revolutionists of Italy, Germany, Russia and Poland today. They are the Red and I.W.W. leaders of the United States today. When one man whose record is known presents himself at Ellis Island—and of course he is one in a thousand whose records are not known—he is held up. Immediately there start across the country telegrams to Congressmen, editors, state and municipal officials telling them in peremptory tones to “get busy” in behalf of Mr. So-and-So who is detained at Ellis Island. And the same day there start back to Washington telegrams from Congressmen, editors and others of influence, insisting on the spotless character of Mr. So-and-So and demanding his immediate admittance into the United States. Sometimes also the Russian embassy—so-called—is used in this work.
It is an invasion—nothing but an invasion; and it is helped by influences within the United States. It is thinly cloaked with sentiment—“these people are fleeing from persecution.” It is cleverly assisted by photographs showing groups of forlorn looking women and children—never by photographs showing the groups of husky young revolutionists who are just as ready to despoil the United States as they were to despoil Russia.
That, however, is the present situation. What this and a subsequent article propose to do for the reader is to put him in possession of some of the facts concerning the government’s fight on this question during the last quarter century.
The question is not peculiar to America, and it may throw a sidelight on the American phase to note some of the facts developed at the hearings of the British Royal Commission on Alien Immigration which sat in London in 1902, a feature of whose proceedings was the testimony of Theodor Herzl, the great propagandist of Zionism.
In his initial statement to the Commission, Herzl made these statements, among others:
“The fact that there is now for the first time since Cromwell a perceptible number of our people in England is the true cause of this Commission being called together. * * * That a serious pressure exists in England, the fact of your Commission sitting is full proof.”
