is back in Albania, somewhere near Lake Skutari, helping shape the future of his country; for he is a leading member of the Albanian Committee.

On Lake Chautauqua his countrymen still work and pray and hope for an autonomous Albania, with schools and churches in which they shall be free to use their language and in which they shall have privileges commensurate with their sacrifices and with the burdens they have borne for Turkey.

Then they will sing in Kortia the song they sang in Jamestown, when we parted before the early dawn of a winter’s morning. It was a national hymn, which the Albanians have a right to sing, although they sing it under the crescent banner of Turkey; for it is a translation of our—“America.”