AN     IMPARTIAL      MEDIUM      FOR     THE     DISSEMINATION     OF      JEWISH      NEWS      AND      VIEWS
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Volume L
TORONTO, ONT., JANUARY 20, 1922
Number 12
EDITORIAL
WHY IS THE WORLD SILENT?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN once said that the United States could not continue half slave and half free.   Therefore the Civil War had to be, and the negro was ostensibly liberated. The philosophy underlying Lincoln's attitude is fundamental. It is applicable to our own time and particularly to the situation of the Jew in the world.
The World War created two great illusions, the one the League of Nations, the other the doctrine of the self-determination and freedom of small nationalities. The ideals underlying both are excellent. They are expressive of the wish. of all peoples. Yet they are illusions and will probably remain such for many yeaus to come, because they run contrary to the best interests of the imperialistic ambitions of many of the nations of the world.
It was as a result of the creation of these illusions that the Jewish problem received a hearing before the Peace Conference. The diplomats of the world appreciated the fact that Europe could not become free, with the wandering Jew still enslaved. It would not merely have been a parody on justice to permit the status quo to remain as regards the Jewish position, but it might have proved dangerous to the freedom of Europe.
The Jew is not a problem merely unto himself. He is a question mark to the world. His own problem is one of adjustment to the newer forces of life in order that he may survive. These are internal in nature and concern the Jew's relations to other Jews and to Judaism. The other problem is external in character. It deals with the non-Jew's relation to the Jew and vice versa, the Jew's relation to the non-Jew. For good or for ill, the Jews, 14,000,000 of them, are in the world, and there is no way to get rid of them. In this connection one often wonders what the world would be like if the Jews disappeared. It is safe to say that religion, philosophy, science, literature, the stage, arts, and certainly commerce and industry, would be the poorer and the less developed. The Jews are a people of contributors. They give more than they ever receive. They are a condition and not a theory, and a solution to their problem has to be discovered.
Whatever was the world's solution of the Jewish problem agreed upon at Versailles, it was ' twofold in character. (1) A natural homeland for the Jews in Palestine, and (2) Equal rights for the Jews with other groups in those lands where group rights are recognized, and for citizenship where the individual and not the group,'-is the unit in political government.
The Balfour Declaration and the British mandate over Palestine are the practical results of the first, and the special Jewish right clauses in the treaties with Poland, Roumania, Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, etc., were the practical outcome of the second. Close to three years have elapsed since this solution was adopted and the League of Nations was created to carry into reality these resolutions of Versailles. What has been accomplished? Is the Jew any safer? In Ukraine alone we are informed by so accurate and unbiased a source as the Red Cross that over 138,000 Jewish lives have been pogrommed to death since the Armistice. Poland is a living hell for the Jewish population of several millions. Austria and Hungary have deliberately violated the minority right clauses contained in their peace treaties.
- When Armenians are massacred and Chinese perish of hunger, when Russians starve, the world's sense of justice is outraged and
from every corner of the civilized globe are raised voices crying "Defend the living, give the hungry bread, clothe the naked, bury the dead," but when Jews are driven like hunted animals in an alien jungle, when their rights, both in Palestine, and Europe, are violated and their property pillaged, their children murdered, their wives and daughters outraged, and they themselves cruelfy beaten and tortured, no sound of protest is heard, the world is silent; only the feeble voice of the Jew raised at such meetings as that of the British Board of Guardians recently held, is heard. We are informed that Mr. Lucien Wolf, secretary of the Board, presented a report of his work in connection with the meeting of the Council of the League of Nations. He pointed out that the Council had forwarded the complaints from Jewish representatives to the offending nations, regarding the violation of the minority clauses.
Does not the.Board of Guardians and all such Jewish bodies established to protect Jewish rights, realize how ineffective are such methods? Do they not appreciate how weak and ineffective is the League of Nations?
It is becoming increasingly clear to the most optimistic among us that as long as the outrages upon justice and the Jew can go on without stirring up the conscience of the world, so long as the best spirits even amongst the liberal minds of the world remain cowardly silent on the Jewish question, then the world is not sincere in its pious declarations issued when it serves the purposes of the diplomats to do so, to solve the Jewish problem. If the world but wished it, the Ukrainian outrages would stop to-morrow. All that would be necessary is that the allied nations meeting now in either Washington or Cannes should wire Petlura that his arms and support would be cut off if his bandits perpetrated another pogrom. Poles would cease to cut off Jewish beards and halt from venting their anti-Semitic spleen on the Jew if they were informed that their economic support is endangered by this sort of tactics. If the world but wanted it the external problem of the wandering Jew could be solved, but the world is indifferent, the world has still not freed itself from the old-time prejudices, and its knowledge of the Jew is still based on the old grandmother tales and traditional hearsay. The Jew stepping out of his middle ages and ghettos into the Western world of so-called freedom, remains an enigma to the non-Jew. Is the world so perturbed about the massacred Armenians and the starving Chinese and indifferent to the Jew, because they are so closely connected to the former by ties of blood or religion or culture or habitat, and total strangers in all these ties to the latter? Is not the reverse the case? The Armenians and Chinese are as close to the peoples of Western Europe/ in blood, religion, culture and habitat, as are the two poles, whereas the Jews are almost bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh in these respects. Yet in their very condition may be found the reason for the situation. The Chinese and Armenians are possible customers; they can patronize them. The Jew they regard as an economic rival and competitor. They are jealous of the success which is his wherever and whenever opportunity is given him. Economic jealousy and religious bigotry has blinded the eye, stuffed the ear and hardened the heart of the world in reference to the Jew. That the attitude is false, short-sighted and stupid, every sensible man will agree; yet prejudice and jealousy, bigotry .and hatred, are of the heart and not of the head. What is^ required is a change of heart of the world, before the external Jewish problem can be solved.  Peace treaties and sanctimonious condescending