Page:The International Jew - Volume 2.djvu/246

 itself had been a breach of the Sabbath, and therefore a grave religious offense.” (Captain Wright.)

All of the investigators agree in denouncing what followed. Captain Wright says the Polish officer would hardly have acted with such promptitude if the prisoners had been others than Jews.

General Jadwin sums it up thus: “The Pinsk outrage * * * was a purely military affair. The town commander with judgement unbalanced by fear of a Bolshevik uprising of which he had been forewarned by two Jewish soldier informers sought to terrorize the Jewish population (about 75 per cent of the whole) by the execution of 35 Jewish citizens without investigation or trial, by imprisoning and beating others and by wholesale threats against all Jews. No share in this action can be attributed to any military official higher up, to any of the Polish civil officials, nor to the few Poles resident in that district of White Russia.”

Sir Stuart says: “Under the present local administration Pinsk is once more peaceful, and the relations between the Christian and non-Christian inhabitants have become normal.”

It is sometimes forgotten here in the United States that for Poland the war is not yet over. Poland is now a free nation—on paper—but her freedom seems to be a day-by-day tenure, dependent on fighting. Bolshevism made serious inroads on her. Wherever the Bolshevik Red armies swept across Poland, the Jews met them with welcomes. This is no longer denied, even in the United States: it is explained by the statement that the Bolsheviki are more friendly to the Jews than are the Poles—a statement which readers of our recent articles on the Jewish character of Sovietism can well understand.

When the Poles beat back the Reds, they commonly found that the Jews had already set up Sovietism, as if they had long awaited it and were well prepared. It is scarcely strange, therefore, that the Poles still retain their suspicions.

The Jews do not want to become Poles. That is the root of the present difficulty between the two peoples. Sir Stuart Samuel barely touches it—“On several occasions the resentment of the soldiery and