Thus it may be said, that when he died, his head rested upon the pillow of universal affection and esteem, and that the most ambitious among our people may well envy the record of a life so splendid in devotion, usefulness and inspiring example. TO ERVING WINSLOW NEW YORK, Jan. 28, 1903. Yesterday I had a visit from Mr. Cleveland and a long conversation on the subject of imperialism. He warmly sympathizes with our views and will look for some fit occasion to make a pronouncement. He wishes to put forth a practical program "that his party can stick to." I showed him Governor Boutwell's paper which he liked very much. We shall continue to correspond on the subject. This, of course, is strictly confidential. It should not be made public that Mr. Cleveland will before long come out with a statement. He wants to choose his own time and a premature announcement might annoy him. TO POMEROY BURTON' 24 EAST 91ST ST., Feb. 5, 1903. In response to your letter asking me to give you my views about the possibilities of a war with Germany, I have this to say: A war between the United States and Germany would be so awful, so incalculable a calamity that only the most absolute and evident necessity could serve as an excuse for it. Not even the wildest jingo on either side will pretend that such a necessity exists or is in prospect. In fact, there is no real question of difference whatever between the two countries important 'Managing Editor, N. Y. World. enough to disturb their ancient friendship. A war between them would therefore not only be criminal, but idiotic-an absurd atrocity, a murderous nonsense. Even to suggest the possibility of such a war under such circumstances and to agitate the public mind by such suggestions is a piece of mischievous recklessness. TO CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR. 24 EAST 91ST STR., NEW YORK, Feb. 8, 1903. Your letter of the 4th enclosing the Welsh correspondence is in my hands. I agree with you in the opinion that at present our committee should remain as much as possible in the background. I suppose you remember the petition for the continuation of the inquiry by the Senate, which had been drawn up by the Anti-Imperialist League of this city, and which I communicated to our committee at its last meeting here. I returned it to its author with our criticism on its opening paragraphs. It has been changed in accordance with that criticism and received the signatures of a considerable number of college presidents and professors and other people of similar standing who had so far not been counted among the aggressive anti-imperialists. I advised our friends here that in my opinion our committee should not appear at all on it. So it has been sent to Mr. Hoar to be presented to the Senate. This, I think, is well as it is. I have also told Mr. Fiske Warren who is active in a movement to bring Mobini to this country that I did not think our committee should take the lead or identify itself with that matter, but that, if the thing was to be done at all, a separate committee composed of men of comparatively less conspicuous standing in this fight should be formed for that purpose. The public interest in the general subject seems to have been rising again since the publication of the reports of Root and Taft about the state of distress in the Philippines. Some time ago there was a large meeting assembled at the Cooper Union, filling the big hall, to listen to speeches on the condition of the Philippines by Dr. Adler, President Schurman and Edward M. Shepard. The meeting was very enthusiastic and seemed to be of one mind. There are similar reports from other parts of the country. I have a good deal of evidence that we anti-imperialists are to-day very much less regarded as "cranks" than we were three months ago. On the whole I may say that the cry of "crank" has no terror for me. I have heard it so often in connection with the anti-slavery movement, the civil-service-reform movement and other things, that I am rather used to it. It may be very fierce sometimes, but it always wears off if the cause provoking it is a good one. TO SETH LOW BOLTON LANDING, LAKE GEORGE, May 25, 1903. I am sincerely sorry I cannot attend the meeting called to express the indignation of American citizens at the horrible atrocities recently committed at Kischinev. I hardly need assure you that I am heartily with you in your purpose. While those outrages in Russia stand preeminent in their savage cruelty, it should not be forgotten that they only present one of the natural upshots of a widespread movement which in our days has put a peculiarly repulsive blot upon our vaunted civilization. The persecution and maltreatment of human beings on account of their race or their religious belief is always an offense not only unjust to the victim, but also degrading to the offender. But the persecution and maltreatment of the Jews as mankind has witnessed it, and is now witnessing it in several countries, has been not only especially barbarous in the ferocity of its excesses, but in a singular degree self-debasing and cowardly in the invention of the reasons adduced for its justification. The Jews are accused of various offensive qualities and dangerous propensities. If we mean to do them anything like justice, are we not in duty bound to inquire how these qualities and propensities, so far as they may really exist, appear in the light of history? For centuries the Jews were penned up in their ghettos and otherwise forcibly shut off from the rest of humanity, and then they were gravely accused of being clannish. For centuries they were in most countries arbitrarily restricted in the right to hold land and to follow various civil callings, and then they were gravely accused of not taking to agriculture and of preferring to trade. For centuries they had to defend themselves against the lawless rapacity of the powerful and against the wanton hostility of the multitude, being robbed and kicked and cuffed and spit upon like outcasts having no rights and no feelings entitled to respect; and then they were accused of having become crafty and unscrupulous in taking advantage of the opportunities left open to them. For centuries-and even down to our day-whenever a Jew did anything conspicuously offensive, be it in the way of business unscrupulousness or of social ostentation, the cry has been-and is: "Lo, behold the Jew!" While, when a Christian did the same thing, or even ten times worse, nobody would cry: "Lo, behold the Christian!" And now, to cap the climax, even in this age of light and progress, and in countries boasting of their mental and moral culture, we hear apostles of anti-Semitism, even persons belonging to the so-called upper classes, insist with accents of profound alarm that if the Jews be permitted the same rights and privileges as other people, that despised race, forming so infinitesimal a part of the world's population, will surely outwit us all, and rob us of our property, and possess themselves of all the controlling forces of society; and that, therefore, the Jews must be shackled hand and foot with all sorts of legal disabilities, if not exterminated, in order to save Christendom from ignominious enslavement. Nothing could be more absurd and at the same time more cowardly than such reasoning and such appeals. But it is to agitations inflamed by just this spirit that we owe horrors like those of Kischinev, in beholding which humanity stands aghast. These horrors are only one more revelation of the ulterior tendency of a movement which here and there even assumes the mask of superior respectability. Here is the whole question again brought before the tribunal of the conscience of mankind. May this event serve to put in clearer light the fact that the history of the world exhibits no more monumental record of monstrous injustice than the persecutions inflicted upon the Jews during so many centuries. We may then also hope to see the other fact universally recognized that wherever the Jewish race, with its wonderful vitality and its remarkable productiveness of talent and energy, enjoys the equal protection of just laws and a due appreciation of its self-respect, it will, far from remaining a race of aliens, furnish its full contingent of law-abiding, peaceable, industrious, public-spirited and patriotic citizenship, vying with the best. TO POMEROY BURTON BOLTON LANDING, LAKE GEORGE, N. Y., I thank you for the copy of Mr. Pulitzer's "Appreciation and Apology" which you have been so kind as to send VOL. VI.-20 |