The New Exodus. By Harold Frederic. (W. Heinemann.)—It will readily
be understood that the main interest of this book is not literary, and that it is one the substance of which it is better for a reviewer to describe than to criticise. Mr. Frederic states, in bold, clear, and emphatic language, the case for the Russian Jews. He does not conceal the facts that tell against them. unfortunately, such is his contention, the policy of the Russian authorities, in intensifying their separate position, have aggravated their worst characteristics, The ordinance, for instance, which made the Jewish uonsistories so powerful, had an immediate effect in crushing any independence of thought that might spring up. A young Jew who presumed to think for himself could summarily be handed over to the conscription by the Conservative elders of hie congregation. Mr. Frederic traces the history of the people under the "second Haman" (this was the name which was given to the Czar Nicholas), under the liberal policy of Alexander II., and finally in the present day, when the anti-Semitic terror is at its height. Russia, so we are told, is universally bankrupt, but "the Jews are not the creditors. The multiplying swarm of Grand Dukes, each with his two millions of roubles of capital; the rapacious gang of officials and politicians, of whom Ignatieff is a type ; the vast thousand-armed devil-fish of an Orthodox Church, sucking in everything portable from every quarter, and piling up in its maw literally tons of gold and silver; the incapable native producers and traders, with their ceaseless clamour for higher tariffs ; the wildly debauched colonies of spendthrift aristocrats in Paris and on the Riviera,—these are the people to whom Russia owes her bankruptcy, not the Jews." To support this statement, at once a defence and an indictment, Mr. Frederic produces some curious figures. The peasant, so these seem to show, is better off in the " Pale " (the region wherein the Jews have been permitted to exist) than he is elsewhere. The in- habitants of the Pale owe 26 kopecks per head for taxes in arrear ; in the Interior the figure is 83 kopecks. The death-rate in the Pale is 29'8 per thousand ; in the Interior it is 35.6. In the Pale itself the Jews contrast favourably with the rest of the population. They constitute, e.g., four-fifths of the town popula- tion in the Province of Kovno, but furnish only half of the criminals, and this though acts which are no orimes in a Russian are crimes in a Jew, and though the law is administered entirely by Christians. As to the extent of the Exodus, we are told that in the year ending October last nearly a quarter of a million were driven from their homes.
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