Page:The International Jew - Volume 2.djvu/208

 speech reeks with it. There isn’t an original idea in it. He was the human megaphone whom the Jews retained for one night through whom to voice their words. The real purpose of the speech was, of course, to secure its publication throughout the country as the voice of the people on the Question. But nothing whatever excuses the fact that the speech contains absolutely no contribution to the Question.

Mr. Taft is against religious prejudice. So is everybody else. Mr. Taft is against racial prejudice. So is everybody else. Mr. Taft wants concord and good will. So does everybody else. But what have these to do with the facts which comprise the Jewish Question?

The real story of Mr. Taft and the Jews begins back in the time when Mr. Taft lived in the White House. The Jews maintain a lobby in Washington whose business it is to know every President and every prospective President, and, of course, Mr. Taft was known to them a long while before he was made President, but whether they did not foresee his political future or whether they considered his opinions as having too little force for them to bother about, is not clear, but the fact seems to be that very little fuss was made about him. There are no indications that he ran after the Jews or the Jews after him in the days before his presidency.

As President, Mr. Taft once stood out against the Jews, was strongly denounced as unfavorable to the Jews, was soundly beaten by the Jews in a matter on which he had taken a firm stand, and has ever since shown that he has learned his lesson by accommodating the Jews in their desires.

The story involves a portion of that voluminous history which consists of the quarrels between the United States and other nations on account of the Jews. Readers interested in this phase of the history of the United States can find it fully set out by Jewish writers. There seems to be a certain pride taken in recounting the number of times the nations have been compelled to give diplomatic recognition to the Jewish Question. From 1840 until 1911, the United States had special diplomatic trouble concerning the Jews. The trouble that culminated during 1911, in an