VOL. XXX VI, No. 1 WASHINGTON 



July, 1919 



THE 



MATD0NAL 

 GEOGRAPHIC 

 AGAZE 



COPYRIGHT. 1919. BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY. WASHINGTON. D. C. 



THE PROGRESSIVE WORLD STRUGGLE OF 

 THE JEWS FOR CIVIL EQUALITY" 



By William Howard Taft 



Author, in the National Geographic Magazine, oe "Some Recent Instances of National Altruism, 



"The Arbitration Treaties/' "Washington: Its Beginning, Its Growth, and Its Future," 



"Great Britain's Bread Upon the Waters," "The Health and Morale of 



America's Citizen Army," and "The League oe Nations" 



WITHIN the limits of this article 

 one can hope to give only the 

 merest sketch of the history 

 which the subject of the Jews involves. 

 I need not pause to emphasize the re- 

 markable character of the Jewish people. 

 They are unique in that for eighteen hun- 

 dred years they have had no country, 

 have been dispersed to the four quarters 

 of the globe, and yet have retained their 

 religion, their cohesion, their intellectual 

 capacity, their loyalty to their race, and 

 have, whenever there was any pretense 

 of equality of opportunity for them, 

 forged their way ahead into positions of 

 prominence, influence, and power in 

 business, professions, in philosophy, in 

 art, in literature, and in government. 



They have at the same time made loyal 

 subjects or citizens of the countries in 

 which they have lived whenever they 

 have been accorded any reasonable pro- 

 tection of civil rights. No other people 

 has ever been subjected to such continu- 

 ous persecution in denial of opportunity 

 to make a living and pursuit of happi- 

 ness, in humiliating restriction upon their 

 liberty, in exclusion from education, and 



*An address delivered by the ex-President, 

 William Howard Taft, before the National 

 Geographic Society at Washington, D. C. 



indeed in actual physical cruelty and 

 massacre. 



THI^ DISPERSION OF THE JEWS BEGINS 



During the three hundred years before 

 Christ, the Jews were under Greek con- 

 trol and influence. Jerusalem was at- 

 tacked many times and sacked, with the 

 consequent dispersion into other coun- 

 tries of many of its people. They mi- 

 grated into Syria, into Arabia, into 

 Egypt, and became numerous and promi- 

 nent in Alexandria. Indeed, there were, 

 it is said, as many as a million Jews in 

 Egypt before the Christian era. 



When the Roman and the Parthian 

 empires constituted the world, Jews were 

 to be found in every commercial center, 

 and in each there was a Jewish com- 

 munity and synagogue and a relationship 

 maintained with Jerusalem. 



The Jews flocked to Rome. Tiberius 

 issued an order excluding them, but it 

 was only enforced for a short time and 

 they returned in great numbers. Al- 

 though the Emperor Claudius announced 

 his intention of banishing them again, 

 they were so many that he gave it up. 



In the first and second centuries after 

 Christ, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Trajan, 

 and Hadrian found the lews of Palestine 



