Closely connected with this thought is another. The Commission, be it remembered, was a Jewish body, appointed by the _Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeindebund_ in 1885. But Graetz was not appointed a member. (Comp. the _Memoir_ in the Index Volume of Graetz’s _History of the Jews_, Philadelphia, 1898, p. 78). Why did the leaders of Berlin Jewry ignore Graetz, the man who, above all others, had stirred the conscience of Europe by his vivid pictures of the medieval persecution so poignantly illustrated in the Sorrows of Tatnu? That was the very ground for excluding Graetz. There is no doubt but that Graetz’s method of writing Jewish history was somewhat roughly handled at about the period named. This assault came from two sides. Treitschke, the German and Christian, attacked Graetz as anti-Christian and anti-German, and used citations from Graetz to support his propaganda of academic anti-Semitism. Certain Jews, on the other hand, felt that, though Treitschke was wrong, Graetz was too inclined to regard the world’s history from a partisan and sectarian point of view. Whether or not this was the reason for the exclusion of Graetz from the Commission, what is interesting to note is the fact that the Commission, when it came to grips with the records, produced quite as emphatic an exposure of the medieval persecution as Graetz himself. It is, in brief, impossible for any student of the records to do otherwise. The Commission included among its members some (conspicuously L. Geiger) who subsequently proved to be the strongest anti-Zionists. The duty and the desire to honor the dead for the inspiration of the living are not restricted to any one section of our community. There is nothing nationalistic or anti-nationalistic in our common sympathy with the Sorrows of Tatnu, in our common impulse to turn those sorrows to vital account in the present. In a soft age it is well to be reminded that Judaism is above all synonymous with hardihood. Thus these memories are cherished because “the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church.” This magnificent thought originated with Tertullian, though the precise phrase is not his. The idea conveyed by these oft-quoted words must be carefully weighed, lest we make of it a half-truth instead of a truth. No institution is founded on its dead, it is its living upholders who alone can support it. We tell these stories of the dead, because, in their day, they, living, recognized that to save themselves men must sometimes sacrifice themselves. To pay, as the price of life, the very thing that makes life worth living is an ignoble and futile bargain. The Sorrows of Tatnu, regarded as the expression of this conviction, are converted from an elegy into a pæan. But the song is discordant unless we, who sing it, are also prepared to act it, in our own way and in our own different circumstances. _Den Toten zur Ehre, den Lebenden zur Lehre._ PART II