Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/31
Masaryk with a small circle of like-minded men made a determined fight against this superstition; having examined in his usual thorough manner both the question of ritual murder and the circumstances of the Polná murder he laid before the Czech public a clear proof of the absurdity of the superstition. The anger of the people was then turned against Masaryk and his party; in the end, however, the champion of justice gained victory. The excitement passed away, and social and political conditions recovered after the anti-Jewish fever. Nevertheless, this affair had a lasting effect on the Jewry of the Hapsburg Empire.
If we cannot trace the rise of Zionism directly to the Hilzner affair, it can be at least said that its growth was thereby accelerated and strengthened. It becomes necessary at this point to discuss this Jewish movement; but in order to do that we must take note of developments in the German Empire, the birth-place of German nationalistic and racial anti-semitism based, as one expects from the Germans, on their well-known scientific methods.
In Germany the growing imperialism had need of a war cry of national superiority and divine mission so as to inculcate in the German people the conviction that the age-long Drang nach Osten—more recently a push into all corners of the world—is the natural, historical mission of the German nation. German imperialism did not find a home merely in the shadow of the Hohenzollern tree; it had penetrated into the head and heart of nearly every German through the instrumentality of the school and the barracks, science and pulpit, literature and music and fine arts.
Marx who is called the father of the International was just as passionate Pangerman as any Hohenzollern, Prof. Mommsen, the great historian of Rome, shared Pangerman ideals with Bismarck, Richard Wagner, the composer, agreed with Adolf Wagner, professor of political economy who in 1870 was among the foremost and first advocates of annexation of Alsace-Lorraine.
After 1871 this national megalomania knew no limits, it became an insane faith. What more was needed, except a proof of German racial superiority and special mission?
Count Gobineau wrote in 1854 his “Essai sur linégalité des races humaines.” He, a Frenchman and a nobleman, flattered the Germans as a specially gifted race. German scholars found his work most remarkable, and it became a text of innumerable books and pamphlets. A flood of newspaper articles spread the good tidings of German superiority over all other nations, above all their Slav neighbors. And the most zealous apostles of this new gospel were German-Jewish journalists. Their colleagues in Hungary applied this doctrine to Hungary and its nations by spreading the doctrine of the special mission of the Magyar nation. The logical conclusion of this doctrine was plain: denationalization of non-German and non-Magyar nations, whatever may be the means used, is in the interest of higher culture, therefore in the interest of those denationalized, in the interest of humanity itself.
But the German Michel cannot be charged with lack of thoroughness. When he believes, he believes blindly and deduces from his faith all the consequences. He is superior by being born a German, called to rule others, elevated above the Slavs who are of lesser worth, above the degenerate Latins, perfidious Anglosaxons, kinsmen to be sure, but given to pursit of gold instead of following lofty idealism like the Germans. But is not German idealism endangered by the Semites who know nothing but despicable pursuit of wealth and in their debased materialism can have no conception of German idealism and its historical mission?
Michel who likes to have all his opinions properly authenticated by science had science furnish him the necessary arguments against the Jews. Germany has a wealth of universities, professors and instructors, printing shops and paper. German science demonstrated to Michel promptly that the Jew—Semite—is a worse