keeps me what I am today in every clime."

[Illustration: Signature: William Ellery Leonard]

The Jews in the War

BY JOSEPH JACOBS

[Illustration: _JOSEPH JACOBS (born in New South Wales in 1854), noted
author and editor, was one of England's well-known scholars and men of
letters when he was called to America to become managing editor of the
Jewish Encyclopedia. He has held the chair of English literature at
the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is now editor of the American
Hebrew. He is the author of many authoritative books, including "Jews
of Angevin England," "Studies in Jewish Statistics," "Jewish Ideals,"
and "Literary Studies."_]

IT is of course difficult to conjecture what will be the ultimate
effect of such a world-cataclysm as the present European war on the
fate of the Jews of the world. The chief center of interest naturally
lies in the eastern field of the war which happens to rage within the
confines of Old Poland. This kingdom, founded by the Jagellons,
brought together Roman Catholic Poland and Greek Catholic Lithuania
and could not, therefore, apply in full rigor the mediaeval principle
that only those could belong to the State who belonged to the State
Church. Hence a certain amount of toleration of religious differences,
which led to Poland forming the chief asylum of the Jews evicted from
Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As a
consequence here lies the most crowded seat of Jewish population in
the world. From it comes the vast majority of the third of a million
Jews in the prime of life who are fighting for their native countries
and often against their fellow-Jews. Probably three hundred thousand
Jewish soldiers are under arms in this district. Besides the
inevitable loss by death of many of these and the distress caused by
the removal of so many others for an indefinite period from
breadwinning for their families, there must be ineffable woe caused by
the fact that this district is the scene of strenuous conflicts, which
lead to the wholesale destruction of the Jewish homes in a literal
sense. When one reflects that one out of every six of the inhabitants
of Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Poland is a Jew, the extent of the
misery thus caused may be imagined. One meets friends whose
birth-place changes nationality from week to week, according as the
different armies take possession. The Jewish inhabitants of Suwalki,
for example, must be doubtful whether they