Page:The International Jew - Volume 2.djvu/231

 freedom of writing. It is exercising a privilege which the Jewish press of Poland always had. But now that it speaks freely of Jews, repress it with a strong hand, says Sir Stuart. He would not dare suggest that in England where the press also is finding its freedom. As to the Yiddish press in Poland, the reader will find some information in Israel Friedlaender’s essay, “The Problem of Polish Jewry.” Friedlaender was a Jew and his book was published by a Jewish house in Cincinnati. He says:

“The Yiddish press sprang up and became a powerful civilizing agency among the Jews of Poland. The extent of its influence may be gathered from the fact, which curiously enough is pointed out reproachfully by the Poles, that the leading Yiddish newspaper of Warsaw commanded but a few years ago a larger circulation than that of all the Polish newspapers combined.”

HENRY MORGENTHAU says (par. 7)—“The soldiers had been inflamed by the charge that the Jews were Bolsheviks, while at Lemberg it was associated with the idea that the Jews were making common cause with the Ukrainians. These excesses were, therefore, political as well as anti-Semitic in character.“

And again (par. 8)—“Just as the Jews would resent being condemned as a race for the action of a few of their co-religionists, so it would be correspondingly unfair to condemn the Polish nation as a whole for the violence committed by uncontrolled troops or local mobs. These excesses were apparently not premeditated, for if they had been part of a preconceived plan, the number of victims would have run into the thousands instead of amounting to about 280. It is believed that these excesses were the result of widespread anti-Semitic prejudice aggravated by the belief that the Jewish inhabitants were politically hostile to the Polish State.”

SIR H. RUMBOLD says: “It is giving the Jews very little real assistance to single out, as is sometimes done, for reprobation and protest the country where they have perhaps suffered least.”

CAPTAIN P. WRIGHT says: “It is an explanation often given of what may be called, according to the point of view, the idiosyncrasies or defects of the