86 RUSSIA THEN AND "NOW 



aid received from the United States was from the 

 Jewish congregation of Sacramento, California, which 

 to him was all the more remarkable from the fact that 

 the district stricken was, through governmental re- 

 striction, uninhabited by Jews. The expression of 

 pleasure turned to one of sorrow when he remarked 

 that Russia had little deserved such generous treat- 

 ment at the hand of Jews and he lived to see the 

 manner in which it was repaid in Kishineff and other 

 places. 



More than 300,000 Jews of Russian birth are fight- 

 ing today in that country for their fatherland, and 

 tens of thousands of them have laid down their lives 

 in defence thereof. Hundreds of them are recipients 

 of medals of honour for deeds of valour on the battle- 

 fields, in many instances won while fighting against 

 fellow-Jews of Austrian and German armies, thus 

 holding ties of fatherland higher than those of blood or 

 faith. 



From this loyalty of Jews to countries where they 

 are still labouring more or less under disadvantages, 

 even to such countries as Russia, where they are not 

 yet in possession of citizenship rights at all, may easily 

 be judged what their loyalty must be to a country such 

 as ours, where, almost from the first, every right that 

 was conferred upon followers of other faiths, was con- 

 ferred upon them, the country which, for the first 

 time since they were driven from their original Pales- 

 tinian home, eighteen hundred years ago, they were 

 privileged to call truly their own. 



The conversation turned to social conditions in the 



