with Russia. He, the foremost Jewish leader, had the self-assumed right to
lobby as he saw fit with the agents of the czar. Had it been otherwise, he
doubtless would have declined any involvement.
The Russo-Japanese War allied Schiff with George Kennan in a venture to
spread revolutionary propaganda among Russian prisoners of war held by
Japan. The operation was a carefully guarded secret, and not until the Rus-
sian Revolution of March 1917 was it publicly disclosed by Kennan. He
then told how he had secured Japanese permission to visit the camps and
how the prisoners had asked him for something to read. Arranging for the
Friends of Russian Freedom to ship over a ton of revolutionary material, he
secured Schiff’s financial backing. As Kennan told it, fifty thousand officers
and men returned to Russia ardent revolutionists. There they became fifty
thousand “seeds of liberty” in one hundred regiments that contributed to
the overthrow of the czar.^32 Thus, just as the Russo-Japanese War changed
power configurations on the international scene, so did it generate new
strategies for Schiff to employ in his private war for Jewish liberation.
Diplomacy and ReliefAn opportunity for the American stewards to plead the case of Russian
Jewry directly to a high czarist official arose in the summer of 1905. When
Sergius Witte led a Russian delegation to Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
for the peace negotiations ending the Russo-Japanese War, Adolf Kraus of
B’nai B’rith arranged for the Russian envoy to meet with five leading Jews.
At first Schiff was reluctant to take part in a conference that he thought
would prove futile. Nor did he want it said that he went to discuss Russian
finances or, now that the war was over, to be in the position of a supplicant
without any bargaining chips. Jews had to remain firm: “To give as hard
knocks to Russia as we can,... to accept no promises in return for our aid,
when this is asked for, and to do nothing for Russia until she has actually
given civil rights to her Jewish subjects.”^33 He was persuaded, however, to
join Oscar Straus, Isaac Seligman, Adolph Lewisohn, and Kraus for a meet-
ing with Witte and the Russian ambassador to the United States. A bold ex-
ercise of elitist leadership, the episode also illustrated the virtual impos-
sibility of forging a consensus within the amorphous Jewish community.
Reporters who were closely monitoring Witte’s doings met the Jews on
their arrival at Portsmouth. The committee spoke guardedly. Schiff denied
that the mission was concerned with financial matters; rather, the Jews
wanted to show Witte that emigration in response to discrimination had
become an international issue. Russian Jews were good citizens, he added,
Captivity and Redemption 137