by Meyer Levin
His tone changed.
So much for the assimilationists. But there were others who held back from enlistment in the Jewish unit, and for a very comprehensible motive. They didn’t want to get killed. And even better, they didn’t want to kill.
With them he could reason, even materialistically. True, they had found themselves a haven here in London and been able to stay out of the war thus far. Perhaps they did not realize that British young men as well didn’t want to kill and didn’t want to be killed. But there were times when one’s choice was not entirely free. And their own choice too, he now had to inform them, would soon cease to be so free. For the Russian Ambassador to England, Count Nabokov, was being pressed from both the Russian and the British sides as to their status. The Czar was demanding that they be sent home as deserters. And the British were embarrassed to have their hospitable land used as an escape-ground by tens of thousands of men of fighting age who were the subjects of their Russian allies. As they all well knew, diplomatic talks on this unpleasant subject had been going on for some time. “But I myself have very recently spoken with Ambassador Nabokov and can report to you the unpleasant news that any day now you may be seized and shipped back to Russia.”
There arose a bitter murmur of anger, hostility, wariness, as though he were playing some kind of trick on them. Waiting until it had subsided, the speaker demanded now in the voice of a hard and practical bargainer, devoid of idealism: Was it better to be thrown into the half-starved, ill-equipped armies of the Czar, where men were cheaper than bullets, the cheapest of cannon fodder, and where in addition to everything else they would find themselves among their ancient, unchanged comrades, the illiterate anti-Semitic moujiks and Cossacks—was it better to be spat on and beaten up there, as Zhids, or was it better to volunteer here to fight together with fellow Jews, the men of Zion, for one’s own people, one’s own land?
Something flew through the air and spattered against the table. Amidst outcries, catcalls and screams, rotten vegetables pelted the platform. The speaker brushed muck off his shoulder. Trumpeldor had leaped up to protect him, but Jabotinsky did not budge. Gidon and Herschel plunged into their row and collared a pair of Chicherin’s Boys. The Zion squad from the rear of the hall had already pushed down the aisle.
No fight was offered. A dozen of the troublemakers were speedily ejected. People settled back in their seats; Jabotinsky resumed: “I appreciate the eloquent attempt at a counterargument …”
But the mood had been broken. When he ended and called for volunteers for the Jewish Brigade, scarcely twenty men, at least half of whom had been primed before the meeting, came forward toward the platform.
It was a dreary English winter. In the day, Gidon’s platoon were drilled as though they had never seen battle. Everything from the beginning, left turns and present arms and the strictest saluting. Leaping over barricades and climbing walls, marching with full pack, all with a double relentlessness.
After the wearying days, a few times they went to London to police the recruiting meetings. But it even seemed as though their numbers instead of growing were becoming smaller; one after another of the volunteers from the mellah, who had never really seemed part of their group but had perhaps joined as a way to get out of Egypt, now managed to have themselves transferred here and there where things appeared safe and easy. A few habitual complainers got themselves shifted, and so did a few good men who had become embittered over the lack of response of the Jews in England and now declared they were sick and tired of the whole idea of the unit—the Jews of the Diaspora weren’t worth it. Until only the hard core remained, scarcely more than eighty.
“It doesn’t matter,” Josef would repeat his famous phrase at every defection. It was even better, he said.
He had still not managed to get himself inducted. But he would come out every few days to tell of the progress being made. A full plan for the Jewish regiment had been submitted in writing to the War Ministry with the signed support of two cabinet members.
It was the worst time for Gidon. Even Herscheleh had deserted him, having at last picked up with some girl who worked in a nearby munitions factory. Herscheleh was always sneaking out on borrowed passes; the shikseh was married, her husband at the front, she didn’t dare be seen with a man—a foreigner was safer for her—and each time Herscheleh came back from her and described the shameless things this proper English girl had done, Gidon was plagued with images. A few times he went whoring, only to pick up a dose, as they said; cursing the world and the vileness of creation, cursing himself, he got caught in short-arm inspection and confined to barracks, and took out his bile on a squad of schneiders. For now he had been given a squad to train.
Despite everything, recruits had dribbled in, a number out of genuine conviction, “real English” Jewish lads who were about to be called up and decided they might as well volunteer for the Jewish unit. But most of his squad fitted the typical picture of the sallow, thin-lipped, hollow-chested schneider. The Russian Embassy had indeed sent out registry forms to all the immigrants, and while their Chicherin instructed them to ignore this and sit it out, a certain few were coming to volunteer. Having come, they retained their own attitude. They were argumentative over every stupid regulation, and too often right. And though they had made up their minds to do a good job of soldiering once they were in, the schneiders were not militarily endowed. They tripped over their feet, while their fingers, so nimble on a sewing machine, became thick on a Lewis gun.
Or else they were overeager to obey precisely. In his own squad one day there arose what came to be renowned as the response of a true Jewish soldier. As Gidon marched his greenies, calling left, left, left, he noticed one of them half-hopping, half-stumbling. Halting the squad, he growled, “Don’t you know your right foot from your left?” To which the willing schneider replied, “You keep saying left, left, left—on my left foot alone, I’m trying, but I can’t march.”
Though he himself hated drill and saw no more use to it than they did, Gidon drilled them until their knees buckled. Indeed, he became the proverbial tough drill sergeant. One day when he heard a schneider call him anti-Semite under his breath, a little glow lighted in his heart. He had them! They were becoming soldiers. Their compressed, bitter little smile of Jewish resignation was turning into the soldier’s sneer of inurement. One night, when he saw a few of them meticulously cleaning their rifles on their own impulse, and exchanging advice about different oils, Gidon suddenly believed again that the whole plan would succeed.
On a cold sleety morning just after he had started training a new squad, an additional recruit arrived from London and was sent out to join them. The movement of the approaching soldier reminded Gidon of someone—head stuck forward, and a hasty step. It was the journalist himself! Jabotinsky had enlisted!
Before Gidon could even have a thought about it, the recruit halted before him and saluted, declaring, “Private Vladimir Jabotinsky reporting for duty, sir,” and the entire squad was agape. Already they were arguing over the event—Jabotinsky was doing it so as to give an example before the world. No, he himself was escaping deportation to Russia. No, they couldn’t deport him, he was a journalist. Then why join, when for the Jewish army he was more useful outside than as a simple soldier?
“You don’t salute a corporal,” was the first remark that broke out of Gidon. Then he barked the squad to attention. He sent the new man into the line. From Jabotinksy’s expressionless glance, Gidon knew he had handled it right.
Many times they had exchanged a few words. Once, as far back as the Alexandria days when the journalist had moved into the Mafrousi Barracks and was sitting around with some of the chevreh drinking tea, he had even asked Gidon a few questions about his family.
The drill continued. In no time it became clear that the new recruit was a case of bad coordination. Compared to the orator even the schneiders were born soldiers. He couldn’t adjust his stride, and he was so intent on catching orders that half the time he was ahead
of the line in executing them. Finally, Gidon hit on the idea of sending him aside and assigning Herscheleh to get Jabotinsky started. But this too had a flaw. Herscheleh naturally tried to seize upon this opportunity to hold discussions, while Jabotinsky kept constantly calling his instructor back to instruction duty.—He certainly wasn’t going to be used as a common soldier in the war, Herscheleh would tell him, so there was no point in troubling themselves over punctilio. —No, Jabotinsky would insist, he wanted to be a correct soldier.
In the barracks a worshipful young Zionist who had a cot in the corner offered to give it over to the orator so that he would have a bit of privacy, but the famous one refused.
There were soon many jests. A special detail would have to be sent to fetch his mountains of mail. In the middle of drill a runner would appear with a message for Private Jabotinsky to call the Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Or perhaps Chaim Weizmann. In the end Gidon solved all the problems together by assigning the famous man to barracks duty. After sweeping out, he could sit and read, and write all his memoranda to the government.
Yet the presence of the orator made a change in Gidon. It was not, despite all the jokes on the subject, that he felt any self-importance in being the one who gave orders to Vladimir Jabotinsky. And it was only partly because a new feeling of interest had come into the barracks, with the bits of half-secret news that the leader let out after his visits to high offices in London, and with his caustic descriptions of the fantastic lengths to which certain highly placed “frightened Jews” would go to place obstacles in the way of the official creation of the Jewish Brigade. Nor did Gidon feel any particular quickening when Jabotinsky let it be known that this one or that one of great power had been won over to their cause. Gidon did not even share in the gloating when one morning Herscheleh came running with the London Times, reading out a leader in favor of the creation of a Jewish fighting unit. Fine and good; Gidon did not need the London Times to convince him.
What was it then, that was breaking through the apathy that had begun to engulf him? Gidon found himself really trying to unravel this. Was it because the enlistment of the orator somehow demonstrated, as some insisted, the “worthiness of the plain soldier?” —Like that old man Gordon in the kvutsa who made a whole philosophy about laboring with his hands on the soil? That wasn’t it, either.
He wasn’t a hero worshiper; it made Gidon feel uncomfortable when, after an impassioned speech in the city, Jews crowded around the orator and wanted to kiss his hands. Especially as he felt the orator rather liked it. There were even certain ideas that the leader didn’t often talk about to the crowds but that Gidon heard voiced in private now and again that vaguely troubled him. It was not only a Jewish army to fight for the Jewish land that was being raised, but see—in the entire Levant, what was to be found? Backward and primitive Arab tribes, scattered over vast areas as large as the whole of Europe. A Jewish nation would bring the Middle East into the modern world, it would reach out as in the days of Solomon, it could reach from the Euphrates to the Nile; Jewish brains and energy would draw upon the untouched resources of Mesopotamia, of Arabia—the vision was broad, ambitious—and what was wrong with having vision? Yet something in it rubbed Gidon the wrong way.
Then despite all this, just what had been brought alive in him by the leader’s presence as a soldier?
Perhaps it was the nearness, the spectacle of a man pressing on with ideas, projects that had simply risen up from within himself. Gidon could not quite think it out, but this was his feeling. That he had begun to go down under the sense that man was too small in himself, that a man ended pushed into this line or that by the enormous powers that ruled the world. But now the other feeling had come back, the feeling of personal worth. What was Vladimir Jabotinsky but a journalist who had come to the refugee barracks in Alexandria and been seized with an idea for a Jewish army? Even here he was still nothing but a soldier in a foreign army. Yet only because he had the will and was sure of his ideas, he was able to make the high ones listen, able to press forward even to the highest. Though Gidon never felt that within himself there was any great force of this kind, the nearness of it lifted him from apathy.
Presently a whole new fever arose. All at once the newspapers were filled with dispatches about upheavals in St. Petersburg. The newest recruits coming from London brought in Russian and Yiddish papers, and the schneiders snatched them from each other’s hands; they became like excited monkeys in a cage, chattering without stop, hopping from one cot to another, starting arguments in the middle of the night, in the midst of drill, speculating, what was happening there in St. Petersburg? Was it the revolution at last?
Jabotinsky would be called away for days at a time; was he not after all a Russian journalist, an expert? It seemed his knowledge was needed in high places.
There were strikes in Russian arms factories, soldiers were said to be in mutiny, it was said the Duma had been dissolved, no, the Czar’s ministers were dismissed, the Czar had abdicated, no, he had withdrawn his abdication, the Czarevitch had been crowned, no, there was no Czar at all! And suddenly it was official, it was true; the Russian Czar had abdicated, there was a democratic government, and among the very first laws was one providing complete equality for Jews!
The schneiders paced the barracks, trapped here, cursing themselves for having only a few weeks ago bound themselves to this army—you could see that everything drew them to Russia, to the great events. But some of them already argued that the revolution was no revolution, it was only a movement of liberals and the bourgeoisie; everything would remain in the same hands, the hands of the aristocracy and the capitalists. And for proof—here was their new “revolutionary” government declaring that Russia would continue to fight the war alongside her allies, and with renewed vigor.
Jabotinsky came back from the city bringing Trumpeldor. First they tried to answer everybody’s questions, but then they sat in a corner with their heads together for hours. It was no secret that Josef had a new plan altogether. Why wait eternally for the mighty British to decide to permit the Jews to have an army? Instead, he would now go and raise a Jewish army in Russia! He must go to St. Petersburg. In the new government, he knew this one and that one. In the Duma and even in the Central Council, here was a Jew and there was a Jew, in the highest offices. If Josef did not know them, then Jabotinsky knew them. Everyone was flocking back to Russia from exile, from Switzerland, from here in England, even from America. Just now, Josef pointed out, another of the exiled leaders of the 1905 revolution, Pincus Rutenberg, had passed through London on the way back from America. From the very start, this Rutenberg had been with Jabotinsky in the idea of creating a Jewish army; he had even gone to America to spread the idea. In the new Russia he would have great influence. He was after all a veteran social fighter! With Rutenberg’s connections, Josef Trumpeldor was certain that he could quickly receive authorization from the new government. A hundred thousand Jews would answer the call overnight! For in Russia was the very heart of Zionism.
—Had he forgotten, Jabotinsky argued with Josef, while half the company hovered around them, had he forgotten that the Russian Zionist Congress itself only last year had passed a strong resolution against the formation of a Jewish army? And the journalist burst into a tirade, describing how his oldest, closest friends and supporters in the Russian Zionist movement had turned against him and shunned him. Precisely because of this he had then come back to England—
“But now it is all different! A year ago they were afraid. Now everything is changed!” The new Social Democratic government was sure to welcome Josef’s plan, for the Jews would bring new spirit into the war. He would lead ten divisions through the Caucasus and capture Constantinople for Russia! And then the Jewish army would sweep down through Syria into Palestine, while the British army came up from Egypt, and they would smash the remains of the Turko-German forces between them, a hammer and anvil. A hundred thousand Jewish soldiers would remain to become chalutzim, settle
in the land and rebuild Palestine!
—A fine vision, but unfortunately Josef was being unrealistic, the journalist retorted. With a burst of quotations from Russian newspapers, from experts in London, from Bolsheviki and Mensheviki, he showed that the very cause of the Russian revolution was war-weariness. Entire army units were simply turning around and leaving the front. The Russian people were sick of the war, and if the Jews even attempted to revive a fighting spirit, they would be answered with pogroms such as had never been seen in the worst Czarist days. If the Kerensky government persisted in continuing the war, it was certain to fall.
Besides, where would Josef get his hundred thousand volunteers? Those Jews who were already in the Russian army would still be with their units as long as the army held together. And those who were already out of the army were certainly not going to go back in.
“They will! They will!” Josef cried. “For their own cause, they will fight!” At least in Russia there was a chance, a good chance, while here every obstruction had been placed in the way and the whole plan looked hopeless.
“No! We are on the verge of success!” Their plan was now already on the desk of the war minister himself, recommended for approval. The Irishman had already been alerted to command the first Jewish regiment. He would certainly commission Josef as second in command. While if Josef, instead, started off to Russia, even before he got to St. Petersburg the provisional government could fall apart. Kerensky had only the shakiest coalition behind him. And it was the Bolsheviki with their anti-war slogans who would topple him. And then Trumpeldor, arriving to call for a new war campaign, might find himself in a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress, rather than in an army headquarters. Finally, did Josef really believe the British would make it possible for him to go to Russia at this juncture?
