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it is much more attractive to both men and women who like animation and color at dinner as an agreeable foretaste of two or three subsequent hours of entertainment or other recreative pastime. For a dinner party to men friends the club in a large proportion of instances may have the preference, but even in that case the restaurant is now often chosen as a relief from the rather oppressive atmosphere of the larger mausolea of clubdom. There are, of course, notable exceptions, but, taken by and large, the restaurant has the pull over the club as an evening resort for a man of moderately gregarious disposition who must, or wishes to, dine away from home either by himself or in company.

In the matter of luncheon, on the other hand, the well-managed club has advantages over the restaurant which are not always turned to properaccount. The bulk of club members are no longer an entirely leisured class, and a great many of them are at work during the day, with a specified interval for lunch. If their club is within fairly easy distance they will gladly avail themselves of its amenities, more especially in the way of comfortable after-lunch facilities for reading or conversation. But, as a rule, the club lunch does not compare favorably in point of cheapness and variety with the good restaurant lunch. In what may be termed luxury clubs this consideration has no particular significance. But with many which are now 'feeling the draught,' financially speaking, the probability is that an improvement might be effected - in some cases it has been effected - by the institution of a club lunch at a fixed price which, taking the absence of tipping and more moderate prices for drinks into account, would satisfy the average member that he could not do better at the average restaurant. No direct profits may accrue to the club

from this arrangement, since, owing to uncertainty concerning the numbers to be provided for, club stewards are frequently faced with kitchen losses which cannot be easily made up. But the fact that a club is reasonably full at one time in the day for five days in the week unquestionably helps to keep the membership above the level at which serious forebodings begin to be developed.

Club committees are always, and always will be, targets for criticism, especially by the member who thinks that payment of a subscription relieves him from any responsibility regarding the conduct and welfare of an organization from which his sole aim is to extract as much benefit as possible, while contributing to it the minimum of effort, and even of good-will. Some committees may suffer from senile decay; others may be too impetuously progressive; but usually a club has the committee it deserves, and it is the former's fault if the latter discharges its functions year after year in any but a reasonably efficient manner. Much the same remark applies to the secretary. Since committee and secretary, either separately or in combination, can do so much to make or mar a club, a wise precaution, if any approach to an impasse is indicated, is the cultivation, at any rate temporarily, of more intimate relations between committee, secretary, and the members at large. A simple expedient is the convention of interim general meetings at which matters of urgent importance to the club's welfare can be more freely and thoroughly dealt with than they commonly are at the annual function.

If there is any ill-feeling or lack of the harmony upon which the well-being of a club so largely depends, it is almost invariably traceable to a suspicion that the committee is doing things which it cannot be made to disclose until the annual general meeting, and which will then probably be lost sight of. The obvious remedy, and one which every committee that is not very fully assured of the complete confidence of its fellow members should adopt, more particularly in respect to impending grave difficulties, is to call those whom they represent together and, after putting the facts squarely before them, to say plainly, 'This is not merely a committee, but an all-club, matter, and it is only fair to you and to ourselves that you should have a direct share of the responsibility connected with it.'

A club in difficulties will never be helped out of them by a committee that is a close corporation, or by members who take no real interest in the club's affairs. Such committees may have had their uses in the past, but, if they

cannot cope with facts as they are today, they are mere anachronisms. Such members, too, deserve to see their clubs crumble to pieces if they make no effort to save them, by putting pressure on their committees either to adopt a more progressive policy or to effect clearly desirable retrenchments. Successful club management now means the exercise of business qualities of a high order. Although magni nominis umbra and reserves accumulated in better days may count for something, the idea that in these hard times competitive concerns, such as the majority of clubs have now become, can keep their heads above water indefinitely by trusting implicitly to such frail supports as these is altogether a delusion and a snare.

SOVIET ANTI-SEMITISM1

A PRE-REVOLUTIONARY COMEBACK

BY B. NEVIDIMTSEV

[NATURALLY the author's name is a pseudonym, since he is writing from Moscow. The editor of the magazine informs us in a footnote that articles on this subject have been printed even in Pravda, the official Moscow daily. For 'Soviet anti-Semitism' even to be mentioned is extremely interesting in view of the political platform of the Party now in power in Russia, which declares the restitution of Jewish civic rights to be one of the new Government's important tasks.]

1 From Volia Rossii (Prague Socialist semimonthly), September

As soon as you find yourself in the company of several Soviet employees, provided there is no Jew among them, the conversation turns upon that race. From the first word spoken, all are of the same opinion, and the word zhid (depreciative of 'Jew') does not leave their tongues.

I am not speaking about the Ukraine, where the anti-Semitism of Communists and Soviet employees of Ukrainian blood is explained partly by the long-standing hostility of the Ukrainian peasantry to the Jewish population, and where bloody pogroms occurred during the last civil war. No, I mean Central Russia, around Moscow, where there was formerly no anti-Semitism worth mentioning, since very few Jews were permitted to settle in that region. What is the source of the present complaints? First of all, one hears of 'Jewish predominance.' If we are to believe the grumblers, this exists in every branch of public service - in the Communist Party, in the Government trusts, in foreign legations and commercial offices, and so on. Any Communist taken at random, provided he is not a Jew himself, is likely to tell you: 'There is hardly a commissariat where the secretaries are not Jews. It is aggravating to see preference given to some half-illiterate Iochel from Whitechapel'; or 'Even Russians of such importance as Chicherin cannot breathe freely.'

Often they will add that 'Jewish predominance' has begun to be noticeable in the families of the commissars: 'The devil take them: Rykov, Lunacharskii, Krasin, have taken new wives

and Jewesses at that. Could n't they at least find helpmates of their own race?'

By the way, poor Mrs. Krasin the first - or so the Party gossip has it first learned of her husband's second marriage from the papers, upon coming to visit him in Moscow from a sojourn abroad. Another comical report from Communist sources asserts that Lunacharskii, the Commissar of Public Enlightenment, invariably asks his assistants, before he steps upon the platform to address a public meeting, 'Are my people in their seats already?'

'My people' are his new relatives in the family of Mme. Rosenel, his latest consort. It is said that since his new marriage he receives anonymous notes from his audiences asking, 'Who pays for the luxurious apparel of the halfnaked woman accompanying you?'

To which he answers unblushingly, 'My literary earnings.'

And often one may hear, from Communists again: 'Good fellow, that Stalin. No Jews in his family, none in his office!'

He is compared favorably with Lenin, who 'was always praising Jewish and half-Jewish wiseheads'; while Stalin 'switches the Party off Jewish tracks. First he kicked out Trotskii; now he is doing the same to Zinoviev and to Kamenev and his gang. He has driven Radek into a corner, and has refused commissars' jobs to Unschlicht and Frumkin.'

The tragic 'cleaning out' of the higher schools in Moscow, which has had the sad result of turning hundreds of young people out into the streets, is commented upon as follows: 'The little Jews got cleaned out. Ninety per cent of them cluttered up the schools.' Again you hear the suggestion that the number of Jews admitted to the schools be limited to a certain percentage.

More significant still are the manifestations of Soviet anti-Semitism in the secondary schools. For instance, at the former Khvostov Gymnasium, which is one of the best and in which children of higher Soviet dignitaries receive their education, the class of the young Miss Voroshilova, daughter of the War Commissar, started something like a diminutive pogrom, and was suspended for three days. Boys in Moscow schools hurl genuine pre-Revolutionary insults at their Jewish schoolmates. I made several attempts to find out where these children, whose parents belong exclusively to Government circles and are often of proletarian descent, get their anti-Jewish notions, but received no satisfactory answer. Every child gives a different explanation, the only sure thing being that they pick their prejudices up from older people's talk and their home surroundings.

Even the housing shortage in Moscow is attributed to the Jews: 'Naturally - they brought their tatele and mamele from their mestechki, and aunts, and brothers, and sisters, and nephews. ...' This complaint about the 'tateles and mameles from the villages' can be heard from some of the so-called 'sensible Jews' - for this type, so familiar under the Tsars, has reappeared under the Soviets. Such men say that 'this unwise eagerness to bring their country relatives to Moscow does great injury to the Jews themselves.'

Soviet anti-Semitism is also spreading in the Government trusts and the Commissariat of Foreign Trade. Everybody is repeating the story of the Russian 'Ivanov' who by some inexplicable oversight was made manager of a Government trust, whereupon the Jews protested in chorus: 'These - Russians! They're pushing in everywhere.' Nevertheless, the Gentile employees of the trusts are not grumbling about the Jews as much as they were. Instead they will tell you, 'It has begun!' They say that in such-and-such a trust 'the Jews are being kicked out.' And if you ask how, they will explain that the president of the trust in question - a notable Communist, of course

'has cleaned out his office under the decree reducing clerical staffs.' And the speaker is likely to add, with a sly smile: 'What can you do? Economy régime!'

In the Commissariat of Foreign Trade you often hear the complaint that 'all our offices abroad are filled with Jews, until there's no standing room left. Our Berlin office has only two Gentiles in it, and they are Bulgarians, not Russians. In Paris they're Jews to a man. The London office has only three or four who are not Jews.' Here likewise you now hear men remark with satisfaction: 'It's begun!' 'What has begun?' you ask. 'House

cleaning!' they answer. 'In our London office irregularities were discovered

money shortage. So they have fired some of their Jews. Now about half the staff are Russians. We'll see who's on top. Other offices will follow suit.'

Another symptom of this growing hostility is the bitter criticism you hear in the Commissariat of Agriculture regarding the policy of settling Jews upon the land. High-up Communists, well-paid technical specialists officially belonging to the Party, spread out their arms helplessly and say: 'A mad policy

but we are powerless. It's being done chiefly to favor the American United Jewish Campaign; but of course nothing but bad feeling will result.'

One of these critics asked me: 'What would our Moscow leaders say if a group of bankers and millionaires representing the numerous Ukrainians now dispersed through the world should organize a Ukrainian United Campaign for the purpose of sending dollars, machinery, and what not, into the Soviet territory but exclusively for the use of Ukrainians? Can you imagine the hue and cry of "Counter-revolution!" "White Guardism!" "World-capitalist intrigue!" and so forth, that would be immediately raised? I should love to see the reception the emissaries of such a Gentile United Campaign would get here in Moscow!'

'But how do you explain this discrimination in favor of the Jews by the Soviet Government?'

'First of all, the dollars that stick to the hands of those among us who manage things for the United Campaign. Second, this tolerance gains the Soviet Government the powerful support of Jewish bourgeois opinion both abroad and at home. But it all makes people here, especially in localities where the Jews are numerous, think that the Soviet authorities are all Jews.'

1

Petlura's assassination in Paris failed

to excite in the Soviet press the jubilation usual when an anti-Soviet leader is put out of the way. The explanation was: 'It's better to let sleeping dogs lie. We don't have to dot all the i's. The murderer was a Jew who avenged Petlura's pogroms - and there's enough hatred as it is -'

I recently heard a Soviet official say: 'Regular fellows, those Transcaucasian Communists! Did n't they act cleverly? Cleaned out all of their Jews from the Party! Our Party is Russian. We had a period of Jewish influx; the Jewish Bund merged with us, and the Soviet Government was filled with Jews after we dismissed en masse the pre-Revolutionary officials, among whom there were no Jews.

'Now normal times are returning. Our Party is gaining strength and is connected more closely with the masses. It is only natural for it to reflect more truly the real racial make-up of the nation. That is n't anti-Semitism; it 's only plain common sense - plain statistics, justice! We do not simply shout "Down with the Jews!" like the Ukrainians.'

As to the army officers, they point out with pride that among them, as

formerly in the old army, there are no Jews, or almost none.

That is the way the reasoning leaders of the Government put it; but among the rank and file Soviet anti-Semitism is less logical and tolerant. The conventional phrase, 'It 's begun!' is heard more and more frequently whenever a reduction of office staffs, a revision of school enrollments, or a change of management in a Government trust is discussed.

This delicate situation is being faced consciously but passively. All know about it, all watch its growth, all understand that it is an entirely new phenomenon which has nothing in common with the old anti-Semite riots in Southern Russia. This anti-Semitism

perhaps the first genuine antiSemitism in Russia - is not the result of police propaganda or the maliciously spread legend of ritual murders, or the hysterical cry of 'They crucified Jesus!' Not at all; it has sprung up spontaneously within the Communist circles, and is developing there - in the bosom of the Party that professes one of its chief tasks to be to eliminate all national and racial hatred, above all the old hatred of the Jews.

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