Of the many queer anomalies which the development of racialism in its exaggerated form has produced, surely none is stranger than that of the Austrian press unanimously Vociferáting against young Jews being permitted to leave Austria at the present time, in view of the danger of a possible Czecho-German war. It is reported that the authorities have cancelled the permission for Jews to leave the country, but, whether that is so or not, the Press outcry alone is sufficient to arouse much cynical reflection; Surely no higher claim cen be made by the State than that its citizens shall fight in its defence. But as an offset to that claim there is the duty which the State owes to the individual, in the safeguarding of his rights and liberties. It cannot be gain said that the Jews in certain of the totalitarian states have been or are being deprived of everything which makes residence in those countries desirable. They are even being forced to emigrate, where they can, under conditions which must arouse the keenest pity for them in their tragic lot, and yet when it comes to warfare it is, in the eyes of ät least the Austrian Press, the duty of the young Jew to fight for the nation which uses his race so despitefully. Sheer logic would assume that if the Jew is so eminently an undesirable in times of peace, he must be equally so in wat, and most certainly should be deprived of the honour of dying for the fatherland. Yet the Great War showed that the Jew can be an admirable soldier, and while it is probably Very few who are able to leave Austria, it is something tragically comical that they should be held back from leaving where they are not wanted, to make possible sacrifices for à country which otherwise will shave none of them. The whole business seems to import quite a new meaning into the phrase Dulce et decorum. est pro patria mori. Though of course, the confirmed racialist, might retort:—Honesta mors turki vita patier.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.