Life — May 10, 1917 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

J COB SCHIFF, who has not been a Zionist heretofore, has come, he says, to see a need of a great Jewish reservoir in Palestine “ whence Jewish culture may spread its beautiful ideals over the world.” He suggests that now that Russia has ceased to oppress her three million Jews, they may not come over here as was expected, and so, fail- ing a great Jewish centre in this conti- nent, there may come to be Jewish dis- integration. Against that he would provide the Jewish reservoir in Pales- tine, The idea is attractive. So is the idea of an improved Irish reservoir in Ire- land, a safe and sane German ‘reser- voir in Germany, and so on. Every race ought to have comfortable quar- ters somewhere for its culture, and to use as a base for the diffusion of as many of its beautiful ideals as the neighbors can accommodate without too much’ inconvenience. The trouble with the Germans was, not that their ideals were not beautiful for Germans, but that they were too impetuous and arbitrary about diffusing them, and in- capable of understanding that other folks also had beautiful ideals that they wished to preserve and diffuse. This idea of race reservoirs beats the melting-pot idea hollow. The melt- ing pot contemplates a conglomerate, mongrel humanity. Mr. Schiff and the Zionists seem ready to indulge man- kind in the cultivation of different varieties and developments of civiliza- tion, each with its centre somewhere, and all working for records in the great world competition for the pro- motion of human perfection and happi- ness. Think how interesting it would he to have a free settlement of several million Jews in Palestine, and to go and visit it, and see what sort of hotels the chosen people would keep, and whether they could run comfortable railroads and effective revolutions, and whether in their hotel-keeping they would find it necessary to discriminate ‘inst Hebrews! We should find out, possibly, whether Jews can be seli- supporting, or require some other race to live off of, “LIFES - Race Reservoirs! One of the horrors of the epoch that is just now passing was its tendency to shape all peoples to a pattern. It threatened to standardize mankind. The most extreme example of this dis- position was Germany, who thought herself so plainly the supreme human ideal that she could not imagine that any nation would not be benefited by being crushed out of its own image and into some faint resemblance to her. Germany has been the worst, but all the western civilization has been intolerant. It extirpated long ago the attractive Moorish civilization in Spain. Only lately it has compelled Japan, step by step, to westernize her- self, to her doubtful benefit. It has been persistently reluctant that the Irish should have an Irish culture and development. It has taken charge of India, not, to be sure, without doing much good, but not without cramping the spirit of her peoples. Now the medication of China is a vast problem. Is the world getting into such a case that China can get the good that the West can give her and still be left to a development that will be Chinese? It is not alone the protection of small nations in their lives that is the next problem, but of very great, populous and cultivated nations, whose efficiency in destructiveness is not sufficient for self-protection. The British have had the idea of a regulated and policed world in which the inhabitants shall live their lives undisturbed as long as they are good. They have not applied that idea per- fectly, but they have done better with it than other people, and have had the largest field for its application. And in the last century and a half the idea has steadily grown, so that it is now very much the basis of the League to Enforce Peace. The idea of the forcible propagation of religions has waned. Religious zeal now tries to limit itself to persuasion, and when it goes beyond that it finds hot water waiting for it. Spain more than any other country thoroughly tried out the propagation of Chris- tianity by compulsion, but even Spain has had enough of it, and has come to see that it does not pay. But when the new arrangements have been made, and all the race rese voirs are peacefully filling, and stre: and pipe-lines from them carrying their beautiful ideals to the neighbors, what is going to keep the races from getting up new fights? Not for noth- ing, it would seem, was the frame of man sharpened at the elbows. Races have always crowded. How shall the be cured of that habit? There are only two known ways doing it. The police represent one way; Billy Sunday, the Pope and all the churches, the other. The League to Enforce Peace prom- ises to be an international police force, but no great plan has been worked out yet to increase and improve the i fluence of religion. In the Mid Ages it was an immense power. No doubt it will be again, but how sox and in what form, and by what means does not yet appear. E.S.M Complete System “MX boy: there is only one rute for married life. «Always treat your wife with the same consideration as if you had just met he “ But suppose you get tired of doing this?” “Then change her for another.” HO FOR EUROPE! “MY Boys TO FOLLOW” comichoo!