Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 2, Slice 2 Part 22

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was founded in 1780, and has the management of a large national antiquarian museum in Edinburgh. In Ireland a society was founded in 1849 called the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, holding its meetings at Kilkenny. In 1869 its name was changed to the Royal Historical and Archaeological a.s.sociation of Ireland, and in 1890 to the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, its office being transferred to Dublin. In France _La Societe Nationale des Antiquaires de France_ was formed in 1814 by the reconstruction of the _Academie Celtique_, which had existed since 1805. The American Antiquarian Society was founded in 1812, with its headquarters at Worcester, Ma.s.s.

It has a library of upwards of 100,000 volumes and its transactions have been published bi-annually since 1849. In Germany the _Gesamtverein der Deutschen Geschichtsund Altertumsvereine_ was founded in 1852. _La Societe Royale des Antiquaires du Nord_ at Copenhagen is among the best known of European antiquarian societies.

ANTIQUE (Lat. _antiquus_, old), a term conventionally restricted to the remains of ancient art, such as sculptures, gems, medals, seals, &c. In a limited sense it applies only to Greek and Roman art, and includes neither the artistic remains of other ancient nations nor any product of cla.s.sical art of a later date than the fall of the western empire.

ANTI-SEMITISM. In the political struggles of the concluding quarter of the 19th century an important part was played by a religious, political and social agitation against the Jews, known as "Anti-Semitism." The origins of this remarkable movement already threaten to become obscured by legend. The Jews contend that anti-Semitism is a mere atavistic revival of the Jew-hatred of the middle ages. The extreme section of the anti-Semites, who have given the movement its quasi-scientific name, declare that it is a racial struggle--an incident of the eternal conflict between Europe and Asia--and that the anti-Semites are engaged in an effort to prevent what is called the Aryan race from being subjugated by a Semitic immigration, and to save Aryan ideals from being modified by an alien and demoralizing oriental _Anschauung_. There is no essential foundation for either of these contentions. Religious prejudices reaching back to the dawn of history have been reawakened by the anti-Semitic agitation, but they did not originate it, and they have not entirely controlled it. The alleged racial divergence is, too, only a linguistic hypothesis on the physical evidence of which anthropologists are not agreed (Topinard, _Anthropologie_, p. 444; Taylor, _Origins of Aryans_, cap. i.), and, even if it were proved, it has existed in Europe for so many centuries, and so many ethnic modifications have occurred on both sides, that it cannot be accepted as a practical issue. It is true that the ethnographical histories of the Jews and the nations of Europe have proceeded on widely diverging lines, but these lines have more than once crossed each other and become interlaced. Thus Aryan elements are at the beginning of both; European morals have been ineradicably semitized by Christianity, and the Jews have been Europeans for over a thousand years, during which their character has been modified and in some respects transformed by the ecclesiastical and civil polities of the nations among whom they have made their permanent home. Anti-Semitism is then exclusively a question of European politics, and its origin is to be found, not in the long struggle between Europe and Asia, or between the Church and the Synagogue, which filled so much of ancient and medieval history, but in the social conditions resulting from the emanc.i.p.ation of the Jews in the middle of the 19th century.

If the emanc.i.p.ated Jews were Europeans in virtue of the antiquity of their western settlements, and of the character impressed upon them by the circ.u.mstances of their European history, they none the less presented the appearance of a strange people to their Gentile fellow-countrymen. They had been secluded in their ghettos for centuries, and had consequently acquired a physical and moral physiognomy differentiating them in a measure from their former oppressors. This peculiar physiognomy was, on its moral side, not essentially Jewish or even Semitic. It was an advanced development of the main attributes of civilized life, to which Christendom in its transition from feudalism had as yet only imperfectly adapted itself.

The ghetto, which had been designed as a sort of quarantine to safeguard Christendom against the Jewish heresy, had in fact proved a storage chamber for a portion of the political and social forces which were destined to sweep away the last traces of feudalism from central Europe.

In the ghetto, the pastoral Semite, who had been made a wanderer by the destruction of his nationality, was steadily trained, through centuries, to become an urban European, with all the parasitic activities of urban economics, and all the democratic tendencies of occidental industrialism. Excluded from the army, the land, the trade corporations and the artisan gilds, this quondam oriental peasant was gradually transformed into a commercial middleman and a practised dealer in money.

Oppressed by the Church, and persecuted by the State, his theocratic and monarchical traditions lost their hold on his daily life, and he became saturated with a pa.s.sionate devotion to the ideals of democratic politics. Finally, this former bucolic victim of Phoenician exploitation had his wits preternaturally sharpened, partly by the stress of his struggle for life, and partly by his being compelled in his urban seclusion to seek for recreation in literary exercises, chiefly the subtle dialectics of the Talmudists (Loeb, _Juif de l'histoire_; Jellinek, _Der Judische Stamm_). Thus, the Jew who emerged from the ghetto was no longer a Palestinian Semite, but an essentially modern European, who differed from his Christian fellow-countrymen only in the circ.u.mstances that his religion was of the older Semitic form, and that his physical type had become sharply defined through a slightly more rigid exclusiveness in the matter of marriages than that practised by Protestants and Roman Catholics (Andree, _Volkskunde der Juden_, p. 58).

Unfortunately, these distinctive elements, though not very serious in themselves, became strongly accentuated by concentration. Had it been possible to distribute the emanc.i.p.ated Jews uniformly throughout Christian society, as was the case with other emanc.i.p.ated religious denominations, there would have been no revival of the Jewish question.

The Jews, however, through no fault of their own, belonged to only one cla.s.s in European society--the industrial _bourgeoisie_. Into that cla.s.s all their strength was thrown, and owing to their ghetto preparation, they rapidly took a leading place in it, politically and socially. When the mid-century revolutions made the _bourgeoisie_ the ruling power in Europe, the semblance of a Hebrew domination presented itself. It was the exaggeration of this apparent domination, not by the _bourgeoisie_ itself, but by its enemies among the vanquished reactionaries on the one hand, and by the extreme Radicals on the other, which created modern anti-Semitism as a political force.

Germany.

The movement took its rise in Germany and Austria. Here the concentration of the Jews in one cla.s.s of the population was aggravated by their excessive numbers. While in France the proportion to the total population was, in the early'seventies, 0.14%, and in Italy, 0.12%, it was 1.22% in Germany, and 3.85% in Austria-Hungary; Berlin had 4.36% of Jews, and Vienna 6.62% (Andree, _Volkskunde_, pp. 287, 291, 294, 295).

The activity of the Jews consequently manifested itself in a far more intense form in these countries than elsewhere. This was apparent even before the emanc.i.p.ations of 1848. Towards the middle of the 18th century, a limited number of wealthy Jews had been tolerated as _Schutz-Juden_ outside the ghettos, and their sons, educated as Germans under the influence of Moses Mendelssohn and his school (see JEWS), supplied a majority of the leading spirits of the revolutionary agitation. To this period belong the formidable names of Ludwig Borne (1786-1837), Heinrich Heine (1799-1854), Edward Ganz (1798-1839), Gabriel Riesser (1806-1863), Ferdinand La.s.salle (1825-1864), Karl Marx (1818-1883), Moses Hess (1812-1875), Ignatz Kuranda (1811-1884), and Johann Jacobi (1805-1877). When the revolution was completed, and the Jews entered in a body the national life of Germany and Austria, they sustained this high average in all the intellectual branches of middle-cla.s.s activity. Here again, owing to the accidents of their history, a further concentration became apparent. Their activity was almost exclusively intellectual. The bulk of them flocked to the financial and the distributive (as distinct from the productive) fields of industry to which they had been confined in the ghettos. The sharpened faculties of the younger generation at the same time carried everything before them in the schools, with the result that they soon crowded the professions, especially medicine, law and journalism (Nossig, _Statistik des Jud. Stammes_, pp. 33-37; Jacobs, _Jew.

Statistics_, pp. 41-69). Thus the "Semitic domination," as it was afterwards called, became every day more strongly accentuated. If it was a long time in exciting resentment and jealousy, the reason was that it was in no sense alien to the new conditions of the national life. The compet.i.tion was a fair one. The Jews might be more successful than their Christian fellow-citizens, but it was in virtue of qualities which complied with the national standards of conduct. They were as law-abiding and patriotic as they were intelligent. Crime among them was far below the average (Nossig, p. 31). Their complete a.s.similation of the national spirit was brilliantly ill.u.s.trated by the achievements in German literature, art and science of such men as Heinrich Heine and Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882), Felix Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy) (1809-1847), and Jacob Meyerbeer (1794-1864), Karl Gustav Jacobi the mathematician (1804-1851), Gabriel Gustav Valentin the physiologist (1810-1883), and Moritz Lazarus (1824-1903) and Heymann Steinthal (1823-1899) the national psychologists. In politics, too, Edward Lasker (1829-1884) and Ludwig Bamberger (1823-1899) had shown how Jews could put their country before party, when, at the turning-point of German imperial history in 1866, they led the secession from the _Fortschritts-Partei_ and founded the National Liberal party, which enabled Prince Bismarck to accomplish German unity. Even their financiers were not behind their Christian fellow-citizens in patriotism. Prince Bismarck himself confessed that the money for carrying on the 1866 campaign was obtained from the Jewish banker Bleichroeder, in face of the refusal of the money-market to support the war. Hence the voice of the old Jew-hatred--for in a weak way it was still occasionally heard in obscurantist corners--was shamed into silence, and it was only in the European twilight--in Russia and Rumania--and in lands where medievalism still lingered, such as northern Africa and Persia, that oppression and persecution continued to dog the steps of the Jews.

The signal for the change came in 1873, and was given unconsciously by one of the most distinguished Jews of his time, Edward Lasker, the gifted lieutenant of Bennigsen in the leaders.h.i.+p of the National Liberal party. The unification of Germany in 1870, and the rapid payment of the enormous French war indemnity, had given an unprecedented impulse to industrial and financial activity throughout the empire. Money became cheap and speculation universal. A company mania set in which was favoured by the government, who granted railway and other concessions with a prodigal hand. The inevitable result of this state of things was first indicated by Jewish politicians and economists. On the 14th of January 1873, Edward Lasker called the attention of the Prussian diet to the dangers of the situation, while his colleague, Ludwig Bamberger, in an able article in the _Preussischen Jahrbucher_, condemned the policy which had permitted the milliards to glut the country instead of being paid on a plan which would have facilitated their gradual digestion by the economic machinery of the nation. Deeply impressed by the gravity of the impending crisis, Lasker inst.i.tuted a searching inquiry, with the result that he discovered a series of grave company scandals in which financial promoters and aristocratic directors were chiefly involved.

Undeterred by the fact that the leading spirit in these abuses, Bethel Henry Strousberg (1823-1884), was a Jew, Lasker presented the results of his inquiry to the diet on the 7th of February 1873, in a speech of great power and full of sensational disclosures. The dramatic results of this speech need not be dwelt upon here (for details see Blum, _Das deutsche Reich zur Zelt Bismarcks_, pp. 153-181). It must suffice to say that in the following May the great Vienna "Krach" occurred, and the colossal bubble of speculation burst, bringing with it all the ruin foretold by Lasker and Bamberger. From the position occupied by the Jews in the commercial cla.s.s, and especially in the financial section of that cla.s.s, it was inevitable that a considerable number of them should figure in the scandals which followed. At this moment an obscure Hamburg journalist, Wilhelm Marr, who as far back as 1862 had printed a still-born tract against the Jews (_Judenspiegel_), published a sensational pamphlet ent.i.tled _Der Sieg des Judenthums uber das Germanthum_ ("The Victory of Judaism over Germanism"). The book fell upon fruitful soil. It applied to the nascent controversy a theory of nationality which, under the great sponsors.h.i.+p of Hegel, had seized on the minds of the German youth, and to which the stirring events of 1870 had already given a deep practical significance. The state, according to the Hegelians, should be rational, and the nation should be a unit comprising individuals speaking the same language and of the same racial origin. Heterogeneous elements might be absorbed, but if they could not be reduced to the national type they should be eliminated. This was the pseudo-scientific note of the new anti-Semitism, the theory which differentiated it from the old religious Jew-hatred and sought to give it a rational place in modern thought. Marr's pamphlet, which reviewed the facts of the Jewish social concentration without noticing their essentially transitional character, proved the pioneer of this teaching.

It was, however, in the pa.s.sions of party politics that the new crusade found its chief sources of vitality. The enemies of the _bourgeoisie_ at once saw that the movement was calculated to discredit and weaken the school of Manchester Liberalism, then in the ascendant. Agrarian capitalism, which had been dethroned by industrial capitalism in 1848, and had burnt its fingers in 1873, seized the opportunity of paying off old scores. The clericals, smarting under the _Kutlturkampj_, which was supported by the whole body of Jewish liberalism, joined eagerly in the new cry. In 1876 another sensational pamphlet was published, Otto Glogau's _Die Borsen und Grundergeschwindel in Berlin_ ("The Bourses and the Company Swindles in Berlin"), dealing in detail with the Jewish partic.i.p.ation in the scandals first revealed by Lasker. The agitation gradually swelled, its growth being helped by the sensitiveness and _cacoethes scribendi_ of the Jews themselves, who contributed two pamphlets and a much larger proportion of newspaper articles for every one supplied by their opponents (Jacobs. _Bibliog. Jew. Question_, p.

xi.). Up to 1879, however, it was more of a literary than a political agitation, and was generally regarded only as an ephemeral craze or a pa.s.sing spasm of popular pa.s.sion.

Towards the end of 1879 it spread with sudden fury over the whole of Germany. This outburst, at a moment when no new financial scandals or other ill.u.s.trations of Semitic demoralization and domination were before the public, has never been fully explained. It is impossible to doubt, however, that the secret springs of the new agitation were more or less directly supplied by Prince Bismarck himself. Since 1877 the relations between the chancellor and the National Liberals had gradually become strained. The deficit in the budget had compelled the government to think of new taxes, and in order to carry them through the Reichstag the support of the National Liberals had been solicited. Until then the National Liberals had faithfully supported the chancellor in nursing the consolidation of the new empire, but the great dream of its leaders, especially of Lasker and Bamberger, who had learnt their politics in England, was to obtain a const.i.tutional and economic _regime_ similar to that of the British Isles. The organization of German unity was now completed, and they regarded the new overtures of Prince Bismarck as an opportunity for pressing their const.i.tutional demands. These were refused, the Reichstag was dissolved and Prince Bismarck boldly came forward with a new fiscal policy, a combination of protection and state socialism. Lasker and Bamberger thereupon led a powerful secession of National Liberals into opposition, and the chancellor was compelled to seek a new majority among the ultra-Conservatives and the Roman Catholic Centre. This was the beginning of the famous "journey to Canossa."

Bismarck did not hide his mortification. He began to recognize in anti-Semitism a means of "dis.h.i.+ng" the Judaized liberals, and to his creatures who a.s.sisted him in his press campaigns he dropped significant hints in this sense (Busch, _Bismarck_, ii. 453-454, iii. 16). He even spoke of a new _Kulturkampf_ against the Jews (_ibid_. ii. p. 484). How these hints were acted upon has not been revealed, but it is sufficiently instructive to notice that the final breach with the National Liberals took place in July 1879, and that it was immediately followed by a violent revival of the anti-Semitic agitation. Marr's pamphlet was reprinted, and within a few months ran through nine further editions. The historian Treitschke gave the sanction of his great name to the movement. The Conservative and Ultramontane press rang with the sins of the Jews. In October an anti-Semitic league was founded in Berlin and Dresden (for statutes of the league see _Nineteenth Century_, February 1881, p. 344).

The leaders.h.i.+p of the agitation was now definitely a.s.sumed by a man who combined with social influence, oratorical power and inexhaustible energy, a definite scheme of social regeneration and an organization for carrying it out. This man was Adolf Stocker (b. 1835), one of the court preachers. He had embraced the doctrines of Christian socialism which the Roman Catholics, under the guidance of Archbishop Ketteler, had adopted from the teachings of the Jew La.s.salle (Nitti, _Catholic Socialism_, pp. 94-96, 122, 127), and he had formed a society called "The Christian Social Working-man's Union." He was also a conspicuous member of the Prussian diet, where he sat and voted with the Conservatives. He found himself in strong sympathy with Prince Bismarck's new economic policy, which, although also of La.s.sallian origin (Kohut, _Ferdinand La.s.salle_, pp. 144 et seq.), was claimed by its author as being essentially Christian (Busch, p. 483). Under his auspices the years 1880-1881 became a period of bitter and scandalous conflict with the Jews. The Conservatives supported him, partly to satisfy their old grudges against the Liberal _bourgeoisie_ and partly because Christian Socialism, with its anti-Semitic appeal to ignorant prejudice, was likely to weaken the hold of the Social Democrats on the lower cla.s.ses. The Lutheran clergy followed suit, in order to prevent the Roman Catholics from obtaining a monopoly of Christian Socialism, while the Ultramontanes readily adopted anti-Semitism, partly to maintain their monopoly, and partly to avenge themselves on the Jewish and Liberal supporters of the _Kulturkampf_. In this way a formidable body of public opinion was recruited for the anti-Semites. Violent debates took place in the Prussian diet. A pet.i.tion to exclude the Jews from the national schools and universities and to disable them from holding public appointments was presented to Prince Bismarck. Jews were boycotted and insulted. Duels between Jews and anti-Semites, many of them fatal, became of daily occurrence. Even unruly demonstrations and street riots were reported. Pamphlets attacking every phase and aspect of Jewish life streamed by the hundred from the printing-press. On their side the Jews did not want for friends, and it was owing to the strong att.i.tude adopted by the Liberals that the agitation failed to secure legislative fruition. The crown prince (afterwards Emperor Frederick) and crown princess boldly set themselves at the head of the party of protest. The crown prince publicly declared that the agitation was "a shame and a disgrace to Germany." A manifesto denouncing the movement as a blot on German culture, a danger to German unity and a flagrant injustice to the Jews themselves, was signed by a long list of ill.u.s.trious men, including Herr von Forckenbeck, Professors Mommsen, Gneist, Droysen, Virchow, and Dr Werner Siemens (_Times_, November 18, 1880). During the Reichstag elections of 1881 the agitation played an active part, but without much effect, although Stocker was elected. This was due to the fact that the great Conservative parties, so far as their political organizations were concerned, still remained chary of publicly identifying themselves with a movement which, in its essence, was of socialistic tendency. Hence the electoral returns of that year supplied no sure guide to the strength of anti-Semitic opinion among the German people.

The first severe blow suffered by the German anti-Semites was in 1881, when, to the indignation of the whole civilized world, the barbarous riots against the Jews in Russia and the revival of the medieval Blood Accusation in Hungary (see _infra_) ill.u.s.trated the liability of unreasoning mobs to carry into violent practice the incendiary doctrines of the new Jew-haters. From this blow anti-Semitism might have recovered had it not been for the divisions and scandals in its own ranks, and the artificial forms it subsequently a.s.sumed through fact.i.tious alliances with political parties bent less on persecuting the Jews than on profiting by the anti-Jewish agitation. The divisions showed themselves at the first attempt to form a political party on an anti-Semitic basis.

Imperceptibly the agitators had grouped themselves into two cla.s.ses, economic and ethnological anti-Semites. The impracticable racial views of Marr and Treitschke had not found favour with Stocker and the Christian Socialists. They were disposed to leave the Jews in peace so long as they behaved themselves properly, and although they carried on their agitation against Jewish malpractices in a comprehensive form which seemed superficially to identify them with the root-and-branch anti-Semites, they were in reality not inclined to accept the racial theory with its scheme of revived Jewish disabilities (Huret, _La Question Sociale_--interview with Stocker). This feeling was strengthened by a tendency on the part of an extreme wing of the racial anti-Semites to extend their campaign against Judaism to its offspring, Christianity. In 1879 Professor Sepp, arguing that Jesus was of no human race, had proposed that Christianity should reject the Hebrew Scriptures and seek a fresh historical basis in the cuneiform inscriptions. Later Dr Eugen Dubring, in several brochures, notably _Die Judenfrage als Frage des Ra.s.sencharakters_ (1881, 5th ed. Berlin, 1901), had attacked Christianity as a manifestation of the Semitic spirit which was not compatible with the theological and ethical conceptions of the Scandinavian peoples. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had also adopted the same view, without noticing that it was a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the whole agitation, in his _Menschliches, Allzumenschliches_ (1878), _Jenseits von Gut und Bose_ (1886), _Genealogie der Moral_ (1887). With these tendencies the Christian Socialists could have no sympathy, and the consequence was that when in March 1881 a political organization of anti-Semitism was attempted, two rival bodies were created, the "Deutsche Volksverein," under the Conservative auspices of Herr Liebermann von Sonnenberg (b. 1848) and Herr Forster, and the "Sociale Reichsverein," led by the racial and Radical anti-Semites, Ernst Henrici (b. 1854) and Otto Bockel (b. 1859).

In 1886, at an anti-Semitic congress held at Ca.s.sel a reunion was effected under the name of the "Deutsche antisemitische Verein," but this only lasted three years. In June 1889 the anti-Semitic Christian Socialists under Stocker again seceded.

Meanwhile racial anti-Semitism with its wholesale radical proposals had been making considerable progress among the ignorant lower cla.s.ses. It adapted itself better to popular pa.s.sions and inherited prejudice than the more academic conceptions of the Christian Socialists. The latter, too, were largely Conservatives, and their points of contact with the proletariat were at best artificial. Among the Hessian peasantry the inflammatory appeals of Bockel secured many adherents. This paved the way for a new anti-Semitic leader, Herrmann Ahlwardt (b. 1846), who, towards the end of the 'eighties, eclipsed all the other anti-Semites by the sensationalism and violence with which he prosecuted the campaign.

Ahlwardt was a person of evil notoriety. He was loaded with debt. In the Manche decoration scandals it was proved that he had acted first as a corrupt intermediary and afterwards as the betrayer of his confederates.

His anti-Semitism was adopted originally as a means of _chantage_, and it was only when it failed to yield profit in this form that he came out boldly as an agitator. The wildness, unscrupulousness, and full-bloodedness of his propaganda enchanted the mob, and he bid fair to become a powerful democratic leader. His pamphlets, full of scandalous revelations of alleged malpractices of eminent Jews, were read with avidity. No fewer than ten of them were written and published during 1892. Over and over again he was prosecuted for libel and convicted, but this seemed only to strengthen his influence with his followers. The Roman Catholic clergy and newspapers helped to inflame the popular pa.s.sions. The result was that anti-Jewish riots broke out. At Neustettin the Jewish synagogue was burnt, and at Xanten the Blood Accusation was revived, and a Jewish butcher was tried on the ancient charge of murdering a Christian child for ritual purposes. The man was, of course, acquitted, but the symptoms it revealed of reviving medievalism strongly stirred the liberal and cultured mind of Germany. All protest, however, seemed powerless, and the barbarian movement appeared destined to carry everything before it.

German politics at this moment were in a very intricate state. Prince Bismarck had retired, and Count Caprivi, with a programme of general conciliation based on Liberal principles, was in power. Alarmed by the non-renewal of the anti-Socialist law, and by the conclusion of commercial treaties which made great concessions to German industry, the landed gentry and the Conservative party became alienated from the new chancellor. In January 1892 the split was completed by the withdrawal by the government of the Primary Education bill, which had been designed to place primary instruction on a religious basis. The Conservatives saw their opportunity of posing as the party of Christianity against the Liberals and Socialists, who had wrecked the bill, and they began to look towards Ahlwardt as a possible ally. He had the advantages over Stocker that he was not a Socialist, and that he was prepared to lead his apparently large following to a.s.sist the agrarian movement and weaken the Social Democrats. The intrigue gradually came to light.

Towards the end of the year Herr Liebknecht, the Social Democratic leader, denounced the Conservatives to the Reichstag as being concerned "in using the anti-Semitic movement as a b.a.s.t.a.r.d edition of Socialism for the use of stupid people." (1st December). Two days later the charge was confirmed. At a meeting of the party held on the 3rd of December the following plank was added to the Conservative programme: "We combat the oppressive and disintegrating Jewish influence on our national life; we demand for our Christian people a Christian magistracy and Christian teachers for Christian pupils; we repudiate the excesses of anti-Semitism." In pursuance of the resolution Ahlwardt was returned to the Reichstag at a by-election by the Conservative district of Arnswalde-Friedeberg. The coalition was, however, not yet completed. The intransigeant Conservatives, led by Baron von Hammerstein, the editor of the _Kreuz-Zeitung_, justly felt that the concluding sentence of the resolution of the 3rd of December repudiating "the excesses of anti-Semitism" was calculated to hinder a full and loyal co-operation between the two parties. Accordingly on the 9th of December another meeting of the party was summoned. Twelve hundred members met at the Tivoli Hall in Berlin, and with only seven dissentients solemnly expunged the offending sentence from the resolution. The history of political parties may be searched in vain for a parallel to this discreditable transaction.

The capture of the Conservative party proved the high-water mark of German anti-Semitism. From that moment the tide began to recede. All that was best in German national life was scandalized by the cynical tactics of the Conservatives. The emperor, strong Christian though he was, was shocked at the idea of serving Christianity by a compact with unscrupulous demagogues and ignorant fanatics. Prince Bismarck growled out a stinging sarcasm from his retreat at Friedrichsruh. Even Stocker raised his voice in protest against the "Ahlwardtismus" and "Bockelianismus," and called upon his Conservative colleagues to distinguish between "respectable and disreputable anti-Semitism." As for the Liberals and Socialists, they filled the air with bitter laughter, and declared from the housetops that the stupid party had at last been overwhelmed by its own stupidity. The Conservatives began to suspect that they had made a false step, and they were confirmed in this belief by the conduct of their new ally in the Reichstag. His debut in parliament was the signal for a succession of disgraceful scenes. His whole campaign of calumny was transferred to the floor of the house, and for some weeks the Reichstag discussed little else than his so-called revelations. The Conservatives listened to his wild charges in uncomfortable silence, and refused to support him. Stocker opposed him in a violent speech. The Radicals and Socialists, taking an accurate measure of the shallow vanity of the man, adopted the policy of giving him "enough rope." Shortly after his election he was condemned to five months' imprisonment for libel, and he would have been arrested but for the interposition of the Socialist party, including five Jews, who claimed for him the immunities of a member of parliament. When he moved for a commission to inquire into his revelations, it was again the Socialist party which supported him, with the result that all his charges, without exception, were found to be absolutely baseless.

Ahlwardt was covered with ridicule, and when in May the Reichstag was dissolved, he was marched off to prison to undergo the sentence for libel from which his parliamentary privilege had up to that moment protected him.

His hold on the anti-Semitic populace was, however, not diminished. On the contrary, the action of the Conservatives at the Tivoli congress could not be at once eradicated from the minds of the Conservative voters, and when the electoral campaign began it was found impossible to explain to them that the party leaders had changed their minds. The result was that Ahlwardt, although in prison, was elected by two const.i.tuencies. At Arnswalde-Friedeberg he was returned in the teeth of the opposition of the official Conservatives, and at Neustettin he defeated no less a person than his anti-Semitic opponent Stocker.

Fifteen other anti-Semites, all of the Ahlwardtian school, were elected.

This, however, represented little in the way of political influence; for henceforth the party had to stand alone as one of the many minor factions in the Reichstag, avoided by all the great parties, and too weak to exercise any influence on the main course of affairs.

During the subsequent seven years it became more and more discredited.

The financial scandals connected with Forster's attempt to found a Christian Socialist colony in Paraguay, the conviction of Baron von Hammerstein, the anti-Semitic Conservative leader, for forgery and swindling (1895-1896), and several minor scandals of the same unsavoury character, covered the party with the very obloquy which it had attempted to attach to the Jews. At the same time the Christian Socialists who had remained with the Conservative party also suffered.

After the elections of 1893, Stocker was dismissed from his post of court preacher, and publicly reprimanded for speaking familiarly of the empress. Two years later the Christian Socialist, Pastor Neumann, observing the tendency of the Conservatives to coalesce with the moderate Liberals in antagonism to Social Democracy, declared against the Conservative party. The following year the emperor publicly condemned Christian Socialism and the "political pastors," and Stocker was expelled from the Conservative party for refusing to modify the socialistic propanganda of his organ, _Das Volk_. His fall was completed by a quarrel with the Evangelical Social Union. He left the Union and appealed to the Lutheran clergy to found a new church social organization, but met with no response. Another blow to anti-Semitism came from the Roman Catholics. They had become alarmed by the unbridled violence of the Ahlwardtians, and when in 1894 Forster declared in an address to the German anti-Semitic Union that anarchical outrages like the murder of President Carnot were as much due to the "Anarchismus von oben" as the "Anarchismus von unten," the Ultramontane _Germania_ publicly washed its hands of the Jew-baiters (1st of July 1894). Thus gradually German anti-Semitism became stripped of every advent.i.tious alliance; and at the general election of 1898 it only managed to return twelve members to the Reichstag, and in 1903 its party strength fell to nine. A remarkable revival in its fortunes, however, took place between 1905 and 1907. Identifying itself with the extreme Chauvinists and Anglophobes it profited by the anti-national errors of the Clericals and Socialists, and won no fewer than twelve by-elections. At the general election of 1907 its jingoism and aggressive Protestantism were rewarded with twenty-five seats. It is clear, however, from the figures of the second ballots that these successes owed far more to the tendencies of the party in the field of general politics than to its anti-Semitism.

Indeed the specifically anti-Semitic movement has shown little activity since 1893.

The causes of the decline of German anti-Semitism are not difficult to determine. While it remained a theory of nationality and a fad of the metaphysicians, it made considerable noise in the world, but without exercising much practical influence. When it attempted to play an active part in politics it became submerged by the ignorant and superst.i.tious voters, who could not understand its scientific justification, but who were quite ready to declaim and riot against the Jew bogey. It thus became a sort of Jacquerie which, being exploited by unscrupulous demagogues, soon alienated all its respectable elements. Its moments of real importance have been due not to inherent strength but to the uses made of it by other political parties for their own purposes. These coalitions are no longer of perilous significance so far as the Jews are concerned, chiefly because, in face of the menace of democratic socialism and its unholy alliance with the Roman Catholic Centrum, all supporters of the present organization of society have found it necessary to sink their differences. The new social struggle has eclipsed the racial theory of nationality. The Social Democrat became the enemy, and the new reaction counted on the support of the rich Jews and the strongly individualist Jewish middle cla.s.s to a.s.sist it in preserving the existing social structure. Hence in Prince Billow's "Bloc" (1908) anti-Semites figured side by side with Judeophil Radicals.

Russia.

More serious have been the effects of German anti-Semitic teachings on the political and social life of the countries adjacent to the empire--Russia, Austria and France. In Russia these effects were first seriously felt owing to the fury of autocratic reaction to which the tragic death of the tsar Alexander II. gave rise. This, however, like the Strousberg _Krach_ in Germany, was only the proximate cause of the outbreak. There were other elements which had created a _milieu_ peculiarly favourable to the transplantation of the German craze. In the first place the medieval anti-Semitism was still an integral part of the polity of the empire. The Jews were cooped up in one huge ghetto in the western provinces, "marked out to all their fellow-countrymen as aliens, and a pariah caste set apart for special and degrading treatment"

(_Persecution of the Jews in Russia_, 1891, p.5). In the next place, owing to the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs which had half ruined the landowners, while creating a free but moneyless peasantry, the Jews, who could be neither n.o.bles nor peasants, had found a vocation as money-lenders and as middlemen between the grain producers, and the grain consumers and exporters. There is no evidence that this function was performed, as a rule, in an exorbitant or oppressive way. On the contrary, the fall in the value of cereals on all the provincial markets, after the riots of 1881, shows that the Jewish compet.i.tion had previously a.s.sured full prices to the farmers (Schwabacher, _Denkschrift_, 1882, p. 27). Nevertheless, the Jewish activity or "exploitation," as it was called, was resented, and the ill-feeling it caused among landowners and farmers was shared by non-Jewish middlemen and merchants who had thereby been compelled to be satisfied with small profits. Still there was but little thought of seeking a remedy in an organized anti-Jewish movement. On the contrary, the abnormal situation aggravated by the disappointments and depression caused by the Turkish war, had stimulated a widespread demand for const.i.tutional changes which would enable the people to adopt a state-machinery more exactly suited to their needs. Among the peasantry this demand was promoted and fomented by the Nihilists, and among the landowners it was largely adopted as a means of checking what threatened to become a new Jacquerie (Walcker, _Gegertwartige Lage Russlands_, 1873; _Innere Krisis Russlands_, 1876). The tsar, Alexander II., strongly sympathized with this movement, and on the advice of Count Loris-Melikov and the council of ministers a rudimentary scheme of parliamentary government had been drafted and actually signed when the emperor was a.s.sa.s.sinated. Meanwhile a nationalist and reactionary agitation, originating like its German a.n.a.logue in the Hegelianism of a section of the lettered public, had manifested itself in Moscow. After some early vicissitudes, it had been organized, under the auspices of Alexis Kireiev, Chomyakov, Aksakov and Kochelev, into the Slavophil party, with a Romanticist programme of reforms based on the old traditions of the pre-Petrine epoch. This party gave a great impetus to Slav nationalism. Its final possibilities were sanguinarily ill.u.s.trated by Muraviev's campaign in Poland in 1863, and in the war against Turkey in 1877, which was exclusively its handiwork (Statement by General Kireiev: Schutz, _Das heutige Russland_, p. 104).

After the a.s.sa.s.sination of Alexander II. the Slavophil teaching, as expounded by Ignatiev and Pobedonostsev, became paramount in the government, and the new tsar was persuaded to cancel the const.i.tutional project of his father. The more liberal views of a section of the Slavophils under Aksakov, who had been in favour of representative inst.i.tutions on traditional lines, were displaced by the reactionary system of Pobedonostsev, who took his stand on absolutism, orthodoxy and the racial unity of the Russian people. This was the situation on the eve of Easter 1881. The hardening nationalism above, the increasing discontent below, the economic activity of the Hebrew heretics and aliens, and the echoes of anti-Semitism from over the western border were combining for an explosion.

A scuffle in a tavern at Elisabethgrad in Kherson sufficed to ignite this combustible material. The scuffle grew into a riot, the tavern was sacked, and the drunken mob, hounded on by agitators who declared that the Jews were using Christian blood for the manufacture of their Easter bread, attacked and looted the Jewish quarter. The outbreak spread rapidly. On the 7th of May there was a similar riot at Smiela, near Cherkasy, and the following day there was a violent outbreak at Kiev, which left 2000 Jews homeless. Within a few weeks the whole of western Russia, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, was smoking with the ruins of Jewish homes. Scores of Jewish women were dishonoured, hundreds of men, women and children were slaughtered, and tens of thousands were reduced to beggary and left without a shelter. Murderous riots or incendiary outrages took place in no fewer than 167 towns and villages, including Warsaw, Odessa and Kiev. Europe had witnessed no such scenes of mob savagery since the Black Death ma.s.sacres in the 14th century. As the facts gradually filtered through to the western capitals they caused a thrill of horror everywhere. An indignation meeting held at the Mansion House in London, under the presidency of the lord mayor, was the signal for a long series of popular demonstrations condemning the persecutions, held in most of the chief cities of England and the continent.

Except as stimulated by the Judeophobe revival in Germany the Russian outbreak in its earlier forms does not belong specifically to modern anti-Semitism. It was essentially a medieval uprising animated by the religious fanaticism, gross superst.i.tion and predatory instincts of a people still in the medieval stage of their development. This is proved by the fact that, although the Russian peasant was supposed to be a victim of unbearable Jewish "exploitation," he was not moved to riot until he had been brutalized by drink and excited by the old fable of the Blood Accusation. The modern anti-Semitic element came from above and followed closely on the heels of the riots. It has been freely charged against the Russian government that it promoted the riots in 1881 in order to distract popular attention from the Nihilist propaganda and from the political disappointments involved in the cancellation of the previous tsar's const.i.tutional project (Lazare, _L'Antisemitisme_, p. 211). This seems to be true of General Ignatiev, then minister of the interior, and the secret police (s.e.m.e.noff, _The Russian Government and the Ma.s.sacres_, pp. 17, 32, 241). It is certain that the local authorities, both civil and military, favoured the outbreak, and took no steps to suppress it, and that the feudal bureaucracy who had just escaped a great danger were not sorry to see the discontented populace venting their pa.s.sions on the Jews. In the higher circles of the government, however, other views prevailed. The tsar himself was at first persuaded that the riots were the work of Nihilists, and he publicly promised his protection to the Jews. On the other hand, his ministers, ardent Slavophils, thought they recognized in the outbreak an endors.e.m.e.nt of the nationalist teaching of which they were the apostles, and, while reprobating the acts of violence, came to the conclusion that the most reasonable solution was to aggravate the legal disabilities of the persecuted aliens and heretics. To this view the tsar was won over, partly by the clamorous indignation of western Europe, which had wounded his national _amour propre_ to the quick, and partly by the strongly partisan report of a commission appointed to inquire, not into the administrative complaisance which had allowed riot to run loose over the western and southern provinces, but into the "exploitation" alleged against the Jews, the reasons why "the former laws limiting the rights of the Jews" had been mitigated, and how these laws could be altered so as "to stop the pernicious conduct of the Jews" (Rescript of the 3rd of September 1881). The result of this report was the drafting of a "Temporary Order concerning the Jews" by the minister of the interior, which received the a.s.sent of the tsar on the 3rd of May 1882. This order, which was so little temporary that it has not yet been repealed, had the effect of creating a number of fresh ghettos within the pale of Jewish settlement. The Jews were cooped up within the towns, and their rural interests were arbitrarily confiscated. The doubtful incidence of the order gave rise to a number of judgments of the senate, by which all its persecuting possibilities were brought out, with the result that the activities of the Jews were completely paralysed, and they became a prey to unparalleled cruelty. As the gruesome effect of this legislation became known, a fresh outburst of horror and indignation swelled up from western Europe. It proved powerless. Count Ignatiev was dismissed owing to the protests of high-placed Russians, who were disgusted by the new _Kulturkampf_, but his work remained, and, under the influence of Pobedonostsev, the procurator of the Holy Synod, the policy of the "May Laws," as they were significantly called, was applied to every aspect of Jewish life with pitiless rigour. The temper of the tsar may be judged by the fact that when an appeal for mercy from an ill.u.s.trious personage in England was conveyed to him at Fredensborg through the gracious medium of the tsaritsa, he angrily exclaimed within the hearing of an Englishman in the ante-room who was the bearer of the message, "Never let me hear you mention the name of that people again!"

The Russian May Laws are the most conspicuous legislative monument achieved by modern anti-Semitism. It is true that they re-enacted regulations which resemble the oppressive statutes introduced into Poland through the influence of the Jesuits in the 16th century (Sternberg, _Gesch. d. Juden in Polen_, pp. 141 et seq.), but their Orthodox authors were as little conscious of this irony of history as they were of the Teutonic origins of the whole Slavophil movement. These laws are an experimental application of the political principles extracted by Marr and his German disciples from the metaphysics of Hegel, and as such they afford a valuable means of testing the practical operation of modern anti-Semitism. Their result was a widespread commercial depression which was felt all over the empire. Even before the May Laws were definitely promulgated the pa.s.sport registers showed that the anti-Semitic movement had driven 67,900 Jews across the frontier, and it was estimated that they had taken with them 13,000,000 roubles, representing a minimum loss of 60,000,000 roubles to the annual turnover of the country's trade. Towards the end of 1882 it was calculated that the agitation had cost Russia as much as the whole Turkish war of 1877. Trade was everywhere paralysed. The enormous increase of bankruptcies, the transfer of investments to foreign funds, the consequent fall in the value of the rouble and the prices of Russian stocks, the suspension of farming operations owing to advances on growing crops being no longer available, the rise in the prices of the necessaries of life, and lastly, the appearance of famine, filled half the empire with gloom. Banks closed their doors, and the great provincial fairs proved failures. When it was proposed to expel the Jews from Moscow there was a loud outcry all over the sacred city, and even the Orthodox merchants, realizing that the measure would ruin their flouris.h.i.+ng trade with the south and west, pet.i.tioned against it. The Moscow Exhibition proved a failure. Nevertheless the government persisted with its harsh policy, and Jewish refugees streamed by tens of thousands across the western frontier to seek an asylum in other lands.

In 1891 the alarm caused by this emigration led to further protests from abroad. The citizens of London again a.s.sembled at Guildhall, and addressed a pet.i.tion to the tsar on behalf of his Hebrew subjects. It was handed back to the lord mayor by the Russian amba.s.sador, with a curt intimation that the emperor declined to receive it. At the same time orders were defiantly given that the May Laws should be strictly enforced. Meanwhile the Russian minister of finance was at his wits'

ends for money. Negotiations for a large loan had been entered upon with the house of Rothschild, and a preliminary contract had been signed, when, at the instance of the London firm, M. Wyshnigradski, the finance minister, was informed that unless the persecutions of the Jews were stopped the great banking-house would be compelled to withdraw from the operation. Deeply mortified by this attempt to deal with him _de puissance a puissance_, the tsar peremptorily broke off the negotiations, and ordered that overtures should be made to a non-Jewish French syndicate. In this way anti-Semitism, which had already so profoundly influenced the domestic politics of Europe, set its mark on the international relations of the powers, for it was the urgent need of the Russian treasury quite as much as the termination of Prince Bismarck's secret treaty of mutual neutrality which brought about the Franco-Russian alliance (Daudet, _Hist. Dipl. de l'Alliance Franco-Russe_, pp. 259 et. seq.).

For nearly three years more the persecutions continued. Elated by the success of his crusade against the Jews, Pobedonostsev extended his persecuting policy to other non-Orthodox denominations. The legislation against the Protestant Stundists became almost as unbearable as that imposed on the Jews. In the report of the Holy Synod, presented to the tsar towards the end of 1893, the procurator called for repressive measures against Roman Catholics, Moslems and Buddhists, and denounced the rationalist tendency of the whole system of secular education in the empire (_Neue Freie Presse_, 31st January 1894). A year later, however, the tsar died, and his successor, without repealing any of the persecuting laws, let it gradually be understood that their rigorous application might be mitigated. The country was tired and exhausted by the persecution, and the tolerant hints which came from high quarters were acted upon with significant alacrity.

A new era of conflict dawned with the great const.i.tutional struggle towards the end of the century. The conditions, however, were very different from those which prevailed in the 'eighties. The May Laws had avenged themselves with singular fitness. By confining the Jews to the towns at the very moment that Count Witte's policy of protection was creating an enormous industrial proletariat they placed at the disposal of the disaffected ma.s.ses an ally powerful in numbers and intelligence, and especially in its bitter sense of wrong, its reckless despair and its cosmopolitan outlook and connexions. As early as 1885 the Jewish workmen a.s.sisted by Jewish university students led the way in the formation of trades unions. They also became the _colporteurs_ of western European socialism, and they played an important part in the organization of the Russian Social Democratic Federation which their "Arbeiter Bund" joined in 1898 with no fewer than 30,000 members. The Jewish element in the new democratic movement excited the resentment of the government, and under the minister of the interior, M. Sipiaguine, the persecuting laws were once more rigorously enforced. The "Bund"

replied in 1901 by proclaiming itself frankly political and revolutionary, and at once took a leading place in the revolutionary movement. The reactionaries were not slow to profit by this circ.u.mstance. With the support of M. Plehve, the new minister of the interior, and the whole of the bureaucratic cla.s.s they denounced the revolution as a Jewish conspiracy, engineered for exclusively Jewish purposes and designed to establish a Jewish domination over the Russian people. The government and even the intimates of the tsar became persuaded that only by the terrorization of the Jews could the revolutionary movement be effectually dealt with. For this purpose a so-called League of True Russians was formed. Under high patronage, and with the a.s.sistance of the secret police and a large number of the local authorities, it set itself to stir up the populace, chiefly the fanatics and the hooligans, against the Jews. Incendiary proclamations were prepared and printed in the ministry of the interior itself, and were circulated by the provincial governors and the police (Prince Urussov's speech in the Duma, June 8 (21), 1906). The result was another series of ma.s.sacres which began at Kis.h.i.+nev in 1903 and culminated in wholesale butchery at Odessa and Bielostok in October 1905. An attempt was made to picture and excuse these outbreaks as a national upheaval against the Jew-made revolution but it failed. They only embittered the revolutionists and "intellectuals" throughout the country, and won for them a great deal of outspoken sympathy abroad. The artificiality of the anti-Jewish outbreak was ill.u.s.trated by the first Duma elections.

Thirteen Jews were elected and every const.i.tuency which had been the scene of a _pogrom_ returned a liberal member. Unfortunately the Jews benefited little by the new parliamentary const.i.tution. The privileges of voting for members of the Duma and of sitting in the new a.s.sembly were granted them, but all their civil and religious disabilities were maintained. Both the first and the second Duma proposed to emanc.i.p.ate them, but they were dissolved before any action could be taken. By the modification of the electoral law under which the third Duma was elected the voting power of the Jews was diminished and further restrictions were imposed upon them through official intimidation during the elections. The result was that only two Jews were elected, while the reactionary tendency of the new electorate virtually removed the question of their emanc.i.p.ation from the field of practical politics.

Rumania.

The only other country in Europe in which a legalized anti-Semitism exists is Rumania. The conditions are very similar to those which obtain in Russia, with the important difference that Rumania is a const.i.tutional country, and that the Jewish persecutions are the work of the elected deputies of the nation. Like the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ who wrote prose all his life without knowing it, the Rumanians practised the nationalist doctrines of the Hegelian anti-Semites unconsciously long before they were formulated in Germany. In the old days of Turkish domination the lot of the Rumanian Jews was not conspicuously unhappy.

It was only when the nation began to be emanc.i.p.ated, and the struggle in the East a.s.sumed the form of a crusade against Islam that the Jews were persecuted. Rumanian politicians preached a nationalism limited exclusively to indigenous Christians, and they were strongly supported by all who felt the commercial compet.i.tion of the Jews. Thus, although the Jews had been settled in the land for many centuries, they were by law declared aliens. This was done in defiance of the treaty of Paris of 1856 and the convention of 1858 which declared all Rumans to be equal before the law. Under the influence of this distinction the Jews became persecuted, and sanguinary riots were of frequent occurrence. The realization of a Jewish question led to legislation imposing disabilities on the Jews. In 1878 the congress of Berlin agreed to recognize the independence of Rumania on condition that all religious disabilities were removed. Rumania agreed to this condition, but ultimately persuaded the powers to allow her to carry out the emanc.i.p.ation of the Jews gradually. Persecutions, however, continued, and in 1902 they led to a great exodus of Jews. The United States addressed a strong remonstrance to the Rumanian government, but the condition of the Jews was in no way improved. Their emanc.i.p.ation was in 1908 as far off as ever, and their disabilities heavier than those of their brethren in Russia. For this state of things the example of the anti-Semites in Germany, Russia, Austria and France was largely to blame, since it had justified the intolerance of the Rumans. Owing, also, to the fact that of late years Rumania had become a sort of _annexe_ of the Triple Alliance, it was found impossible to induce the signatories of the treaty of Berlin to take action to compel the state to fulfil its obligations under that treaty.

Austria-Hungary.

In Austria-Hungary the anti-Semitic impulses came almost simultaneously from the North and East. Already in the 'seventies the doctrinaire anti-Semitism of Berlin had found an echo in Budapest. Two members of the diet, Victor Istoczy and Geza Onody, together with a publicist named Georg Marczianyi, busied themselves in making known the doctrine of Marr in Hungary. Marczianyi, who translated the German Judeophobe pamphlets into Magyar, and the Magyar works of Onody into German, was the chief medium between the northern and southern schools. In 1880 Istoczy tried to establish a "Nichtjuden Bund" in Hungary, with statutes literally translated from those of the German anti-Semitic league. The movement, however, made no progress, owing to the stalwart Liberalism of the predominant political parties, and of the national principles inherited from the revolution of 1848. The large part played by the Jews in that struggle, and the fruitful patriotism with which they had worked for the political and economic progress of the country, had created, too, a strong claim on the grat.i.tude of the best elements in the nation.

Nevertheless, among the ultramontane clergy, the higher aristocracy, the ill-paid minor officials, and the ignorant peasantry, the seeds of a tacit anti-Semitism were latent. It was probably the aversion of the n.o.bility from anything in the nature of a demagogic agitation which for a time prevented these seeds from germinating. The news of the uprising in Russia and the appearance of Jewish refugees on the frontier, had the effect of giving a certain prominence to the agitation of Istoczy and Onody and of exciting the rural communities, but it did not succeed in impressing the public with the pseudo-scientific doctrines of the new anti-Semitism. It was not until the agitators resorted to the Blood Accusation--that never-failing decoy of obscurantism and superst.i.tion--that Hungary took a definite place in the anti-Semitic movement. The outbreak was short and fortunately bloodless, but while it lasted its scandals shocked the whole of Europe.

Dr August Rohling, professor of Hebrew at the university of Prague, a Roman Catholic theologian of high position but dubious learning, had for some years a.s.sisted the Hungarian anti-Semites with _rechauffes_ of Eisenmenger's _Enidecktes Judenthum_ (Frankfurt a/M. 1700). In 1881 he made a solemn deposition before the Supreme Court accusing the Jews of being bound by their law to work the moral and physical ruin of non-Jews. He followed this up with an offer to depose on oath that the murder of Christians for ritual purposes was a doctrine secretly taught among Jews. Professor Delitzsch and other eminent Hebraists, both Christian and Jewish, exposed and denounced the ignorance and malevolence of Rohling, but were unable to stem the mischief he was causing. In April 1882 a Christian girl named Esther Sobymossi was missed from the Hungarian village of Tisza Eszlar, where a small community of Jews were settled. The rumour got abroad that she had been kidnapped and murdered by the Jews, but it remained the burden of idle gossip, and gave rise to neither judicial complaint nor public disorders. At this moment the question of the Bosnian Pacification credits was before the diet. The unpopularity of the task a.s.sumed by Austria-Hungary, under the treaty of Berlin, which was calculated to strengthen the disaffected Croat element in the empire, had reduced the government majority to very small proportions, and all the reactionary factions in the country were accordingly in arms. The government was violently and unscrupulously attacked on all sides. On the 23rd of May there was a debate in the diet when M. Onody, in an incendiary harangue, told the story of the missing girl at Tisza Eszlar, and accused ministers of criminal indulgence to races alien to the national spirit.

In the then excited state of the public mind on the Croat question, the manoeuvre was adroitly conceived. The government fell into the trap, and treated the story with lofty disdain. Thereupon the anti-Semites set to work on the case, and M. Joseph Bary, the magistrate at Nyiregyhaza, and a noted anti-Semite, was induced to go to Tisza Eszlar and inst.i.tute an inquiry. All the anti-liberal elements in the country now became banded together in this effort to discredit the liberal government, and for the first time the Hungarian anti-Semites found themselves at the head of a powerful party. Fifteen Jews were arrested and thrown into prison. No pains were spared in preparing the case for trial. Perjury and even forgery were freely resorted to. The son of one of the accused, a boy of fourteen, was taken into custody by the police, and by threats and cajoleries prevailed upon to give evidence for the prosecution. He was elaborately coached for the terrible _role_ he was to play. The trial opened at Nyiregyhaza on the 19th of June, and lasted till the 3rd of August. It was one of the most dramatic _causes celebres_ of the century. Under the brilliant cross-examination of the advocates for the defence the whole of the shocking conspiracy was gradually exposed. The public prosecutor thereupon withdrew from the case, and the four judges--the chief of whom held strong anti-Semitic opinions--unanimously acquitted all the prisoners. The case proved the death-blow of Hungarian anti-Semitism. Although another phase of the Jewish question, which will be referred to presently, had still to occupy the public mind, the shame brought on the nation by the Tisza Eszlar conspiracy effectually prevented the anti-Semites from raising their voices with any effect again.

Meanwhile a more formidable and complicated outburst was preparing in Austria itself. Here the lines of the German agitation were closely followed, but with far more dramatic results. It was exclusively political--that is to say, it appealed to anti-Jewish prejudices for party purposes while it sought to rehabilitate them on a pseudo-scientific basis, racial and economic. At first it was confined to sporadic pamphleteers. By their side there gradually grew up a school of Christian Socialists, recruited from the ultra-Clericals, for the study and application of the doctrines preached at Mainz by Archbishop Ketteler. This const.i.tuted a complete Austrian a.n.a.logue to the Evangelical-Socialist movement started in Germany by Herr Stocker. For some years the two movements remained distinct, but signs of approximation were early visible. Thus one of the first complaints of the anti-Semites was that the Jews were becoming masters of the soil.