It is an invasion nothing but an invasion; and it is helped by influences within the United States. It is thinly cloaked with sentiment "these people are fleeing from persecution." It is cleverly assisted by photographs showing groups of forlorn looking women and children – never by photographs showing the groups of husky young revolutionists who are just as ready to despoil the United States as they were to despoil Russia.
That, however, is the present situation. What this and a subsequent article propose to do for the reader is to put him in possession of some of the facts concerning the government's fight on this question during the last quarter century.
The question is not peculiar to America, and it may throw a sidelight on the American phase to note some of the facts developed at the hearings of the British Royal Commission on Alien Immigration which sat in London in 1902, a feature of whose proceedings was the testimony of Theodor Herzl, the great propagandist of Zionism.
In his initial statement to the Commission, Herzl made these statements, among others:
"The fact that there is now for the first time since Cromwell a perceptible number of our people in England is the true cause of this Commission being called together. * * * That a serious pressure exists in England, the fact of your Commission sitting is full proof."
Then the examination proceeded until the following was brought out: (the answers are Herzl's)
Q. Looking at the question of alien immigration from the standpoint of the United States for a moment, you have referred to the fact that America excludes?
A. Yes.
Q. The exclusion is a partial exclusion?
A. Exclusion, as I know, is worked in this way: the immigrant must show a certain amount of money at the moment of his landing.
Q. You are aware that the stream of immigration into the United States is twice as much as the immigration into the United Kingdom?
A. I know that. New York has now the greatest Jewish population of all the towns in the world.
Q. And the actual exclusion is the actual exclusion of a small proportion?
A. Yes; but they go, however, to America. I think it is so easy to evade such a prohibition. For instance, if they joined a small company, it would lend the necessary amount to each immigrant, and the immigrant shows it and comes in, and sends back by post the amount he has borrowed. There are no efficacious measures to prevent that.
Q. I took it that your reference to the United States was an approval of the action of that country as an act of self-preservation.
A. No.
A little later on in the examination, the question of immigration to the United States was again brought in. The answers are still Dr. Herzl's – remember that the date is still 1902:
Q. Are you aware whether it is the fact or not that the leading Jews in America have informed their correspondents here that they cannot receive and distribute any more Jewish immigrants?
A. I have heard of difficulties of emigration, and that they are overcrowded with Jews. As to that information I cannot say.
Q. In your opinion would not the stream of emigration to America have been much greater if no such law had existed?
A. I think this law did not alter it much. The prohibition could not change it. Q. On what grounds do you believe that?
A. It is a question of coasts and harbors. They come in. How will you prevent a man from coming in?
Q. Do you mean they are smuggled in?
A. No, I do not believe that. But they always find means to come in.