Crescent and Iron Cross, page 79 by E.F. Benson
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, saw long ago the advantage to her of a growing Jewish population from the Pale in Turkey. She was perhaps a little overloaded with them herself, but in this immigration from Russia to Palestine she saw the formation of a colony that was well worth German protection, and the result of the war, provided the Palestinian immigrants were left in peace, would be to augment very largely the number of those settling there. 'Galicia,' says Dr. Treitsch, 'and the western provinces of Russia, which between them contain more than half the Jews in the world, have suffered more from the war than any other region. Jewish homes have been broken up by hundreds of thousands, and there is no doubt whatever that, as a result of the war, there will be an emigration of East European Jews on an unprecedented scale.' This emigration, then, to Palestine was, in Germany's view, a counter-weight to the 100,000 annually lost to her through emigration to America and England. With her foot on Turkey's neck she had control over these German-speaking Jews, and saw in them the elements of a German colony. Her calculations, it is true, were somewhat upset by the development of the Zionist movement, by which those settlers declared themselves to have a nationality of their own, and a language of their own, and Dr. Treitsch concedes that. 'But,' he adds, 'in addition to Hebrew, to which they are more and more inclined, the Jews must have a world-language, and this can only be German.'
This, then, in brief, and only up to the present, is the story of how the Jewish massacres were stayed. The Jews were potential Germans, and Germany, who sat by with folded hands when Arabs and Armenians were led to torture and death, put up a warning finger, and, for the present, saved them. In her whole conduct of the war, nothing has been more characteristic than her 'verboten' to one projected massacre and her acquiescence in others. But, as for her having saved the Jews out of motives of humanity, 'Credant Judaei!'
Crescent and Iron Cr