“I shall get you yet. Wait till you grow older, when you will declare from the house-tops your devotion for me. You do not think objectively, Mr. Incurable, hence your numerous offences against me. With all your endeavor to appear neutral, your anti-German feelings are transparent. Why don’t you give ear to me occasionally? Think of a people generally hated and envied, yet strong, successful, defiant. How can you help admiring their wonderful achievements in the present war?” I rejoined that I could admire war as an art; that there was art in Napoleon’s warfare, no matter whether he won or lost, no matter whether it was St. Bernard or Waterloo; while the Germans are merely good mathematicians, clever technicians; but I prefer Zimbalist’s artistic flaws to the perfect technique of Albert Spalding, the craftsman. “You are hopelessly incurable, sir. Do you perceive that Germany has won already? Whatever the outcome of the war, the Germans are the victors. To be hated by all one must accomplish something meritorious. Surely the Germans will emerge from the struggle forged with self-respect, self-assurance, and contempt for the rest of the world. Surely they will be spared the demoralizing influence of universal sympathy, which is so atrociously showered upon poor Belgium. In their splendid isolation the Teutons will achieve gigantic things; they may become a race of supermen....” I hastened to order Moselwine and sauer-kraut. _Shmah Yisroel_ There is an inmate in one of the Russian insane asylums at present, a Jewish soldier who paces up and down his cell, continually groaning: “Shmah Yisroel.” His story is simple. One night lying in the trenches on the Prussian frontier, he observed an approaching grey figure, obviously that of a German soldier. When the figure came close to the trenches, the Jew leaped upon his foe and pierced him with the bayonet. The German fell, moaning in agony: “Shmah Yisroel.” The two words have been haunting the Russian since, until, they say, he lost his reason. It is a grave symptom for the Jews, when they begin to lose their reason under the stress of tragedy; their very existence as a people is imperiled, as soon as they show signs of normality, and fail to endure grief and suffering. For what has kept the Eternal Ahasver so wonderfully alive these two thousand years but his philosophical defiance of seeming reality? “Shmah Yisroel,” “Hear, o Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Lord is one,” has been the motto of the nation through the long centuries of persecution, the pillar of fire on its historical Golgotha; it has become the symbol of Judaism, the coat-of-arms of the “Chosen People” who were destined to wander among gentiles, to teach them the living word, and to be rewarded for the instruction with hatred and contempt.