Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question Part 9

Your most obedient, humble servant,

EYRE A. CROWE.

THE CONJOINT JEWISH COMMITTEE.

CONJOINT JEWISH COMMITTEE,

19 FINSBURY CIRCUS, E.C.

_17th November, 1913_.

SIR,--We have had the honour of receiving the letter of the 29th ult.

addressed to us on your behalf by Sir Eyre A. Crowe, and we have duly submitted it to our colleagues of the Conjoint Jewish Committee.

We are desired by the Committee to thank you for this communication and to express their lively satisfaction with the a.s.surances you are good enough to give them and which appear to them to meet the necessities of the case they had the honour of placing before you.

The Committee propose, with your permission, to submit to you at a later stage, for the consideration of His Majesty's Government, an amended formula of civil and religious liberty in the Balkans, which they think will more clearly express the intentions of the Conference of London and the Congress of Berlin than the provisions on the same subject contained in the Protocol No. 3 of 1830 and the Treaty of 1878. They trust that His Majesty's Government may find it possible to make this or some similar amendment the basis for the proposed consultation with the other Great Powers, as they venture to think that in this way a means may be found of obviating a repet.i.tion of the misunderstandings by which the Jews of Roumania have hitherto been deprived of the rights sought to be conferred upon them by the Treaty of Berlin, besides securing the rights of other religious and racial minorities in the Balkans on a footing of perfect equality.

We, are, Sir,

Your most obedient humble servants,

DAVID L. ALEXANDER,

_President, London Committee of the Deputies of British Jews_,

CLAUDE G. MONTEFIORE,

_President, Anglo-Jewish a.s.sociation_.

TO THE RIGHT HON. SIR EDWARD GREY, BART., M.P., K.G., ETC., ETC., ETC.

CONJOINT JEWISH COMMITTEE,

19 FINSBURY CIRCUS, E.C.

_12th March, 1914_.

SIR,--Referring to the letter we had the honour of addressing to you on the 17th November last, we now beg to submit to you, for the consideration of His Majesty's Government, a revised formula of civil and religious liberty in the Balkans in the hope that His Majesty's Government may be able to recommend it to the other Great Powers signatory of the Treaty of Berlin for application to the territories which have recently changed hands in the Near East under the provisions of the Treaties of London and Bucharest, and their subsidiary diplomatic Acts.

As you are aware, Civil and Religious Liberty in Bulgaria, Montenegro, Servia and Roumania is at present guaranteed in identic terms by Articles V, XXVII, x.x.xIV-V, XLIV of the Treaty of Berlin, and in Greece by the concluding _alinea_ of Protocol No. 3 of the Conference of London of the 3rd February 1830. We beg to suggest that in the extension of these stipulations to the new territories they shall be elucidated by the addition to each of the following paragraph:--

All persons of whatever religious belief born or residing in the territories annexed to the Kingdom of---- in virtue of the Treaties of London and Bucharest, and who do not claim a foreign nationality and cannot be shown to be claimed as nationals of a foreign state shall be ent.i.tled to full civil and political rights as nationals of the Kingdom of---- in accordance with the foregoing stipulations.

Some slight modification of this paragraph will be required to meet the special circ.u.mstances of each case, as, for example, the omission of the reference to the Treaty of London in the case of Roumania, and perhaps, the insertion of the paragraph before the final _alinea_ of Article XLIV of the Treaty of Berlin instead of its addition to that Article.

In making this proposal we are chiefly actuated by a desire to obviate as far as may be possible a repet.i.tion in the territories annexed to the Kingdom of Roumania of the cruel evasion of Article XLIV of the Treaty of Berlin by which the native Jews of Roumania have hitherto been deprived of their civil and political rights. It will be within your recollection that this evasion was contrived by arbitrarily declaring all the native Jews to be _ipso facto_ foreigners and by submitting them in that capacity to harsh disabilities which, while apparently applicable to all foreigners, in reality only affected them. We are further impressed by the fact that Bulgaria, Servia and Greece have each acquired a considerable addition to their Jewish populations and, although we acknowledge most gratefully the fidelity with which those States have hitherto performed their obligation in regard to civil and religious liberty, we think it wise, in view of the evil precedent created by Roumania, to strengthen the hands of their rulers and statesmen by extending those obligations in the form we now suggest to the territories they have recently acquired.

Our aims will, we think, be attained by the formula suggested above without in any way enlarging the scope of the original stipulations, as those stipulations were understood by their authors and the majority of the States to which they have hitherto been applied. It is to be noted that a similar amendment of Article XLIV was actually suggested by the Italian representative, the Count de Launay, at the Berlin Congress, with a view to obviating the very evasion of the Treaty subsequently effected by Roumania, and it was only rejected by the Congress because it was desired to adopt an identic formula for all the Balkan States and because it was felt that the formula as it stood "parait de nature a concilier tous les interets en cause." (British and Foreign State Papers, vol. lxix. pp. 1058-9.)

Now that it has been shown that this antic.i.p.ation was illusory, we venture to hope that His Majesty's Government may see their way to realize the intentions of the Berlin Congress by suggesting to the Great Powers the amendment we have proposed, and that their recognition of the territorial changes in the Near East will be made conditional upon its adoption by all the annexing States, and more particularly by the Kingdom of Roumania.

We are, Sir,

Your most obedient humble servants,

DAVID L. ALEXANDER,

_President, London Committee of Deputies of British Jews_,

CLAUDE G. MONTEFIORE,

_President, Anglo-Jewish a.s.sociation_.

TO THE RIGHT HON. SIR EDWARD GREY, BART., M.P., K.G., ETC., ETC., ETC.

(For the humanitarian interventions on behalf of the Jews of Morocco see "The Conferences of Madrid and Algeciras," _infra_, pp. 88-99.)

(_i_) THE JEWISH QUESTION AND THE BALANCE OF POWER (1890 AND 1906).

It will be noted that none of the diplomatic interventions took cognizance of the ill-treatment of the Jews in Russia,[49] although until the recent Revolution it afforded, in magnitude and cruelty, the worst example of religious persecution known to modern Europe.[50] The cynical reason has already been indicated. But if international politics has affected to ignore the Jewish question in Russia, that question has not been without a very distinct influence on the evolution of the European international system. No survey of the Jewish problem in international politics would be complete without a reference to the curious part played by the Russo-Jewish question in the orientation of Russian policy which made for the alliance with France and through it for the Triple Entente. It is well known that even after the termination of the Russo-German secret treaty of mutual neutrality in 1890, the Tsar Alexander III remained for a long time reluctant to come to terms with Republican France. Towards the end of 1890 there was a fresh outbreak of official anti-Semitism in Russia, and the bitter cry of the persecuted Jews was heard all over Europe. At that moment it happened that negotiations for a large loan had been entered into by the Russian Treasury with the house of Rothschild, and a preliminary contract had actually been signed. As soon as the news of the persecutions reached New Court, Lord Rothschild resolved to break off the negotiations. At his instance, M. Wyshnigradski, the Russian Finance Minister, was informed by the Paris House that unless the oppression of the Jews were stopped they would be compelled to withdraw from the loan operation.

Deeply mortified by this attempt on the part of a Jewish banking firm to deal with him _de puissance a puissance_, the Tsar peremptorily cancelled the contract and ordered that overtures should be made to a non-Jewish French syndicate headed by M. Hoskier of Paris. Thus was forged the main financial link in the chain of common interests which soon after led to the Dual Alliance. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that one of the effects of the Alliance was to secure to the Tsar a much larger immunity from criticism in his persistent ill-treatment of the Jews.[51]

Fifteen years later the Jewish question also played a part in the curious Russo-German _rapprochement_ which nearly wrecked the Dual Alliance. Much light has been shed upon this incident by the recent publication of the late Tsar's secret correspondence with the German Emperor[52] and other Russian State doc.u.ments, notably a Memorandum on the Jewish question drawn up by Count Lamsdorf in January 1906.[53]

Negotiations for the adhesion of Russia to the Anglo-French Entente had been opened in the winter of 1903, but owing to the war with j.a.pan and the revolutionary outbreak in Russia the Tsar's views on the subject had changed. Worked on by the German Emperor, he imagined himself a victim of English intrigue, and he concluded with the Kaiser at Bjoerkoeon July 23, 1905, the bases of a new Triple Alliance to consist of Russia, Germany, and France. While the Treaty was still unratified certain reactionaries in Russia seized the opportunity of endeavouring to give it a specially anti-Jewish bias. On the one hand the bureaucracy had persuaded themselves that the Jews were the main authors of the October Revolution, and on the other Count Witte and his colleagues in the Cabinet were furious at the renewed rebuffs they had received at the hands of the House of Rothschild in their efforts to raise new loans on the Paris and London markets.[54] It was in these circ.u.mstances that Count Lamsdorf prepared a Memorandum proposing to the Tsar that an agreement should be concluded with Germany providing for the special _surveillance_ of Jewish activities on the lines of a secret Protocol which had been drawn up by the two Powers on March 14, 1904, for the similar _surveillance_ and extradition of Anarchists.[55] At the same time the Count suggested that the Pope should be asked to adhere to this new Holy Alliance. This strange proposal was approved by the Tsar, who ordered the immediate initiation of negotiations with the Wilhelmstra.s.se. In due course this instruction was acted upon,[56] but in the following May Count Lamsdorf fell, and with the entry of M.

Izvolsky into the Russian Foreign Office a new and saner direction was given to Russian Foreign policy. Nothing more was heard either of the Bjoerkoe Treaty or of the proposed Triple Alliance against the Jews.

DOc.u.mENT.

THE PROPOSED ANTI-SEMITIC TRIPLE ALLIANCE.

(The footnotes appended to the following doc.u.ment are those of Count Lamsdorf himself. Footnotes by the Editor will be found at the end.)

_Secret._