Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question

The substance of this volume was read as a Paper before the Jewish Historical Society of England on February 11, 1918. It has now been expanded and supplied with a full equipment of documents-Protocols of Congresses and Conferences, Treaty Stipulations, Diplomatic Correspondence and other public Acts-in the hope that it may prove useful as a permanent record, and serviceable to those of our communal organizations whose duty it will be to bring the still unsolved aspects of the Jewish Question before the coming Peace Conference. Besides helping to indicate the lines on which Jewish action should travel in this matter, the State Papers here quoted may also serve to remind the Plenipotentiaries themselves that the Jewish Question is far from being a subsidiary issue in the Reconstruction of Europe, that they have a great tradition of effort and achievement in regard to it, and that this tradition, apart from the high merits of the task itself, imposes upon them the solemn obligation of solving the Question completely and finally now that the opportunity of doing so presents itself free from all restraints of a selfish and calculating diplomacy. It is not only that the edifice of Religious Liberty in Europe has to be completed, but also that some six millions of human beings have to be freed from political and civil disabilities and social and economic restrictions which for calculated cruelty have no parallels outside the Dark Ages. The Peace Conference will have accomplished relatively little if a shred of this blackest of all European scandals is allowed to survive its deliberations. Lucien Wolf was an English Jewish journalist, historian, and advocate of Jewish rights.