In no part of Europe is mediaeval prejudice against the Hebrew race more fiercely rampant than in Roumania; for in no other part of Europe, save Russia, are mediaeval social conditions and modes of thought and conduct so rife. There is hardly any middle class in Roumania yet. In that country industries are unknown, commerce is scarce and the mechanics are few. Theoretically a modern constitutional state, in reality it is a country peopled by two extreme castes: the small peasant proprietors or labourers, and the nobles. The husbandman drudges in the open country and the nobleman dissipates in the capital. In fact, though not in name, we find in the Roumania of to-day Froissart’s England, less the splendour and the servitude of feudalism. Out of a population of five and a half millions, five millions are peasants, and these, deprived to a large extent of the rights of citizenship and of the opportunities for self-improvement, live in almost as abject misery and as crass ignorance206 as they did five centuries ago, represented by only thirty members in the Lower House of the national Parliament and by none in the Senate, while the remaining eleven twelfths of the Lower House and the whole of the Senate are elected by the aristocracy of a quarter of a million, which also furnishes all the officials. The one product of the nineteenth century that has found a sincere appreciation in Roumania is Nationalism, and it is under this modern cloak that mediaeval bigotry loves to parade its terrors on the banks of the Danube.

In Moldavia, the northern portion of the kingdom, Jews are first heard of in the fifteenth century, though they do not become conspicuous until the eighteenth. It was in a village of this province that was born, about 1700, Israel Baalshem, the founder of the Hebrew sect of dissenters known, or rather not known, as the “New Chassidim.” Baalshem’s mission, when denuded of those vulgar accessories of the supernatural without which man seems incapable of being lifted to higher things, was a noble one. In the century which preceded his advent Judaism had degenerated into a school of casuistry; simplicity was lost in a maze of sophistical subtlety, conscience was stifled beneath a mountain of formalism, and faith was drowned in the ocean of Rabbinical nonsense.207 In no part of Europe was the decay more complete than in these regions. The long-ringleted Rabbis of Poland had extended their lethal domination over Moldavia, and with their solemn puerilities had perpetuated the spiritual sterility of those districts. This, at all events, is the impression made on the mind of a modern student, whose rationalism may dull him to the latent spirituality of the Rabbis and reveal to him perhaps all too clearly their sophistry. But, in any case, sophistry can only appeal to a people which has reached an advanced stage of intellectual senility. The Moldavian Jews were still in their intellectual infancy. It was emotion and not logic that their soul craved for. The Rabbis were mere priests, the Jews of Moldavia needed a prophet. Israel Baalshem arrived in time to supply the demand and to tear asunder the net of Talmudism.

An angel announced his birth and foretold to his parents that their son would enlighten Israel. After a virtuous, if somewhat eccentric life, devoted at first to prayer and lamentation in the savage solitude of the Carpathian mountains, then to hysterical rapture and to miracles in the haunts of men, Baalshem bequeathed his doctrine and his enthusiasm to faithful disciples who carried the legacy over Moldavia, Galicia, and the Russian “pale.” The principal dogma of Baalshem’s teaching is the universality of God, His real and living presence in every part of creation, pervading, inspiring, and vivifying all. Every being, every thing, every thought, every action is a manifestation or an image of Divine power and love. All things are holy, or contain in them the germs of holiness. This knowledge is the fruit of faith, not of learning. It is a revelation. The practical results of this ethereal teaching are love, charity, and cheerful optimism. For how can one presume to hate, despise, or condemn anything as evil, foolish, unclean, or ugly, since it is the vehicle of Goodness, of Wisdom, of Purity, and of Beauty? The true lover of the Creator must also be a lover of His creatures. The end and aim of our life is union with God—fusion with the Light of which all things are more or less dim reflections. From this exposition of his doctrine it will be seen that Israel Baalshem was a typical mystic. He belongs to the same family of seers as the Neo-Platonists, as St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, as John Bunyan and George Fox, as the Mohammedan Sufis, and many other inspired dissenters who, scattered though they are over many countries, many centuries and many creeds, have three cardinal characteristics in common: protest against formalism, thirst for vision or revelation, and intense desire for absorption in the One.

This Gospel of Love first preached “in the wild ravines of Wallachia and the dreary steppes of the Ukraine” found many listeners. The Rabbis—the upholders of book-taught wisdom—denounced the doctrine of direct inspiration. The “Pious” retaliated with denunciations of the Rabbis. The contest resulted in excommunication, in cremation of books and in persecution, which only helped to spread the new teaching further. However, after the death of the founder and the first apostles, there arose internal dissensions which led to a subdivision of the “Pious” into sects. Degeneration, hypocrisy, and corruption followed disintegration, love was forgotten in the pursuit of sectarian and selfish ambitions, and to-day the Chassidim, though numbering in Roumania, Poland, and South-western Russia about half a million of adherents, are scorned by the orthodox as a mob of fanatics, redeemed by genuine faith, but deluded and exploited by leaders who are no longer saints.208

The Jews of Moldavia, already numerous in the time of Israel Baalshem, received new additions towards the end of the eighteenth century. Then a large number of Jewish refugees entered the country from Austria, Poland, and Russia, so that at the beginning of the nineteenth century they are found scattered all over the province as village inn-keepers and resident traders, or as itinerant merchants visiting the rural districts and buying or advancing money upon the crops. In the big towns also they established important colonies—as for example in Jassy, where they form more than one third of the population, and in Galatz, where they occupy whole streets with their shops. In all these centres they live by trade or as craftsmen—tinsmiths, glaziers, shoemakers, hatters, tailors, butchers, bakers and the like. The southern province of Wallachia is studded with smaller colonies both of Spanish and of Polish Jews, while there are families, settled chiefly in Bucharest, whose ancestors have been in the country from time immemorial. Like their brethren of Moldavia the Wallachian Jews also are engaged in commerce, handicrafts, and finance, thus forming that industrious and intelligent middle class which the Christian population lacks. These Jews for ages lived on terms of comparative peace with their neighbours; the rich among them educating their children at the schools frequented by the children of the native nobility. But these friendly relations were not destined to endure.

As in many other lands, so in Roumania the religion, the success, and the aloofness of the Jew raised a host of enemies against him among the Christians. Here, as elsewhere, the Jews were often accused of child-murder in the eighteenth century. But, while under Turkish domination, the Christians were obliged to suppress an animosity which they had no power of satisfying. It is not till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Russia’s interference loosened the Sultan’s grasp on the Danubian provinces and the Nationalist spirit added fuel to the older hatred, that the first symptoms of anti-Judaism appear in Moldavia. In 1804 Prince Mourousi issued a decree forbidding the Jews to hold land, except that attached to inns. The process of restriction, once commenced, advanced with steady and rapid strides, accompanied by periodical assaults on the unpopular race. The fact that the Jews had gathered the threads of commerce in their own hands was alleged as a reason for crushing them. But for this fact no one could be held responsible, unless it were the Roumanians themselves. An essentially agricultural people, the native Christians despise trade, which consequently has always been left to the Jews in Moldavia, just as in Wallachia it is largely monopolised by Greeks and Armenians. In 1840 the opening of the Black Sea to international commerce drew many more Jews to the country, and the ill-feeling against them grew in proportion to the increase in their numbers. In 1867 the Roumanian politician, Bratiano, exploited the widespread prejudice for electioneering purposes, and the active persecution of Israel entered upon its acutest stage. Religious fanaticism in some measure, and racial rivalry in a greater, lent colour to a hostility which arose mainly from economic jealousy. Usury, that plausible phantom of a long-exploded fallacy, was brought forward as an additional excuse for intolerance.

Analogous causes led to analogous conditions in Roumania’s western neighbour, Servia. Under Ottoman rule the lot of the Jew in that country differed little from that of his Christian fellow-slave. The Mohammedan theocracy recognises no rights except those of the true believers. Both Jews and Christians, inasmuch as they refuse to accept the latest addition to the revealed Word of God, are outside the pale of citizenship. But, on the whole, the Jews, thanks to their pacific disposition and lack of political aspirations, as well as to the closer resemblance between the Mosaic and the Mohammedan forms of worship, suffered less than the Christian rayahs from Turkish oppression. The emancipation of the province, while rescuing the Christian from ignominy, condemned the Jew to an even worse fate. Under the Turk the Jew was at least allowed the congenial privilege of buying and selling, whereas under the Christian even that consolation was denied to him. In Servia, by a curious dispensation of constitutional legislation, the very opposite to the one prevailing amongst us before 1858, the Jews, while forbidden the most elementary rights of citizenship, were theoretically eligible to the highest offices in the state. According to Servian law, a Jew could be a Prime Minister, but not a grocer. He might make laws for others, but could not appeal to them for his own protection. This Gilbertian state of things had attracted the attention of the friends of Israel abroad, and for many years successive representatives of Great Britain and of other Western Powers at Belgrade, spurred by the Jewish charitable associations, had endeavoured to induce the Servians to grant to the Jews the necessaries, as well as the luxuries, of existence. In 1875 the Servians, no longer able to resist the pressure of Europe, proceeded to show their liberality by electing a Jew to the Skuptchina. But the European Powers declined to be deluded by this clever display of legerdemain. Our own Foreign Office, besides steps taken directly at Belgrade, made an effort to enlist Prince Bismarck’s and Prince Gortchakoff’s powerful influence on behalf of the Servian Israelites. The effort was, of course, unsuccessful. The German Chancellor cared nothing for the Jews, and his Russian colleague less than nothing.209

Meanwhile similar remonstrances were made, and similar results obtained, at Bucharest, until the Congress of Berlin in 1878 afforded the champions of the Jews and justice an opportunity of forcing upon the Roumanians the counsels of toleration to which they had hitherto refused to listen.210 Among these champions none was more staunch than Lord Beaconsfield. It was the one subject on which the Commander of the Tories out-whigged the most advanced of Whigs. Even Gladstone in the most radical period of his career pronounced Disraeli on the Jewish Question “much more than rational, he was fanatical.”211 Though baptized at the age of twelve, Disraeli remained a genuine and loyal son of Israel. While as a British statesman of a certain school he opposed Gladstone’s campaign on behalf of the Eastern Christians in 1876, as a Jew he was working heart and soul on behalf of the Eastern Jews. He also was consistent. By the aid of M. Waddington, the French Delegate at the Congress of Berlin, and his own diplomatic adroitness, Disraeli succeeded in gaining over Prince Bismarck and, through him, in overcoming the good Emperor William’s conscientious scruples about the propriety of treating Eastern Jews as if they were Christians. And so it came to pass that by Art. 44 of the Treaty of Berlin the recognition of Roumanian Independence was made conditional upon the abolition of all religious disabilities in the Danubian principalities.

What followed might have supplied valuable material to Aristophanes. To the stipulation of the Treaty the Roumanians returned the astounding answer that “there was no such thing as a Roumanian Jew.” This calm denial of the existence of more than a quarter of a million of human beings failed to satisfy the signatories to the Treaty. Thereupon the Roumanians lifted up their voices and, with remarkable lack of sense of the ludicrous, protested against the “iniquity” of being forced to admit the Jews to the rights of Roumanian citizenship, solemnly declaring that the Russian or even the Turkish yoke was preferable to this grievous condition. The chief reasons brought forward by Roumanian politicians in justification of their attitude in 1878, and since that date re-echoed even in this country by apologists of Roumanian bigotry, were based upon grounds of national sentimentality. It was urged that it is contrary to Roumanian traditions to admit to political equality any one who is not of pure Roumanian blood; that the preservation of the purity of their race has ever been the chief concern of the Roumanians; and that the accident of being born on Roumanian soil does not constitute a title to the status of Roumanian citizenship.

Now, apart from the facts that the ancestors of many Roumanian Jews have been in the country for ages, and that many of their descendants have fought gallantly for Roumania’s freedom, the “purity of race,” on which Roumanian patriots are so fond of dwelling, is as pure a myth as any to be found in the collection of legends that still passes for history in the Balkan Peninsula. In the first place, the very origin of the Roumanians is surrounded by a denser cloud of mist than that which usually surrounds the origin of nations. That their language is akin to Latin is no more certain proof of the Roman descent which they claim than is the parallel kinship of Spanish, Portuguese, and French to the tongue of ancient Rome a proof of the Latin origin of the modern Spaniards, Portuguese, and Frenchmen. But, even granting that Rome is, to use the phrase of a recent Roumanian Minister, “le berceau de leur race,” the original nucleus of Roman colonists has undergone in the course of ages such matrimonial vicissitudes as must have caused the blood to lose a considerable portion of its primitive “purity.” The Roman settlers found the country already peopled by an alien race. Ovid, banished by Augustus to Tomi on the Black Sea—near the modern town of Kustendje—describes the district as one inhabited by savages. ♦8–17 A.D.♦ All his letters from the country during his ten years’ exile are one long lament over his hard fate. He dwells again and again on the bitterness of the lot which has cast him among people who do not understand Latin, he expresses the fear that he will gradually forget his own tongue, and his whole correspondence is an alternate wail on the horrors of barbarous warfare and the hardships of barbarous life.

Towards the end of the first century Trajan conquered Dacia, the modern Wallachia, and, in pursuance of the old Roman policy, the conquerors endeavoured to confirm their hold upon the country by the settlement of Latin colonists and by the introduction of the Latin language. ♦250 A.D.♦ The Latinisation of Dacia was, however, interrupted by the invasion of the Goths, a warlike horde lured by the prospect of reaping where the peaceful peasantry of Dacia had sown under the protection of the Roman eagles. They met with no opposition in the newly and imperfectly settled province; and this absence of opposition is the best proof of the precarious nature of the Roman rule and of the paucity of the Roman settlers. Twenty years later the Emperor Aurelian, convinced of the impossibility of holding the country, relinquished it to the Goths and Vandals. Upon the evacuation of Dacia most of the Roman subjects crossed the Danube and settled in the region stretching from the river’s southern bank, and then was formed the new Dacia which corresponds to modern Bulgaria. The old country of the same name on the northern bank of the Danube retained, it is true, a great number of its inhabitants, but the mere fact of their consenting to serve a Gothic master, when the option to remain under Roman rule was open to them, shows how feeble the Roman element must have been among them. This population was gradually blended with the dominant Gothic tribe, and there was formed an independent state inhabited by a mixed race which, characteristically enough, claimed the renown of a Scandinavian origin, or descent from the old indigenous “savage Getae” whom Ovid has immortalised in his Pontic Epistles. Interest promoted peaceful relations, and even alliance, with the Roman Empire, and thus the Roman language continued to be heard on the northern bank of the Danube.

Yet another hundred years have passed by, and a new horde of barbarians, even more fierce and monstrous, overthrew the power of the Goths, who in abject terror implored the Emperor Valens to permit them to cross the river and settle in Thrace. ♦375 A.D.♦ Valens, hoping to ensure the stability of his Empire by enlisting the services of new and hardy subjects, granted the request of the Goths, though not without hesitation and misgivings. The barbarians crossed the Danube to find themselves compelled to part with their arms and their children. This harsh demand, justified though it may have been as a precautionary measure, excited the indignation of the immigrants, who tried to force a passage in defiance of the Roman legions. The latter met violence with violence, until an Imperial order reached them to transport the new-comers across the river. The passage was stormy, and many were drowned, but there survived a number sufficient to rout the Imperial troops and to turn the Eastern Empire into a field of massacre, rapine, and ruin.212

Such are the titles upon which the modern Roumanians have always based their claims to a Roman pedigree. First, it is to be observed that the term Roumanian includes not only the inhabitants of Wallachia, the ancient Dacia, occupied for a while by the Roman legions, but also the inhabitants of Moldavia, over whom the Roman never bore sway. Secondly, even in Dacia, how many of the original Romans were there left after the double evacuation and conquest of the province? Nor did matters improve after the fourth century. Roumania is the highway over which, during the last fifteen hundred years, wave after wave of Goth, Hun, Avar, Slav, and Bulgar has poured on its southward course; and it must be a truly extraordinary flood that leaves no alluvial deposit behind it. If to these inundations be added the Greek element which, though never very numerous, exercised a powerful influence over the country during the Ottoman domination, it would need exceptionally robust faith to uphold the purity doctrine.

In fact, the quantity of foreign blood in Roumania is amply attested by the features of the modern Roumanian peasant and by the Roumanian language itself. This language, besides a large admixture of Slavonic words and idioms which the professors of Bucharest have been earnestly endeavouring to eliminate, is phonetically very closely related to the Slavonic dialects of the neighbourhood, and until two generations ago was actually written in Slavonic characters. It was about 1848—the annus mirabilis of Continental Nationalism—that the Latin alphabet was introduced, but, despite the strenuous exertions of patriotic pedants, even this alphabet had to be modified so as to meet the phonetic requirements of non-Latin throats,213 and the feat has been accomplished, clumsily enough, by a profusion of accents and other accessories more or less picturesque and bewildering. The very family names of the Roumanians, when not artificially brought into harmony with modern academic sentiment, reveal a non-Latin origin. Those of the peasantry are frequently Slavonic, while those of the nobility are not infrequently Greek. Yet the purists banished the Slavonic element from the dictionary of the Roumanian language compiled under the auspices of the Roumanian Academy by two native Latinists. Take, again, Roumanian folk-lore. Any one who has given the subject even superficial attention can see at a glance the deep impress of Slavonic thought and custom in the legends and superstitions of the Roumanian peasantry. Yet, such are the sublime effects of racial fanaticism, when a few years ago a competition was instituted at Bucharest for the best comparative study of the national folk-lore, the work on which the prize was bestowed did not contain a single allusion to the folk-lore of the adjacent Slavonic countries.

Of course, these facts, ignored though they are by the Roumanians and their advocates, do not prevent a Roumanian from being a Roumanian, however much they may prevent him from being a Roman; nay, one would be loth to grudge to natives of Moldo-Wallachia the pleasure of contemplating a long line of noble Latin ancestors, imaginary though it be, did they not make this harmless gratification of their vanity an excuse for depriving other natives of Moldo-Wallachia of the very means of existence. Moreover, one may not unreasonably ask, in what way would the enfranchisement of the Jews impair the “purity” of the Roumanian race? The Jews in other lands are often charged, and not unjustly, with aversion from intermarriage with the Gentiles. Indeed, the Roumanians themselves seem to feel the force of this objection, for they attempt to parry it by the argument that, should the Jews be admitted to the deliberations of the Roumanian Parliament, they would form a compact party of obstructionists—why, does not appear. A more probable result of such an admittance has recently been suggested by one of those very Jews who, although a Roumanian for many generations, although educated in Roumania’s schools and imbued with Roumanian traditions, has been compelled to leave his country, because that country—“the only country I knew and, God knows, loved with heart and soul, reckoned me a ‘foreigner’ and as such deprived me of the chance of earning a livelihood.” This exile declares: “Were the treaty of Berlin lived up to, and the Jews given emancipation, they, being all literate and city-dwellers, would, according to the provisions of the electoral law, belong to either the first or the second electoral college, and would therefore either share the privileges of the present privileged class, whose number exactly equals that of the resident Jews, and share its power, or would compel that privileged class to give up its privileges and change the laws so as to give the great mass of people a voice in the running of their public affairs.”214

When the dialecticians of Bucharest realised that their ingenuity produced no impression upon the blunt minds of Western statesmen, they changed their tactics. A commission of deputies was appointed to investigate and report on the question of Jewish disabilities. The commissioners’ report began with the subtle distinction between “Roumanian Jews” and “native Jews,” declaring that only the latter variety was in existence, and adding that these Jews, though born in the country, were really aliens. As such, they might obtain naturalisation, if they applied for it individually; but the boon could only be granted by a special Act, passed for each particular case. This revision was effected by the simple alteration of Art. 7 of the Roumanian Constitution, which had hitherto restricted the right of naturalisation to “foreigners of Christian denominations,” into one embracing all “foreigners” alike, without distinction of creed, who had lived for ten years in the country.

By this generous concession the Roumanians claimed, and their apologists have innocently endorsed the claim, that they did as much as could fairly be expected from them. The illusory and disingenuous nature of the concession was patent to all, and the friends of the Jews were quick and emphatic in pointing it out to the Western Cabinets. But the Western Cabinets had by this time begun to think that they had done enough for Israel. Some of the Powers, like Germany, were anxious to conciliate Roumania in order to obtain a railway concession. Others, like England, were equally anxious to secure commercial advantages, while they one and all were cordially tired of the tedious and unremunerative crusade on behalf of justice. ♦1880♦ Lord Salisbury, in authorising the British representative to announce to the Bucharest Government the glad news that they could henceforth regard their country as a sovereign state, timidly expressed a hope, on behalf of England and France, that, in return for the Powers’ forbearance, Roumania, by a liberal application of the revised article of the Constitution, would bring matters “into exact conformity with the spirit of the Treaty of Berlin.” Thus the East once more succeeded in the time-honoured method of conquering by sheer inertia, and by dividing the Western Powers through their separate interests; and the Jews were left to float or founder according to the decrees of Fate. They did not float.

The Roumanians, through the alteration in the letter of their Constitution, by which the Jews were no longer excluded from the franchise as non-Christians but as non-Roumanians, had nominally placed them on a par with other aliens—Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians—and, having done this, they professed intense astonishment that the Jews, alone among foreigners, continued to clamour for civil and political rights. Yet the reason of their obstinacy is not far to seek. The subjects of England, France, Germany, and Italy are quite content with their status, for they would gain nothing by enrolling themselves as Roumanian citizens. Their nationality affords them ample protection against injustice, while the wretched Jews, whose cause France and England had pleaded in vain, if they are not Roumanian citizens, are citizens of no city. They have no Government to which they might appeal in an hour of need. Furthermore, it was feared from the very first that the cumbrous machinery of individual naturalisation would be put in motion as rarely as possible, and experience has more than confirmed those fears. During the twenty-four years which elapsed between the Treaty of Berlin and 1902, very few live Jews were granted the franchise. For the posthumous naturalisation of the six hundred who had fallen in battle fighting for the freedom of Roumania, and that of two hundred more, admitted at the same time, was an exceptional act of liberality which has created no precedent. From 1878 to 1888, out of 4000 applications only thirty were granted, and since that date fifty more, bringing up the whole number to a grand total of eighty.215

During the same period the disabilities, under which the hapless race was suffered to remain labouring, have grown almost incredible in their severity, and have eclipsed the grievances which the Treaty of Berlin so unsuccessfully attempted to remove. Those grievances already amounted to oppression. The Jews were obliged to serve in the army as their Christian fellow-countrymen, and to pay the same taxes; and yet, though burdened with the same duties, they were denied equal rights. They were made to assist in the defence of a country which they were forbidden to call their own, and to contribute to the expenditure of a Government whose actions they had no voice in controlling. But, at all events, they were allowed the privilege of earning a livelihood. Since that time all the weight of Roumanian legislation and popular fanaticism has been brought to bear upon one object—the extinction of the Jewish race in the kingdom.

As an example of this systematic persecution may be mentioned the law of 1885, excluding the Jews from the trade in liquor, which had been open to them since 1849. This arbitrary act was justified by the argument that the Jews were fostering the vice of intoxication among the peasants. But the law has not lessened the consumption of liquor by a single drop. The Roumanian peasant still drinks as much as he drank before. Nor does the fact that his drink now comes from a Christian instead of a Hebrew source seem to produce any difference in its effects. The truth is that the Roumanian peasant is one of the most thirsty in the world, occupying as he does the third place in the scale of universal bibulosity. The brandy bottle is his companion in joy, and ever present comforter in sorrow. At weddings, as at funerals, brandy is an honoured guest. On holidays it enhances the merriment, and on week-days it relieves the monotony of work. To the brandy bottle, as to an infallible counsellor, the Roumanian peasant still appeals at times of taxation or any other domestic calamity.

Among such calamities the greatest and most frequent is famine; for, though Roumania is, next to Russia, the principal grain-exporting country in Europe, the Roumanian agriculturist, like his Russian neighbour, and for similar reasons, is one of the most favourite victims of hunger. “It sometimes happens,” says the Queen of Roumania, “that in one year the soil yields enormously, and in the succeeding year, owing to a failure of the crops, we have famine.... It is difficult for any but those who have seen it for themselves to imagine what a poor harvest means in a purely agricultural state. It is horrible. Hunger in its most appalling aspect stalks everywhere.... Picture fields that look like empty threshing-floors; starving cattle, their bones starting through their flesh, browsing on the barren ground, and falling dead from sheer exhaustion; men, women and children without so much as a handful of meal left to provide their meagre diet of ‘mamaliga.’” At such times “the taverns are far too much frequented; it is one way of cheating an empty stomach.”216

It is, of course, undeniable, and the fact is attested by all those who have studied the question of temperance reform in any part of the world, that the supply tends to foster the demand. But no one has ever asserted that it creates it. Nor has it been demonstrated that temperance is promoted by the exclusion of one portion of the population from a trade which is open to all others.

Other laws have been passed, forbidding the Jew to lend money to the Christian, and the Christian to be ruined by the Jew. The futility of such enactments, everywhere manifest, is nowhere more clearly proved than in Roumania. The boyards, impoverished by the extravagance which characterises the newly-emancipated and semi-civilised nobleman, still go to the money-lender. But the main object is achieved—to represent the Jew as corrupting the wealthy, and as ruining the poor. It would perhaps have been wiser on the part of Roumanian legislators to try to reform their people instead of persecuting those who simply minister to its vices and exploit its follies. Eradicate the demand, and the supply will cease of its own accord, is a remedy not yet understood at Bucharest. Still primitive in their mental attitude, Roumanian politicians act on the principle ridiculed by the Eastern proverb: They beat the saddle when the beast is to blame.

How far the Roumanian’s misfortunes are to be traced to the Jew can be shown from the fact, established by statistics, that the number of Jews in the Balkan States, though the case is far different in other parts of the world, is in inverse ratio to the advanced condition of the general population. In Servia the Jews are barely counted by the hundred (00.20), and so they are in Greece (00.34). In the latter country the race would be even more scarce, were it not that many shrewd and enterprising Greeks are tempted to emigrate to foreign countries. In Bulgaria also the Jews form an insignificant minority (00.76).217 In the kingdom of Greece they enjoy perfect freedom of worship and all the rights and privileges of Hellenic citizens. In the Principality of Bulgaria also they are treated on equal terms with the Christians. Why is it that in Roumania only they figure in their hundreds of thousands and are oppressed? The answer is obvious. The Jews have become numerous in Roumania, where the degraded condition of the people offers the line of least resistance; and the rulers of those countries fearing lest, if they do not protect their own compatriots from the competition of a superior race, the wealth and influence of the latter might increase to a dangerous extent, harass and handicap them by prohibitive legislation.

However, the Jew’s fecundity seems to be proof against any degree of persecution. In spite of all checks, the Jews in Roumania, as their forefathers in Egypt, “increased abundantly and multiplied, and the land was filled with them.” The Roumanian legislators were, therefore, bound, in consistency with their own policy, “to deal wisely with them.” And now ensued a literal repetition of the first chapter of the Book of Exodus. King Charles appears to be actuated by the same fears as those which dictated the policy of Pharaoh: “lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.” The experience of thousands of years has taught no lesson to Roumanian statesmen, and Jewish disabilities have kept pace with the increase of the victims. At the present moment the Jews are excluded not only from the public service but also from the learned professions. They are allowed neither to own land nor even to till it in the capacity of hired labourers. Mere residence in a country district is a punishable offence, and when the Jew, driven from the open country, takes refuge in a city, most avenues to an honest living are studiously closed to him. He is permitted to engage in none but the lowest trades and handicrafts. Nay, even as journeymen artisans the Jews are not allowed to exceed the proportion of one to two Christians. Education is altogether forbidden to them. In addition to these and like restrictions, which doom Israel to perpetual penury and ignorance, these unfortunate Roumanians who cannot boast a “Latin” pedigree are treated by their “Roman” fellow-countrymen as pariahs. They are insulted and baited by high and low, without the slightest means of redress; their social, as well as their political, status being literally more degraded than that of the gipsy; and that will convey a sufficiently clear idea to those who know the feelings of loathing and horror which that unfortunate outcast inspires in the Roumanian peasant. In one word, the Roumanian Jews can only be described as bondsmen in their native land.

In the Middle Ages the Synagogue, as well as the Church, indulged in various gruesome performances calculated to strike terror into the hearts of sinners. One of the varieties of the ban, book, and candle rite was also adopted by the Law Courts as a means of extracting evidence from unwilling witnesses. The Austrian newspapers, in the summer of 1902, published detailed accounts of a judicial torture of the kind, known as “Sacramentum more Judaico,” revived by the modern Roumanians in cases where Jews are engaged in litigation with Christians. Without the least regard for his religious susceptibilities, the Roumanian Jew is obliged to go through all the ritual solemnity of a mock burial: his nails are cut, he is wound up in a shroud, placed into a coffin and then laid out, corpse-like, in the synagogue. The Rabbi, under the eyes of a congregation of revolted co-religionists and scornful unbelievers, pronounces an awful, comprehensive and minute malediction upon the Jewish plaintiff and his progeny, should he not speak the truth. The corpse repeats the imprecations after the Rabbi; for if he declines to curse himself and his family he loses his case.218

At length, worn out by persecution and having abandoned all hope of succour, the Jews of Roumania began to emigrate in considerable numbers. In the year 1900 there was a great exodus; but the stream was temporarily stemmed by the accession to power of M. Carp, from whose well-known liberality the would-be exiles anticipated a mitigation of their sufferings. They were disappointed. M. Carp’s cabinet was short-lived, and its successor, instead of relieving rather aggravated the sorrows of Israel. Emigration was resumed and continued on an ever-increasing scale. The Jews now began to leave the country by tens of thousands, on their way to England and America, assisted thereto by wealthy co-religionists abroad.219

The outpouring of this crowd of needy refugees into Austria was not calculated to please the inhabitants of that empire. Measures were taken to prevent any of them from seeking a permanent home in the dominions of the Hapsburgs, and the police were charged, gently but firmly, to speed the unwelcome guests on their journey. When the funds, generously contributed for the purpose, fell short of the requirements of the travellers, the Austrian authorities hastened to send them back, and the Austrian newspapers began to denounce the Government through whose tyranny these destitute Israelites were compelled to leave their native country. This protest elicited from the Roumanian Government one of its customary démentis. Those who had not hesitated to deny the very existence of “Roumanian Jews” could have no difficulty in declaring that “There is absolutely no foundation for the malicious statement published by some foreign papers regarding a wholesale emigration of the Jews from Roumania.” The statement was based “on a perversion of the new Roumanian Labour Law,” and the Roumanian Government deprecated the publication of such articles, “as they might call forth, as was the case years ago, an unhealthy excitement in the minds of the people.”220

But, facts being more convincing than official denials, the exodus grew more alarming, because the forces to which it owed its origin continued in operation. The “Jewish Colonization Association” now came to the aid of the indigent exiles, and endeavoured to save them from additional suffering by preventing those who were not provided with the necessary passage money, or were not physically fit, from leaving their homes.221 These wise measures restrained to a certain extent indiscriminate expatriation, but, as might have been foreseen, failed to check it entirely. The exodus continued, and the outcry against Roumania spread, for now the countries into which the undesirable current flowed were compelled by self-interest to do what they had hitherto vainly attempted to effect from a sense of philanthropy.

America, the favourite haven of refuge for the fortune-seeker of every colour and clime, undertook the task of spokesman. The late Mr. Hay, Secretary of State, in September, 1902, through the representatives of the United States in the countries which took part in the Congress of Berlin, reminded the Governments of those countries of Art. 44 of the Treaty signed by them in 1878, urging them to bring home to Roumania her flagrant and persistent failure to fulfil the conditions on which she had obtained her independence. After a handsome tribute to the intellectual and moral qualities of the Jew, based on history and experience, the American Minister protested, on behalf of his country, against “the treatment to which the Jews of Roumania are subjected, not alone because it has unimpeachable ground to remonstrate against resultant injury to itself, but in the name of humanity.” He concluded with a vigorous appeal to “the principles of International Law and eternal justice,” and with an offer to lend the moral support of the United States to any effort made to enforce respect for the Treaty of Berlin.222

This powerful impeachment, coming as it did from a distant party in no way connected with the affairs of Continental Europe, may have caused heart-searchings in nearer and more immediately concerned countries; but it failed to awaken those countries to a proper sense of their interests, not to say duties. The only quarter in which America’s appeal to humanity found an echo was England. A number of representative men, such as the late Archbishop of Canterbury, the present Bishop of London, Lord Kelvin, the Marquess of Ripon, the late Mr. Lecky, Sir Charles Dilke, the Master of Balliol, and others, publicly expressed their profound sympathy with the victims of persecution. Mr. Chamberlain also seized the opportunity of declaring that, as history proves, the Jews, “while preserving with extraordinary tenacity their national characteristics and the tenets of their religion, have been amongst the most loyal subjects of the states in which they have found a home, and the impolicy of persecution in such a case is almost greater than its cruelty.”223 Other Englishmen also joined in the denunciation of Roumania not so much from pity for the victims of oppression as from fear lest, unless the Roumanian Government was compelled to change its policy, England should have to face another inroad of “undesirable” Jewish immigrants.

In like manner, the only Government which volunteered to second Mr. Hay’s Note was the British, and on the common basis of these two representations, the signatory Powers of the Treaty of Berlin “exchanged views.” The results of this exchange can be summed up only too easily. The historian of the future will probably derive therefrom some interesting lessons regarding European politics and ethics in the beginning of the twentieth century. They are as follows:

Germany, under whose presidency the stipulation concerning the Jews of Roumania was framed, did not choose to consider herself called upon to insist on the execution of that stipulation. The Liberal section of the German press received the American Note with sincere, but ineffectual, appreciation; while of the Conservative majority some pronounced it naïve, and others affected to regard it as an attempt on America’s part to interfere in European affairs, or even as an electioneering trick having for its sole object to enhance President Roosevelt’s political prestige! The German Government, though more courteous than the German press, proved equally cold. As we have already seen, that Government was the last to join in the efforts to improve the lot of the Roumanian Jews and the first to declare itself satisfied with the deceptive revision of Article 7 of the Roumanian Constitution. This attitude, when considered in conjunction with the fact that a Hohenzollern reigns in Roumania, and with that kingdom’s place in the present political combinations of the Continent, enables us to understand, if not to applaud, Germany’s reception of Mr. Hay’s Note.

Austria-Hungary, whose proximity to Roumania pointed her out as the Power primarily concerned, and entitled to act, declined to take any steps singly or collectively. The self-restraint of Austria, like that of Germany, and even in a greater degree, was dictated by political considerations, Roumania being practically the only State in the Balkans, where the influence of Austria-Hungary and of the Triple Alliance still counts for something. Besides, the Vienna Cabinet could not decently join in advocating Jewish emancipation, for it was Austria which in May, 1887, concluded with Roumania a treaty whereby some seventy thousand Jewish residents in the latter kingdom—who, according to a practice common in Mohammedan countries, had enjoyed Austrian protection while Roumania was under Ottoman rule—were deprived of the status of Austrian subjects, without receiving any other status in exchange.

Italy was deterred from lending her support to the American Note by Roumania’s relations with the Triple Alliance and also by the vogue which the “Roman” idea obtains in the land which the Roumanians are pleased to regard as “the cradle of their race.”

Russia, whose treatment of her own Jewish subjects would have made an appeal to “humanity and eternal justice” on behalf of the Jews in another country a sad mockery, decorously refrained from supporting the American Note. It is true that the Russian press imitated the Teutonic in scoffing at America’s action as a pretext for gaining admission to the counsels of the European Areopagus, and in condemning it as an impertinence! But the Czar’s Government, with better taste, extricated itself from an awkward position by basing its refusal on the ground that the grievances set forth in Mr. Hay’s despatch were so old that it was hardly worth while troubling about them. In the opinion of the Russian Ministers, the Jews must by now be thoroughly accustomed to starvation.

France, with all the good intentions in the world, could do nothing without Russia’s consent and, therefore, contented herself with the expression of a modest hope that the Roumanian Government might of their own accord decide to fulfil their obligations, seeing that the real sufferer is Roumania itself, and with pointing to the lack of means of enforcing such fulfilment.224

In brief, the European Powers considered that they did their duty by expressing their platonic concurrence with that part of the American Note which referred to the obligations of humanity and civilisation generally. But to the more definite appeal to the Treaty of Berlin they refused to pay any attention whatsoever. Nor can we wonder at their refusal. The appeal was not a very happy one; for every party to that contract has conscientiously broken it in turn. Russia, in defiance of its provisions, has fortified Batoum; Turkey has not even attempted to carry out the reforms in the European Provinces of the Empire, ordained by the Treaty; Great Britain has done nothing for the Armenians. Why then should poor Roumania alone be called upon to carry out her share of an agreement, already disregarded with impunity by everyone else concerned?

Such a retort would, of course, have been too candid and too rational for diplomacy. Instead, the Roumanian Government had again recourse to the more correct, if somewhat hackneyed, expedient of an official contradiction of the truth. The Roumanian Minister in London declared that “the idea that any persecution existed was absolutely erroneous.” The Jews were foreigners, and “the disabilities imposed upon foreigners were absolutely necessary for the protection of his countrymen, who had bought their independence with the sword, and had a right to manage their economic affairs according to their requirements, etc., etc.”225 What the Roumanian conception of such a right is has been very eloquently explained by Roumania’s accomplished Queen. After having drawn a pitiful and, although exaggerated, in the main faithful picture of Roumania’s economic misery, Her Majesty declares that, under such conditions, the civilised world ought not “to require her to harbour and support others, when she herself stands in dire need of assistance.” Those “others” are “foreigners,” that is, Roumanian Jews; their exodus is represented as the voluntary emigration of “a foreign population” due to the instinct which prompts a rat to quit a sinking ship, and their departure is welcome, because they, being traders, drain the country of its wealth. This interesting economic doctrine is expounded by Her Majesty as follows: “It is a fact that no money has ever been introduced into Roumania through any one in trade. Any that such a man may possess goes abroad, first to purchase his stock and outfit, and later for supplies to carry on his business, even such articles as buttons and the commonest kinds of braids not being manufactured here except on the very smallest scale.”226 Here again the Jewish apologist is more convincing than his Roumanian accuser. Admitting that, on the whole, the Queen’s statements are correct, he asks: “But why is it so? For the reason that the ruling class prohibits ‘foreigners’ to acquire lands in the country, and by means of this and other laws keeps foreign capital from coming in.”227

Protests pass away, grievances remain. The well-meant action of Mr. Hay and Lord Lansdowne, far from bettering, really aggravated the condition of the people on whose behalf it was taken. The Roumanian politicians, with characteristic astuteness, perceived that the immediate cause of the complaint was the emigration of the Jews to the United States, England and Canada, and, naturally enough, arrived at the conclusion that the one thing needful was to remove the ground of complaint by stopping emigration. A telegraphic order was sent to all the local authorities, forbidding the issue of passports to the Jews. Those who had already reached the frontier were forcibly turned back, and hundreds of others, who had sold all they possessed in order to raise the funds necessary for the journey, were compelled to return home and perish.228 Thus an act intended as a blessing proved an unmitigated curse, and modern Roumania by this new measure has outstripped even mediaeval Spain in cruelty. For the Spanish sovereigns, blinded by religious bigotry, had yet given to the Jews the alternatives of conversion or exile. Their Roumanian imitators, infatuated by racial fanaticism, will not baptize the Jews, nor dare they banish them; but, like Pharaoh of old, they virtually bid them stay and be slaves.