IT is of course difficult to conjecture what will be the ultimate effect of such a world-cataclysm as the present European war on the fate of the Jews of the world. The chief center of interest naturally lies in the eastern field of the war which happens to rage within the confines of Old Poland. This kingdom, founded by the Jagellons, brought together Roman Catholic Poland and Greek Catholic Lithuania and could not, therefore, apply in full rigor the mediaeval principle that only those could belong to the State who belonged to the State Church. Hence a certain amount of toleration of religious differences, which led to Poland forming the chief asylum of the Jews evicted from Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As a consequence here lies the most crowded seat of Jewish population in the world. From it comes the vast majority of the third of a million Jews in the prime of life who are fighting for their native countries and often against their fellow-Jews. Probably three hundred thousand Jewish soldiers are under arms in this district. Besides the inevitable loss by death of many of these and the distress caused by the removal of so many others for an indefinite period from breadwinning for their families, there must be ineffable woe caused by the fact that this district is the scene of strenuous conflicts, which lead to the wholesale destruction of the Jewish homes in a literal sense. When one reflects that one out of every six of the inhabitants of Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Poland is a Jew, the extent of the misery thus caused may be imagined. One meets friends whose birth-place changes nationality from week to week, according as the different armies take possession. The Jewish inhabitants of Suwalki, for example, must be doubtful whether they are Germans or Russians, according as Uhlan or Cossack holds control of their city. But whichever wins, for the time being, the non-combatants suffer by the demolition of their houses, the requisition of their property, and above all by the dislocation of their trade. The mass of misery caused by the present war in this way to the Jews of Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Poland is incalculable.