ve occurred in this country, and the
numerous lynchings of negroes by infuriated mobs, I cannot bring
myself to accept the easy optimism of the anonymous Jew-baiter. Even
as I am writing these lines the morning newspaper comes to hand with
the account of the lynching of three negroes, one of them a woman, in
Georgia. The story is quite familiar in its shocking details. The
three negroes, who were charged with murder, were in the custody of
the sheriff of the county, when they were seized by a mob and brutally
murdered. That this was due to the fact that they were negroes, a
manifestation of race hatred, is beyond question.

My faith that we shall be spared the shame and ignominy of pogroms
rests upon other and, I believe, more solid foundations. I have
confidence that the anti-Semitic propaganda will be met by the stout
resistance of the great mass of our citizens of Gentile birth and
heritage who will fight and crush anti-Semitism in defense of
Christian civilization and of American ideals, traditions, and
institutions. That seems to me to be a rational faith; it affords firm
anchorage. On the other hand, it is a stupendous and dangerous folly
to believe that you can cultivate, as part of our national psychology,
anti-Jewish fear and prejudice without reaping in due course a harvest
of hatred and violence toward the Jewish people. Racial hatred is
everywhere the same.

There is no reason for believing that here in the United States we
possess a special immunity from the worst forms of anti-Semitism. It
would probably be safer to say that our conditions afford exceptional
opportunities for their development. We have drawn heavily upon the
Old World for our population, which reflects the divisions and the
antipathies, the hereditary jealousies and suspicions, which for
hundreds and, in some instances, thousands of years have troubled
mankind. We have not yet welded these diverse elements into anything
approaching homogeneity; our national consciousness is still
undeveloped and, as a consequence of that fact, we have as yet not
developed fully those self-imposed disciplines and restraints which
are attendant upon highly developed national solidarity. Our national
life, with its alien masses only partially assimilated, is as
susceptible to inflaming passion as the wind-blown dry autumn leaves
are susceptible to the flame of the torch.

Michael Davitt called attention to the fact that in the Kishinev
pogrom it was not t