Patterson, James G.; Conant, William Cowper. The Whole Truth in the Cause of Hermann Warszawiak (American Mission to the Jews) in Answer to His Accusers. [New York:] William Cowper Conant, 1898

THE WHOLE TRUTH IN THE CAUSE OF HERMANN WARSZAWIAK (AMERICAN MISSION TO THE JEWS) IN ANSWER TO HIS ACCUSERS.

“And the cause that I knew not I searched out.”—Job xxix: 16.

Any number of Copies, from One to One Thousand, can be obtained at the uniform cost price of One Cent each, plus postage, by sending the amount, in check or money order, to

WM. COWPER CONANT, Treasurer,

466 West 151st Street, New York, U. S. A.

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APOLOGY.

The following report has been under diligent and extremely careful preparation, owing to its great importance and difficulty, for four months, three of which have elapsed since it was promised in our “Preliminary Notice.” Nevertheless, no one could accuse us of tardiness who realized the labor of ransacking the vast chaos of Mr. Warszawiak's eight-years' correspondence for the data and proofs of the situation that we have brought to light. Coadjutors whose assistance was much relied on were mostly dispersed for the Summer before the materials were well in hand, and the counsels and countenance of that unwavering friend, the Rev. Dr. John Hall, were anxiously waited for as long as possible. His joy to see the dawning of truth on the dark night of obloquy through which he had watched can now only be imagined by those who knew his deep feeling and his steadfast faith.

It is due, moreover, to Mr. Warszawiak as well as ourselves to reveal that this dear brother, with all his rare gifts, has no perceptible faculty for personal apologetics or explanations, and but an imperfect appreciation of the force and significance of details, of which some of the more important only escaped his lips by allusion, in casual conversation, innoticed by himself, or were recalled by him only under close questioning. Hence, in the absence of all accounts and records from 1896 on, the surprising refutations of the different slanders heaped upon him could never have been elicited but by a process akin to the exploration of the buried cities of antiquity. The results of that process so far as carried are suggestive of considerable “finds” of like character yet to be exhumed from the debris.

Most of our statement is the abstract of authentic documents or of known history; but the occasional matters of information and belief are no less fully believed, from the many and invariably satisfactory tests of consistency and candor in Mr. Warszawiak which our prolonged and intimate personal inquisition has created.

But the solemn facts and providential instructions communicated in these pages to the international Christian world must, it seems, stand alone, by their intrinsic authority; for “on the side of the oppressors there was power,” and the religious body more directly charged with responsibility in the case, since the loss of its greatest and best yields but three or four of its humbler names to the side of the wronged and weak, whose trust still rests in God and Truth alone.

Signed by

REV . JAMES G. PATTERSON, D. D.,

(Pastor East Harlem Presbyterian Church.) 1770 Madison Av., New York.

WILLIAM COWPER CONANT,

Editor “Modern Medical Science.”

H. A. WOOD, Ph. D.

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New York, September 30, 1898.

We desire to signify our cordial assent to the conclusions embodied in the within report. This investigation, which we have required and awaited with deep solicitude in common with many others in America and Great Britain, has been conducted with great labor and deliberation by the brethren to whom it was committed, their sole desire being to arrive at the truth. Their report will, we believe, be welcomed by others as well as ourselves, as a decisive exoneration of Mr. Hermann Warszawiak from all just suspicion of iniquity in the handling of moneys intrusted to him, while admitting serious though generous errors of judgment, which he himself deplores and renounces, in the treatment of destitution occasioned by the success of his missionary work.

In view of these conclusions, we take pleasure in expressing our continued confidence in Mr. Warszawiak, and in commending his work to the generous support of all who love justice and desire to help in the evangelization of the Jews.

Signed by

REV. DAVID JAMES BURRELL, D. D.,

Pastor Marble Collegiate Church, 5th Avenue and 29th St., New York.

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My Dear Mr. Warszawiak:

Allow me to add to the explanation of your work and the letter of continued confidence from Rev. Dr. Burrell and others my deep sympathy with you in the great loss you have experienced by the death of Rev. Dr. John Hall. He was the first to receive you on your arrival here, eight years ago; was associated with you in all of your work, and continued to be your true and steadfast friend when almost all others had forsaken you. He not only contributed largely for your support when all of your sources of income were cut off, but also publicly expressed his continued confidence in you and your work. When you were condemned he desired that it might be recorded that he considered “the charges not proven.” His last published article says he considered the charge not proven. For his conscientious faithfulness to what he considered was right he risked his reputation for sound judgment, his position in the Church, and the loss of many friends, which probably helped to shorten his life. I trust that the time may speedily come when the confidence of your many former friends may be restored and the great work in which Dr. Hall took so much interest and which the Lord was so abundantly blessing may again go forward with increased energy and a greater blessing. Yours truly,

SAM'L B. SCHIEFFELIN,

958 Madison Av., New York, Oct. 4, 1898.

(Elder of the Fifth Av. Presbyterian Church.)

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THE WHOLE TRUTH

In the Cause of

HERMANN WARSZAWIAK

(American Mission to the Jews)

IN ANSWER TO HIS ACCUSERS.

“And the cause that I knew not I searched out.—Job xxix., 16.

This cause célèbre has been prosecuted before the People of Two Hemispheres for a number of years, without the slightest advance towards an issue. The issue, indeed, has never been made up. The prosecution has occupied the whole time with opening its case, and as yet not a word has been heard from the other side.

The first thing, therefore, to be called to mind by all who feel concerned for the truth in this matter, and for the important consequences dependent thereon, is this singular fact:

HERMANN WARSZAWIAK has never yet had a hearing on the accusations brought against him; though prosecuted, literally throughout Christendom, for the last two years especially, and still prosecuted, with a prodigious expenditure, of money, of talents legal and rhetorical, of high social and ecclesiastical influence, of costly detective labor, ingenuity and invention, of newspaper and circular advertising, of telegraphic, cable and postal correspondence, and of amazing personal energy, on the part of certain rich Christians (!) and Anti-Christian Jews, with active agents in the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, as far as Russia, and how much farther we know not.

Such an employment of resources appropriate for the overthrow of a dynasty, and involving the co-operation of elements so incongruous as Jewish malignants and Christian ministers for a common end—the annihilation of Warszawiak's Mission to the Jews—seems so incredible, that we are here constrained to affirm with emphasis that the description is unexaggerated, and that the distinct traces of all those associated parties, agents, and operations, are in tangible evidence which may see the light upon occasion—and some of it in the course of this statement.

Among other things surprising to most people, there will also appear reasons both cogent and laudable, though inscrutable hitherto to friends and enemies alike, why defamation has been silently allowed to proceed to every extremity and to extend to the uttermost bounds of Christendom, without a word in protest, refutation, or explanation, from him who has been hunted like a wild beast from continent to continent and from one end of the earth to the other, for these years past.

Conditions so singular as these command a candid inquiry, even from the most prejudiced—Why it was that with incredible patience under unspeakable suffering, for so long a time, “as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.” Attend, and you shall know.

But what spirit is it that has entered into devout and godly people, to cast out his name as evil and to say all manner of evil against a man approved of God by mighty works, and to destroy the work of God in its unparallelled glory in modern Israel—on the faith of unverified slanders, without waiting to hear one word from their fellow-servant in answer to the accusations of his enemies!

Still, some one may innocently ask: Did not Warszawiak have a hearing before the Church and Presbytery to which he belonged on the strange charge of having frequented a low gambling den?

Not at all. The Elders of that Church heard so much as it suited them to hear, and, by a compact and predetermined majority, arbitrarily silenced the witnesses who had the means of knowing whether or no Warszawiak had ever been in the gambling house, and for what; accepted and acted on the “testimony” of Jewish detectives, who had been hired out of the lowest grade of that semi-criminal guild, and had been instructed, in so many words, to “unearth that missionary fraud” (Warszawiak); set at naught the testimony of more than twenty citizens of unquestionable disinterestedness and respectability, who proved by reference to dated papers, accounts, and transactions at bank and elsewhere, that Mr. Warszawiak was engaged in his mission business in New York, at a full three hours' measured journey (both ways) from the gambling house in New Jersey, during the whole of each and every hour specified in the

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sworn memoranda of the detectives; rejected the testimony of these citizens under the pretense that their (!) `alibi' had been forged, after the testimony, to suit the case; and, to shield this pretense, arbitrarily threw out a paper presented by Rev. Dr. John Hall himself, which he had received from Mr. Warszawiak before the detectives had testified, containing a complete diary of the interviews and transactions, with the names of the witnesses who would (and did) testify to them, covering every hour of the five days named in the formal charge on which he was arraigned.

They rejected also the testimony of a committee of clergymen and others, headed by the Rev. David James Burrell, D. D., pastor of the “Marble” Collegiate Church in Fifth Avenue, New York, who had visited the proprietor of the gambling house at his residence, with Mr. Warszawiak among them, confronted the proprietor and his “watcher” or guard, and requested them to point out any of them that they had ever seen before. After careful scrutiny, the only one they could recognize was Rev. Mr. Taylor, pastor of a neighboring parish. Mr. Warzawiak then being pointed out, it was emphatically declared that he had never been seen before (for his peculiar appearance no one could forget), and furthermore, that any such style of man would never have been allowed to play or remain in the gambling house, but would have been forthwith ejected (as anybody might know without being told) for a probable spy of anti-gambling prosecutors.

Now, what occasion could have suggested to the detectives the Weehawken gambling den, in particular, as a starting point for the fabrication which was so utterly crushed by the above evidences, as well as by their complete breakdown under cross-examination? It was this: In the course of their shadowing of Mr. Warszawiak, the detectives hired to “unearth that missionary fraud” finally got upon his track in a trip to the West Shore Railroad station in Weehawken for the purpose of seeing a friend off. Ferry boats run from the same pier in New York, alternately, to two points in Weehawken, about three-quarters of a mile apart. Mr. Warszawiak, intending to take the boat for the railroad, by mistake took the other, and was landed opposite a wooden stable-like building where men were entering—it might be a mission house for all he knew—so he naturally approached and inquired, learning that it was a thing for which he had no use, a gambling house; and then proceeded as best he could to the railway station. His subsequent admission that under these circumstances he had seen the place, and knew where it was, was eagerly perverted on the “trial,” and in Lawyer Parsons's published argument, into a `confession,' and used to help out the detectives; whose inventive faculty, like Esterhazy's, was held properly subject to their superiors—and to their promised reward. The parallel between this case and the condemnation of the Jew Dreyfus on forged documents and false oaths, to shield the `honor' of the French military staff, is so striking and has been so often remarked that it needs only (or hardly) to be noted here.

That sort of “trial” could decide nothing, and the next superior court, the Presbytery was obliged to undertake a hearing of the case on appeal, by a commission. But again there was no hearing; this time, not so much as a part hearing, or a pretence of any hearing at all. The counsel for Warszawiak, appointed by the Presbytery—Rev. James G. Patterson, D. D.—was refused, successively, a month, a week, a day, or an hour! to prepare the case and testimony of the defence for a hearing before this second tribunal. All that was done was simply to hear the previous record read, accompanied by comments and arguments from the same prosecutor whose dictation absolutely dominated both “trials” at every point throughout, and on this and nothing more, in the absence and under protest of both appellant and counsel, the previous judgment was endorsed to the Presbytery, and in the same way, without a hearing and without discussion or vote, the Presbytery entered the judgment as its own act. But this is not the end: the demand is still pending and is still pressed before the ascending judicatories of the Presbyterian Church, for a hearing, that is all: and that is the whole state of the case to this day and for days to come, on the preposterous charge of gambling, which nobody can seriously believe.

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Much might be added in exposition of the other monstrous demerits of the case on which some of Dr. Hall's elders professed to think Mr. Warszawiak guilty of gambling: but we have given that question all the space we can spare at present, and more than it deserves. At a proper time in the future, when the ecclesiastical judicatories shall have done with it, the full record of the so-called trial may in one way or another be made accessible to all who wish to see what it was with their own eyes.

One thing more should be understood by every one before reading further. It is this: No one concerned directly in the investigation and statement now to be presented had been among the former supporters of Mr. Warszawiak, or committed by personal sympathy to his cause. At the eleventh hour, as it were, our attention had been directed to the violent outbreak of persecution and the simultaneous quasi-ecclesiastical interdict laid on the charities of the faithful, shutting off sustenance from the Jewish Mission in advance of any examination of the case. Dr. Patterson's first relation to the case arose from an unsought appointment as counsel, by the Presbytery, upon which he entered, not without an unfavorable bias from the gravity of the charge and the great personal weight of its supporters, but in an undetermined and purely judicial frame of mind, seeking only the truth, as at present.

During all the uproar, which reached its height in Europe and was re-echoed to America in 1897, while Mr. Warszawiak was laboring abroad, we had waited in painful suspense for his return and an opportunity to demand a frank and full explanation of the money affairs in which he appeared so mysteriously implicated. On his return, May 22, 1898, this demand was at once made, and Mr. Warszawiak, realizing that the motives for his reticence were no longer of sufficient force, acceded to it. We came forward as outsiders, uninvited, and determined if possible to bring out the whole truth, although fearing that it might not prove altogether satisfactory to Mr. Warszawiak or his friends, in case any were still left him.

We were therefore entirely unprepared for a defence that, in spite of the judicial spirit of our inquiry, forbids a judicial tone to our report, unless every impulse of humanity (not to speak of Christian fraternity) were to be coldly suppressed: in short, a state of facts the extreme opposite, in toto and in detail, to that which has been spread before the public in envenomed ex parte reports.

THE CHARGES STATED.

The charges against Mr. Warszawiak, which have been worked so adroitly and industriously as to have stampeded such of his friends as could not wait for his answer, and which seem therefore to call for serious attention, are these:

1. That there was a fund of nearly $13,000 which had been collected from many donors under stipulation that it should be appropriated solely to the erection of a Christian Synagogue for the Jews in New York; that this fund was entrusted by those donors to Mr. Warszawiak, for that purpose and for that alone; that it has not been so employed, nor accounted for in any way; and that it is therefore probable that it has either been selfishly and fraudulently appropriated, squandered, or lost in gambling speculations.

2. That a certain Madame Nicolas, of Italy, about four years ago, was induced by Mr. Warszawiak to entrust him with about £6,000 ($29,040) for a more profitable re-investment in America; of which entire sum he has defrauded and robbed her.

3. That a certain Mrs. Denniston, of Jamaica, W. I., and the Rev. Dr. John Hall, of New York, have each lent Mr. Warszawiak a thousand dollars of which no accounting has ever been made.

These allegations have apparently massed against Mr. Warszawiak an aggregate liability of $44,000 missing and unaccounted for. Having stated the grounds of suspicion in their full extent as made out by the prosecuting agents who have so far had their say without let or hindrance or reply, we will now show just how much and what there is in them, by an explanation sustained by intrinsic reasonableness and consistency, and corroborated by public facts and by conclusive documentary and statistical evidences which Mr. Warszawiak has, without system, almost involuntarily happened to preserve out of many lost.

I.

THE CHRIST'S SYNAGOGUE FUND.

The basis and nature of this fund proves to have been altogether different from what the public has been led to suppose.

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In the first place: Mr. Warszawiak himself was the sole founder of this fund, and the earliest, the most constant, and by far the largest contributor thereto. That is: beginning from the hour of its first conception in his mind, with appropriations from time to time of such sums as he could spare from his own necessities, personal gifts of friends, and other sources: incidentally mentioning it to others in conversation or correspondence; consequently receiving responses in sympathy with his desire and covering donations which he was authorized to appropriate at his discretion, or, sometimes, to divide in certain proportions between the several departments of the mission work; the fund was thus gradually built up, in the main, of whatever sums Mr. Warszawiak's own zeal of synagogue-building could set aside, as a surplus building reserve in the Mission treasury. This it was, and nothing more. While some private contributions were offered out of express favor to that branch of the mission work, the large collections for the support of the Mission that were made under Mr. Warszawiak's public addresses in Britain and America, were simply set aside for the desired building, as surplus funds, by Mr. Warszawiak's sole initiative. More than this: it was by Mr. Warszawiak's own request, that Miss Douglas in Scotland also set apart and retained for that same surplus the greater part of the donations received by her: remitting to America only such sums as were designated to be not for that fund but for general purposes. It makes a great difference, whether the British synagogue funds were designated for that purpose or were simply those not designated expressly otherwise: which, in the main, was the fact, and in general their dedication to the Synagogue was made not by the donors, but by Mr. Warszawiak himself.

The truth of this explanation with regard to the great majority of the moneys entered up under the Synagogue head, will not be intelligently disputed anywhere. The insidious misrepresentation of that amount as a trust fund for specific investment shows its absurdity on its face when once the question arises, Whither would the fund revert in case it should fall short of its object or its object be frustrated in some other way?—both of which contingencies have actually come to pass. It remains, then, in the Mission treasury for all legitimate and necessary purposes of the Mission: there is no other owner or purpose for it. It is inconceivable that any of those friends of Israel's redemption who contributed to build up the American Mission to the Jews in a place of its own, ever thought of “salting down” their money as a permanent trust fund, petrified in a possible synagogue forever and in every event. Not one of them, doubtless, would ever have thought of regretting—much less, of censuring—a re-appropriation of their money to sustain the Mission and its converts when persecuted unto death, if they had not been led by sinister persuasions to believe that their chosen almoner had proved unworthy of the trust reposed in him.

The only question, therefore, regarding the disposition of the so-called Christ's Synagogue fund is whether it has been honestly expended for the purposes of the Mission to which it was devoted by the donors. That it has been so expended and not otherwise we have ascertained and will show. That it was in all cases most wisely expended, is a different proposition, which Mr. Warszawiak himself would be the last person in the world to maintain.

Following at once upon Dr. Schauffler's unsupported accusations, the interdict went forth with the blast of infamy, commanding all support for the Mission to cease; the dream of a synagogue vanished; the final extinction of a wondrous work of Divine grace was imminent: and yet reserve funds enough were in hand to sustain it for some time to come. What should be done?

This was done: Notwithstanding his almost unlimited discretion, express or implied and at all events unavoidable by the nature of the case, Mr. Warszawiak was scrupulous, and proceeded to consult by circular, so far as practicable, those donors whose gifts had been more particularly identified with the project of a building, whether by himself or them. None of them, so far as we can learn, hesitated cordially to commit the appropriation of the money to his discretion under the changed circumstances. How

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could they? They were not investors, looking for their money or their money's worth, but were only wishing, first and last, to see it serve as it best might under any circumstances, the progress, or at least the continuance, of the cherished work.

Meanwhile, however, a demand on behalf of the New York City Mission Society for possession of the Mission surplus which had been set aside towards a building fund—a demand backed by a threat implying personal restraint in case Warszawiak should decline to surrender the money—determined him to place it forthwith in custody that could not be disputed under any pretence whatever. Taking the first steamer, he proceeded to Edinburgh and delivered £2,075 ($10,527) to Miss Douglas, his representative abroad, who had been the collector of the principal part of the foreign donations. This was the transaction which was instantly proclaimed to the world by Dr. Schauffler in “open” cablegrams and otherwise in terms to the following effect:

“Warszawiak, an impostor, has absconded, taking an amount of money with him. Warn others.”

Later, the same money, with £125 additional, was spontaneously remitted to Mr. Warszawiak by Miss Douglas, with expressions of the highest confidence and regard, and of deep regret for having entertained unfavorable impressions from a certain too well known source; without any reference to supposed restrictions on its use, and only the prayer “that God will direct you how best to use it.”

Nevertheless—once more—every one who had been beguiled by such monstrous calumnies as the above into demanding a return of donations or alleged donations to the building of “Christ's Synagogue,” has received back the same, so far as possible; and beyond the means available, all such still have Mr. Warszawiak's gratuitous pledge for their ultimate reimbursement from possible future resources of his own not necessary to be specified here. We have a statement to present further on of the moneys already returned, in part and so far as Mr. Warszawiak can remember; he rarely having asked for a receipt or even an identification of any professed contributor who made demand, and all accounts whatever having ceased since the loss of his bookkeeper and office in the Bible House early in 1897. In the same connection will follow the answer to the fundamental question of all: What has been done with the money?

Meanwhile, the prior question, What money, and whence? bespeaks the reader's patience a little farther, as it is emphasized by

THE MONSTROUS ALLEGATIONS OF MADAME NICOLAS.

We shall now have the pleasure of allowing Mm. N. herself to explode the diabolical fabrication that has been circulated under her signature, by simply reproducing for her those letters of her own in which the whole business in question was originally transacted.

But first let us hear the accuser:

Out of a number of recent personal letters, all to one and the same purpose, signed by the same lady, “communicated far and wide” by her as we were advised by one of the recipients in April last, and since given all possible publicity through the press and post by the indefatigable agents of the persecution in Europe and America; we select one addressed to Mr. William Lindsay, of Glasgow, which probably most people have seen, as we meet with it everywhere in quantities printed and offered gratuitously “for circulation” by that gentleman, and also copied out in lengthy personal letters to prominent persons by the same agent, in most industrious handwriting.

(Copy, in handwriting of Mr. Lindsay.)

Letter I.

Villa Marina, San Remo, 23d of March, 1898.

Dear Sir:—With the greatest personal sympathy for H. W. and the highest interest in the work for which he seems so immensely fitted, I regret to say that he is a liar and a thief. I say so from personal experience, for he robbed me of nearly £6,000, money (in R'way shares) which I had trusted to him to deposit in America because he assured me I could with all security obtain a higher percentage: seeing in this manner the possibility of continuing to support the same needy ones as before, and permitting him to use the surplus for his needs, I was delighted with this arrangement.

When the interest was not coming forth, nor an explanation, I sent a lawyer to speak to him, he fled from New York and came here [!] end of December

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to confess that he had spent it all for his mission—though I told him I could not part with the capital! Please to use this statement to protect others, and believe me, dear Sir, Yours truly, A. NICOLAS.

The following extract from a letter (signed) by Mme. N. and addressed to Rev. Dr. C. Y. Biss, London; also circulated by Mr. Lindsay; adds particulars which will become still more interesting farther on. She (?) writes:

“The sum he (H. W.) robbed me of roughly counted is £6,000…How I came to trust him such a sum was that I had a part of my fortune in St. Gothard shares and expressed in his presence my duty to move this capital as otherwise I was condescending to a desecration of the Sabbath because the Railway was running Sundays. He at once offered to deposit for me with every security in America where higher percentage was obtainable and I would have more chance of doing good. He spoke with such assurance that I decided to send it to him and he reported the money was bringing 7 1/2 so I accepted the 5 as before and allowed him to use the 2 1/2 to help Jews.”

In view of the conjunction of affectionate and violent epithets towards the same person (H. W.) and the amazing contradictions of fact at almost every point, essential or non-essential, as shown by the original correspondence now to be produced, all charitably disposed persons will unite with us, after reading it, in preferring almost any other theory of the actual composition of the above-quoted letters than that they were produced by one who had known the facts well enough to be able to tell the exact story, and who was at the same time of sound and disposing mind and memory. But this has no particular bearing on the question immediately in hand, though it would be interesting in a collateral relation, if our readers could go with us through the lady's unassisted epistolary work, and observe the striking contrast presented by the accusing letters, in business touches of form, and artful innuendo; together with the insistent motive of mischief apparent in the gratuitous solicitude to “warn others,” “protect others,” and so on.

The state of facts to be shown by the subjoined original and indubitable letters of Mme. N. (for we have the originals in our possession) may first be summarily placed in contradiction throughout to the statements to which her signature has been obtained, and to the furious reclamation now published for circulation regardless of expense and pushed under forms of law regardless of recovery, and all for the sole purpose of destroying the Mission with the Missionary. First, it will be remembered, the usual charge is (as circulated in Mr. Lindsay's letters) that Mr. Warszawiak, by some occult personal influence akin to hypnotism, by a crafty and hypocritical suggestion that her funds were employed in sabbath-breaking and would better be devoted to his mission, and by pressing on her a proposition to invest those funds for her in American securities at a higher rate of interest “with every security,” persuaded Mme. N. to place in his hands for such re-investment about $29,000, which he has spent, nobody knows how. The lady's own letters tell a contrary tale at every point. These are the facts which the reader will be able to verify from the letters following:

1. The exchange of Swiss for American securities at a higher interest, as a proposition which has been insidiously suggested and actually impressed upon the public mind by the wording supplied to Mme. N. for her accusation, was never spoken or thought of by either party. The only proposition was one of her own devising, and of an entirely different nature; viz: a loan of certain Russian funds about falling in (letter V.); and the sabbath-breaking railway had absolutely nothing to do with “the way I [she] came to trust him such a sum,” but was her own afterthought of later date than her proposal of loan (letter VI.).

2. The proposition—which emanated solely and spontaneously from Mme. N.—was never “expressed in his (H. W.'s) presence,” or spoken of, but was made, and made only, by letter to an intermediary (letter V.) and also modified and carried out completely, before she had ever seen him (letter VI.)

3. So far from a crafty persuasion having been employed by Mr. Warszawiak to induce Mme. N. to withdraw her investment from the St. Gothard Railway as a sabbath-breaking business and transfer it to his agency, the subject was never mentioned by him or “in his presence; “ neither the sabbath scruple, nor the loan, nor the transfer of funds to America, nor the suggestion of getting her “a higher percentage” “with every

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security” nor the suggestion of any kind of security whatever, was at any time mentioned by Mr. Warszawiak or “in his presence;” but each and every one of these suggestions (except that of security, which was never mentioned at all) originated with Mme. N. herself, and were mentioned for the very first time in her letter (V.) to Miss Douglas as an intermediary, long before she had ever met Mr. Warszawiak.

4. The proposition to “deposit” money at a profit for Mme. N. in America never existed, or was thought of until the word was found convenient for the conveyance of an infamous imputation.

5. It was only after Mr. Warszawiak had declined the offer of funds for the Christian Synagogue at 5 per cent. that an opportunity for so combining profit with charity, by the employment of persecuted Christian Jews in manufacturing, was presented to him, and by him laid before Mme. N., who joyfully embraced it (letter VI.)

6. Instead of “reporting that the money was bringing in 7 1/2,” Mr. Warszawiak on the contrary reported, at or about the time he received it, that the manufacturing project had collapsed, and that the money was bringing nothing (except the 5 per cent. required of himself.)

7. Instead of “the interest not coming forth,” Mme. N. has received more than $3,000 from Mr. Warszawiak on this utterly unproductive loan, for the most of which we hold her acknowledgments.

8. And now a deferred question will occasion a revelation but too astonishing: What was the true amount of the loan at 5 per cent interest, with which Mr. Warszawiak was chargeable? Was it “$29,000?” It was definitely 50,000 francs, or $9,300 as realized: the only sum with regard to which any reference to loan or interest or recourse in any form was made at or before the time of transfer or until long after.

9. Again: What was the total of all sums bestowed by Mme. N. whether as loan or gift—and of which she now accuses him of having “robbed” her to the amount of $29,000, and posts him and attempts to prosecute him in both hemispheres as “a thief”? The utmost aggregate is $17,300; every dollar dedicated to the relief of persecuted Jewish Christians or other mission work, at Mr. Warszawiak's sole discretion, without recourse in any form except a charge of 5 per cent. per annum on the first item of $9,300; and every dollar of it all, expended faithfully according to the letter and spirit of the gifts, as we shall presently show.

10. A little more yet: Whether or no Mr. Warszawiak could be said to “flee” from his own house to that of his adversary (the unconscious joke hints of Dr. Schauffler's style): It is true that he visited Mme. N. at San Remo in December, 1897; explained everything to her (then) satisfaction, just as it was and as it was stated in substance in her original letters hereinafter quoted and was entertained by her for some weeks with every demonstration of satisfaction and complacency on her part. At his departure she sent to her conservatory for a fresh palm leaf, which she gave him to keep as a token of perfect and perpetual reconciliation. It now hangs in his study, withered and brown and dry, and evidently of no use as a talisman of friendship or even of humanity.

11. It is not true that Mme. N. “sent a lawyer to speak to him” (H. W.) (whoever may have done so); she denied it on the occasion last referred to, and peremptorily refused to pay the bill of $25 which the speaking lawyer sent her together with some threat; and for peace and quietness, Mr. Warszawiak, then present, paid the $25 for the bit of persecution, out of his always wide open purse: Mme. N. at the same time writing to the lawyer (as late as the beginning of 1898) that she had settled the whole matter satisfactorily, with Mr. Warszawiak.

12. Finally: Mme. Nicolas having since attempted criminal prosecutions in America and Italy under a monstrous claim for restitution of all her gifts to the Mission nearly once-and-a-half times over (with a view, of course, merely to the destruction of the Mission with the Missionary) has been overruled in the latter object by the more practical views of her attorney in New York, compromising on a proposed repayment by instalments secured by pledge of contingent personal resources, and $650 already paid out of the deep poverty and lack of actual necessaries in the missionary family.

We anticipate the indignant remonstrance

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of every reader at this partly self-inflicted outrage. Let us anticipate Mr. Warszawiak's answer: Resuming now in such weakness his one inviolable duty, he has no time or strength for personal and legal contests—especially with adversaries who have already more than once proved their ability to procure any oaths adapted to arrest his work and to degrade him in the eyes of the world—and that no pecuniary sacrifice, or submission to wrong, however monstrous, weighs anything against the supreme interest of his life-work for Christ, or can aggravate the suffering now and for years past endured. We here gather

THE ORIGINAL LETTERS THAT EXTINGUISH THE FAMED NICOLAS SCANDAL.

inviting our readers to the trouble of verifying what has gone before by what follows.

As Mr. Warszawiak unfortunately lacks, among all the other habits lacking for want of a training for business, the habit of preserving copies of his own letters as well as records of money transactions, we are able only to give the other side of this correspondence; leaving his own part in it to appear by implication in the letters of Mme. Nicolas, as it does to a sufficient extent for all practical purposes. On her side, however, we are able to go back to the beginning, and have found of her letters enough to be connected in a complete diary of this business by her own hand. We begin with her initial communication: for brevity noting merely the substance of letters prior to the transactions in question. (Letters numbered I. and II. are the recent accusatory letters.)

Letter III.

is dated San Remo, April 6, 1894; is in French; is addressed, “Cher Monsieur Warszawiak”; expresses interest in and prayers for your (H. W.'s) work of evangelization; encloses “a little sum” (150 francs) “to aid your brethren in distress;” and suggests plans of colonization for them on the cheap lands of Canada or Sardinia. (It will be remembered that this was in the period of miserable exodus of Russian Jews who crowded into New York and every other available refuge in helpless destitution which gave rise to various schemes of colonization for them.)

Letter IV.,

April 25, 1894, also in French, to Cher Monsieur Warszawiak, adds a donation of 250 francs, “to use as best you can;” and enlarges on the possibilities of the Jewish colonies in Palestine.

Letter V.,

the next in order, is in English, addressed to Miss Douglas, of Edinboro', and she simply forwarded it to Mr. Warszawiak. It introduces, for the first time, the singular idea of a loan at five per cent. for missionary purposes—not in Mr. Warszawiak's presence, as the author of Mme. N.'s recent letters blunderingly states, but both first and last, as will presently appear, in transatlantic correspondence, long before she had ever seen him. We copy this letter entirely and precisely.

Villa Marina, Via Roma, San Remo.

Dear Miss Douglas:—As you know so much about Warszawiak's affair, I come to ask you whether you think he might feel inclined to accept a loan toward the erecting of his Christian Synagogue. I have sent him occasionally small sums, and wish I were able to help more efficiently, but my means would not permit me to venture a larger sum, but I have some money in Russia and by an Ukas of the Emperor who is reducing the State debts I am able to dispose of a part of my capital and I asked my banker to wait till I hear from you before he disposes of it in the manner he proposes as I would rather devote it for Christian purposes. If he can make use of 10,000 Rubel silver paying 5 per cent interest first of May half of it and Nov. first the other half. I shall be obliged to hear as soon as you can decide as I shall have to settle this matter through a banker in Germany and back to Petersbourg. Believe me, dear Miss Douglas, your sister in Christ, ANNINKA NICOLAS.

This proposition, as before remarked, was simply passed on by Miss Douglas to Mr. Warszawiak, and thus the original written piece of paper has come into our possession. The proposition was at once declined by him: the offered loan being for an object not only non-productive of interest, but also too far in the future to be taxed with the payment of a permanent annuity to Mme. Nicolas, which might, not improbably, eat the fund entirely up before any use could be made of it.

Not long after, however, there came before Mr. Warszawiak a case of two distressed Jewish converts, brothers, who had been engaged in the manufacture of

11

hats, and who represented that with capital to re-establish themselves, they could not only retrieve their own condition, but also give employment to many of their fellow sufferers for Christ's sake, and be able to pay 7 1/2 per cent. for the use of the capital. The proposition was communicated to Mme. N. by letter, and gave her the satisfaction she has so naively confessed. We have given the purport of this correspondence on the part of Mr. Warszawiak, in the absence of the originals, which of course are beyond our reach; but the next letter from Mme. N. fully confirms by implication our statement, while our statement in turn makes the letter intelligible. It is as follows:

Letter VI.

Villa Marina, Via Roma,

San Remo, June 11, 1894.

To Mr. Herrmann Warszawiak:

My dear brother in our Lord Jesus Christ:—Please to continue sending me the Hebrew Christian, for it is full of the greatest interest and after I have filled my heart out of it with God's wondrous blessing over His chastised yet dearly beloved people, there are others here who wait with Christian zeal to hear of the success God so profusely showers upon you.

Now in respect to my offering you 10,000 Rubel, you are quite right to say that as God put it into my heart; what he put into my heart is the wish to help His sorely tried people and I only regret I cannot give you large sums to spend right away wherever you find the need to be greatest. I wrote to Miss Douglas, as I felt sure she knew about your business almost as much as yourself for there was no time to expect an answer from you, thus it happens that I had to decide about my money in Russia which through an Ukas of the emperor I had a chance to withdraw, now it is disposed of; but I can make you another offer. I have shares in the St. Gothard Railway which are very valuable, but I believe you will agree with me that Christians ought not to hold shares in any business which does not sanctify the Sabbath. I did not buy them, they were left me by my father, they amount to 50,000 fr. will you accept these for the purpose you mention under the conditions before proposed [by me]? please let me know and I will inform my banker to send them to you. I am quite sure God will bless such an institution. I know how persevering and industrious the Jews are how many more high qualities they will develop after their severe trials and if their heart is filled with Peace from on high through the knowledge of Christ. May God bless you with health and with wisdom that all your hands may find to do may prosper for His honour and His glory and for Christ our Redeemer's sake. Yours sincerely, Sister in Christ.

ANNINKA NICOLAS.

The next letter, dated July 2, 1894, explains a casual delay of the promised remittance, but is otherwise immaterial and need not encumber this paper.

Fifteen days later, July 17, 1894, and over a month after the offer of the St. Gothard funds for industrial relief to Christian Jews by payment of five per cent. interest we find copies (for once!) of Mr. Warszawiak's acknowledgments to Mme. N. and also to her bankers in Frankfort and Berlin, respectively, of 67 four per cent. St. Gothard bonds, value of 50,000 francs, or some $9,300 as realized.

But about this time it so happened that the hat manufacturers quarrelled and separated; other modes of relief for oppressed Christian Jews must be substituted; and so Mme. N. was advised, when there was still time for her to have recalled her loan, or at least to have complained of the changed course of relief, in case the particular mode at first intended had been regarded as an essential condition of the transaction. On the contrary, a thorough and patient perusal of all her prolix letters from that time to the end of 1897 proves that no dissatisfaction with the appropriation of the money to general mission purposes at Mr. Warszawiak's discretion was ever expressed by Mme. N.: the single cherished condition being that she should get the annual interest at five per cent.; and we can truly state that the unavoidable passing of this dividend in consequence of the persecution which extinguished the support of the Mission, was and is her only assignable ground of complaint. Not to anticipate further, we now come in the regular order to

THE FIRST PERSONAL MEETING.

The next in the series of Mme. N.'s letters is addressed, “Hermann Warszawiak, Esq., General Delivery, London, Inghilterra,” was received by him in London during his visit to Britain in the late summer of 1894; and begins as follows:

Letter VII.

Villa Marina, Via Roma, San Remo.

Dear Sir:—I cannot tell how pleased I would be to have an opportunity to make your personal acquaintance, and if a few days of rest would benefit you, do please

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come. (She goes on to enlarge upon the charms of Italy, to apologize for the condition of her house, and to refer at considerable length to her personal affairs and her friends in England. The only allusion to Mission affairs is this:) “We are praying for you and success in your work every morning, so God is sure to bless you, and if I can't help others can if it be God's will that what you intend to do should be done.”

With this visit of Mr. Warszawiak to friends in Europe, which was extended to Mme. N. on the foregoing invitation, her formal style of address disappears, and the succeeding letters begin to be filled with the endearments of intimate personal affection: the first following, dated September 30, 1894, marking distinctly the period when direct personal intercourse began to influence her if ever, during which all the money put into Mr. Warszawiak's hands by her, after the first 50,000 francs ($9,300) was given outright and committed unconditionally to his discretion for the mission work. We may remark by the way that one of the principal gifts was made in the presence of Mrs. Warszawiak at San Remo with the remark: “I intended to leave it all to you in my will, and why should I not give it now, instead of leaving it for lawyers to profit from?” The several items referred to in the further correspondence are these:

1. 3 Swiss bonds to the value of 30,000 francs which were left with her bankers and recalled without having been sent.

2. 3 Russian bonds to the value of 2,500 rubles which, owing to a legal difficulty, could not be realized.

3. and last: 14,000 roubles in Russian bank notes which Mme. N. unexpectedly got in Russia and sent through her banker when she learned that the above did not realize; later, however, Mr. W. received from a banker in Zurich with Mme. N's consent £395. out of sale of bonds; making in all some $8,000, in addition to the loan of 50,000 francs, or a grand total of $17,300 in all.

Patient examination of her voluminous correspondence has revealed the foregoing money items, and no others, referred to by Mme. Nicolas, in all the years, 1894 to 1898 inclusive. In the whole correspondence moreover, there is not the slightest trace of allusion to conditions of any kind, or to interest payable, on the Russian funds remitted: only, when in December, 1894, Mme. N. acknowledges the receipt of the first semi-annual interest, 1250 francs, on her 50,000 francs, she seems to begin to think of getting interest on her roubles also! These 14,000 roubles moreover, suddenly swell to 38,000 in her account. Her next letter admits a correction by Warszawiak of the enormous error; apologizing in these words:

Letter VIII.

“I told you I was a bad reckoner, still to make such a blunder as this is indeed a riddle to me, the only excuse that I can make for it is that lately I have been utterly unfit for anything like brain work, and I am sure you will sympathize with me if I tell you that Leonhard almost drove me to despair.”

Leonhard was a leading element in Mme. N.'s affairs and letters, with which we are not concerned, but which appears throughout the correspondence in shapes well fitted to produce, continuously, the state of mind, and of accounts as well, which she here attributes to it: a state of mind which re-appears with great aggravation in her next letter about accounts, implying objection again from Mr. Warszawiak to the exaggerated statement renewed. In this letter—too voluminous, and mainly irrelevant, to burden the reader with—she resents and refuses, with much asperity, a request for particulars; which, she says, would cost her too much trouble to look up. Finally, at the date of this writing, her account still stands at the fabulous amount which she had acknowledged to be unaccountably exaggerated, and she sues him for that amount, at the same time publicly advertising him as “a thief” who had “stolen from,” and “robbed her of” about $29,000; and putting in motion legal machinery to secure his arrest as a criminal to be pilloried before the whole world, with the extinction of his Mission and career in disgrace, and a final impossibility of ever practically recovering one cent of the money ostensibly sought by her action. These proceedings testify, trumpet-tongued, their common origin with all the complicated series of their congeners, ramifying from one centre of malice through a thousand apparently independent agencies. The pitiable figure of the lady, under this diabolical influence, transformed from an “angel of light,” may suggest different reflections in different minds.

Few of our readers, surely, can from experience realize the feelings with which

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the foregoing pages will be read by the eminently respectable contrivers and promulgators of this most aggravated libel. That they will be satisfied with the shame of their exposure, and even thankful if forbearance shall allow them to rest there in silence, can hardly be doubted.

THE TRUE AMOUNT OF LIABILITIES TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR.

It now appears that the appalling sum of $44,000 shrinks by half, under the light of facts such as we have been able to recover from oblivion under extraordinary difficulties.

But a mere reduction of the pecuniary charge to be accounted for by Mr. Warszawiak from $44,000 to $20,000 (as the true remainder would probably be if the more numerous minor repayments could be recollected) is not what we set out to accomplish. The real question remains: How were these funds, whether greater or less, employed by Mr. Warszawiak? This—with his hitherto unexplained motive for a perplexing reticence on the whole subject, and his efforts, from the same motive, to repair the fund without accounting—will be our final concern in this paper.

BEGINNING BACK.

The last financial statement of the Mission, and the last record of accounts in any form, ended at December 31, 1896, in the break-up of confidence and sustenance, and of the business office and bookkeeping of the Mission, which immediately resulted from the public attacks of the Rev. Dr. Schauffler et soc. by Associated-press telegrams, cablegrams, and hundreds or thousands of personal letters, sent far and wide through the world in 1896 and thenceforward; in consequence also of which, from February, 1897, on, contributions to the support of the Mission practically ceased, and the word went forth over the world, that Warszawiak's Mission was dead, dead, dead! That jubilant shout has never ceased, or at least has never been recalled, in the united acclaim of persecuting Jews and “Christians” to this day, in spite of the testimony of the visiting clergymen from England, Rev. Henry Varley and Rev. Dr. John Robertson, who found the work going on at the usual place in all its former power, and published the fact, which in all his tergiversations Mr. Varley has never been able to deny.

Yes! The work has gone on: now nearly two running years: Has it occurred to any one to ask how and by what means? It will be more difficult for Doubting Thomas to explain this than the deficiency in mission funds! And yet this is not half of what he will have to explain before he can tell why “the bush is not consumed.” That explanation goes far back, and will appear in its proper place.

Meanwhile: nine or ten months after the crash, when the vigorous continuance

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of the work at No. 424 Grand Street was reported publicly by Mr. Varley, and privately by others who could tell also of the bitter destitution of the missionary family, a few donations amounting to $261 came in; and these, supplemented by a transaction yet to be revealed and a few later occasionals, have served to prolong the struggle nearly through a second year (which men who believe in everything more than in God are sure will be the last) without increase of debt, but not without increasing distress, until the present writing.

Under the tribulation of these years, the interest due Mme. Nicolas on her $9,000 had been necessarily passed; and in November last, Mr. Warszawiak, learning of her impatience for the money, hastened to San Remo, explained to her the condition of affairs, and reached the complete understanding with her which she reported to her attorney in New York, and which we have already related, but which was so soon to be subverted.

The other great object of Mr. Warszawiak's visit to Europe at this time was to satisfy the complaints that had been instigated abroad by misrepresentations of the moral status, and treatment in his hands, of the so-called Synagogue Fund. For reasons presently to appear, he was not willing to disclose the condition to which the reserve funds were thrown at the sudden suppression of income, and much less to disclose all the causes of that condition, while there remained a hope of repairing it by the sacrifice of certain private expectations; to accomplish which he had now crossed the Atlantic. This hope was soon crushed by the discovery that but an insignificant sum could as yet be realized in that way.

Not this, however, was the end of the resources placed before Mr. Warszawiak in Europe; and still, in the last extremity of ruin and despair, a great extremity of temptation was to be borne. Lest the destruction of the Jewish Mission should be but imperfectly accomplished by force and fraud (by reason of the invincible determination of the missionary to preach the Gospel at all hazards and whatever cost), the element of corruption was brought into the plot. A temptation was prepared like that magnificent concession of Satan to the Savior in distress; with an exquisitely fit representative to present it. This was “A. Benjamin,” the famous missionary-baiter of New York: name familiar as household words in the offices of the New York Independent, of the New York City Mission Society, of the London Christian, and of the “Christian” gentlemen foremost in the Warszawiak hunt through the United States and Europe; whose correspondence with him as to that absorbing object he proudly exhibits to all who will attend. Devoted, as he states, at the expense already of half his life and all his fortune (salary, some say), to the extirpation of Christian missions to the Jews, A. Benjamin declares, and offers some strong evidence, that he was the true purveyor of all the anti-Jewish-mission scandals that such Christian gentlemen and Editors as those above referred to have received and rolled as sweet morsels under and from their tongues for the last three or four years, and some of them for at least fifteen years. He boldly claims to be the true Goliath who has laid the little missionary champion low. We are willing to give him all the credit he claims; and we are very sure that certain ministers and other gentlemen of great prominence in the Presbyterian Church will yet be very, very glad to relinquish it all to “A. Benjamin.” We know, indeed, how successfully he worked the New York Independent and other Christian powers in this city for all they were worth in defaming the late Rev. Jacob Freshman and his little church of Jewish converts at No. 17 St. Mark's place, New York, until that over-wearied missionary gave up the agony and retired, turning over the valuable mission property, 17 St. Mark's place, to the New York City Mission Society in trust forever as a mission house for the Jews; and how the trust was soon after sold out to a builder, who pulled down the mission house and put up a building of no hallowed character on the consecrated lot.

The same zealot tells us of his first effort on Dr. Schauffler, eight years ago, when Warszawiak was the Society's missionary; and of the peremptory rebuff given to his communications, until better opportunity and more indirect approaches served his purpose after H. W.'s

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secession from the Society. We all know that A. Benjamin transferred his operations to Britain three years ago, with a public boast that he had now gained such allies in the New York City Mission Society that he could well afford to leave his American work in their care. For himself, as he informs us, he felt that the decisive blow to the mission was to be delivered at the roots, which he had traced to the purses of British Christians; and at these roots he has wrought indefatigably all this time (returning here a few weeks since) with what success is now patent to all. No thanks to his communicativeness, however, we know that the London Christian, and some other respectable mediums, public and private were simply A. Benjamin's mouthpieces until the secret channel of inspiration accidentally sprung a leak, and the last poisoned paragraph was stopped in the Editors' room from fear and shame. Howbeit, A. Benjamin is still able to parade the letters he has received in the course of his negotiations with the too many and too facile dupes of his craftiness.

Here is A. Benjamin's preliminary report in brief of his work in the British islands, communicated to the Jewish Messenger, Aug. 26, 1898:

“Three years ago, when Warszawiak reached the pinnacle of fame and fortune, I conceived the idea that the only way to precipitate his fall was for me to go to London. There I soon constructed such explosive machines that, when I applied the fuse in London, it exploded with terrific effect in New York. This has been verified by articles in the press in both hemispheres.

“The diametrically opposite opinions of Rev. Henry Varley, as seen in the Boston Watchword of September, 1897, and June, 1898, were due exclusively to my efforts, as verified by letters in my possession.”

Whatever may be thought of C. Benjamin's veracity, from reading his unquotable tales of Jewish missionaries and converts—unquotable for number and vileness—there remain notorious facts sufficient to lend strong support to his boast of prime agency in the production and propagation of the slanders that we have exposed. And yet, the crowning effort of A. Benjamin's life, as we should estimate, and to which we have made a rather long introduction, is one of which he refrains from boasting, doubtless because it had not an issue worthy of its satanic depth of craft. It was a masterpiece. Man could not have doubted its success. Yet it failed like the master's own, on which it was modelled. For A. Benjamin and his Christian coterie had now brought Warszawiak to the last extremity: his last friend and his last hope seemed to have forsaken him; and now the tempter, no more the persecutor, would make his final fall easy, nay, luxurious. While still with one hand stuffing the London Christian, as had been his wont with the New York Independent and others, with venomous material for the poisoning of Mr. Warszawiak's reputation in Britain; with hat in the other hand he deferentially and sympathetically approached Mr. Warszawiak at his hotel in London, professing to be moved with pity by the cruelty of his Christian enemies, and proving himself an ambassador from Mrs. Warszawiak's doting father (not, by the way, the first, nor the second, nor the third, in the same sense); by laying before our brother in his extremity tangible securities for all that heart could wish of comfort and independence for life to the entire and reunited family, their children restored, and the great pecuniary embarrassment removed in a moment; without a condition of any kind, religious or other, except simply to shake off the dust of his feet against Christian persecutors, leave the missionary service which had brought him nothing but ruin and woe, and come home!

What a victory of Dr. Schauffler's vow to “drive Warszawiak out of New York” and Jewish mission work—if this temptation could have succeeded! It was a golden temptation, and infinitely more than golden—more to the long-agonized martyr than all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them—appealing to every human passion, affection, interest, as husband, as father, as destitute, outraged, proscribed, hunted for his life and more, posted all over the world as a thief and a robber, and worst of all, hypocrite: with the magic gold of a rich father pleading to wash all the woes and stains and tears away! and his deadliest human enemy perhaps save one—perhaps with even that one's approbation—uniting in the amicable overture: a tropical oasis of kindness, where kindness had

16

been almost a forgotten thing in the midst of a pandemonium of hate.

But there was One only object in the universe that the great bribe could not cover, and that was All-in-all. The Tempter got this answer swiftly: The opportunity that you thought so excellent for your purpose was the very worst you could have chosen; never was I so utterly cast upon my Christ as now, never was He so much more than all to me, and I will preach Him to my people in spite of earth and hell, as long as I can speak!

A. Benjamin, to prove his friendly intentions towards Mr. Warszawiak, had begun by giving him a confidential “tip” of certain machinations of his enemies, which providentially proved a clue to the intimate relations of A. Benjamin to their conclave and to a certain editorial intention of The Christian. The detection, brought home to the Editor, shut off the next and probably the last of the inimical communications fed to that paper through A. Benjamin and like worthy agents of the amazing conspiracy of which we have thought it well to uncover a single interior glimpse.

This temptation met, some further time passed in efforts by Mr. Warszawiak in spite of closed doors to communicate publicly and privately with the friends of Jewish missions, for their satisfaction, encouragement, and renewed aid. Nothing, as it turned out, could be thus accomplished, until the extinction of all hopes of financial recuperation should force him to a revelation which he had strong reasons (not personal) for withholding if possible. The poison of calumny had been too readily and too generally absorbed out of hand; fresh installments also were emitted daily; and finally, the transformation spectacle of Madame Nicolas was put on the stage with tremendous dramatic effect, fictitious though it was; while Mr. Warszawiak, separated by the ocean from his evidences and defences, stunned by treachery and false accusation, hunted with police to jail him where neither defence nor bail would be available, now seemed to his persecutors to be enclosed helpless in their toils and already at the final stage of ruin and ineffaceable disgrace. Once more a single glimpse of them (fatuously betrayed from the inside) may well be thrown upon our canvas.

Extract from a letter of Mme. Nicolas to Mr. Lindsay, April 29, 1898, circulated, with a singular notion of effect, by that indefatigable gentleman:

“Last Friday, 22d, he (Warszawiak) came here.…I sent my manservant to tell him to come the following day, and sent at once for my lawyer, who at once procured an order to arrest him. The commandant of the constabulary was for three days trying to find me (her residence, where she had appointed to meet him with this design `on the following day')…at last I sent my servant to bring him (the commandant) here, to give him every necessary particular myself, and he informed me that he (H. W.) should be seized wherever found. Yesterday they sent word that they could not find him.”

Under Divine Providence, it seems that the Italian police saw no reason to be superserviceable. At this point, One said, Thus far, and no farther. But although their beagles were baffled, the man-hunters had not yet measured their own limitations. On the very day that the hunted innocent arrived in New York, word was given out from headquarters in the New York City Mission Society, that “Warszawiak will be behind the bars within twenty-four hours.”

But very different things “happened,” as men say. The finger of God appeared in a series of interpositions that would make remarkable reading, but our story is too long. In a word, “the snare is broken;” “the word of God is not bound;” nor is the “ambassador in bonds.”

____________________________

This review has now brought us to the exact point where our relation to the present case began (as stated in our preliminary notice of June 30, 1898) by calling on Mr. Warszawiak to permit a full investigation of the financial and other affairs of the Mission; which we found him now more than willing to have freely and faithfully done. Of the results of that investigation we have already reported much; and yet comparatively not much of the catalogue of wrongs and sufferings. There remains to be unfolded

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MONEYS.

First: with the exception of the small remainder on deposit in certain banks, as mentioned to the Rev. Mr. Isaacs, of

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Bath, there is not a dollar of the funds in question that had not already been expended prior to the present investigation, in the sustentation, the charities, and other essential interests, of the missionary service to the Jews of this city and country, as hereinafter to be explained and specified. And, notwithstanding that such remainder was on deposit as stated to Mr. Isaacs, it is not and was not under the hand of Mr. Warszawiak. It consisted of about £500 of Miss Douglas's later retained collections deposited in the National Bank of Scotland; about $500 in the United States Savings Bank, New York, to the credit of the former Treasurer of the American Mission to the Jews; and about $600 outstanding as loans of assistance to several Jewish missionaries, from whom something might possibly be recovered, some time or other, and possibly not.

Second: This mission takes its new departure on a system of responsible accounting without any balance of cash, and without any means of accounting for some $20,000 of bygone funds, of which no record, public or private, was ever made, except some large facts of public notoriety, which are vouchers for the greater part of the money; many considerable items of charity additional which are vouched for or undeniable by confidential and known beneficiaries; and the conclusive negation of any possible corrupt appropriation of money, that has been provided through the millionaire resources lavished with hostile intent to rake Mr. Warszawiak's whole life with fine-tooth combs and lighted candles, but without discovering the smallest trace or clue leading from him to any other channel of disbursement than his continual and prodigal, though concealed, charities.

That channel, or those channels, of disbursement for large sums daily from the first year of Mr. Warszawiak's mission service in New York, were not looked for in the futile search for wickedness, and the anxious questionings of friendly inquirers never lighted on them—so solicitously had they been withheld from discovery or identification—until Mr. Warszawiak pointed them out, in response to our request for a complete explanation; surprising us with a very penitent confession (the truth of which we will soon demonstrate) of secret liberality on a large scale towards Jewish brethren persecuted and perishing for the sake of Christ: liberality extending far beyond the sum for which he is called in question; all of which had been concealed as anxiously as a miser's hoard; unrecorded in any way, even when an accountant was kept on the mission expenses proper; for the double reason, that Jewish inquirers must not be influenced by hopes of material aid, and that Jewish malignants must not be furnished with appearances that might be perverted to the support of their clamorous allegations that Mr. Warszawiak was hiring Jews by hundreds to profess conversion for the fame and credit of his mission.

To avert this unjust and yet terrible reproach from the missionary work and the Gospel itself, is the secret, now first disclosed, of Mr. Warszawiak's long-silent endurance of almost all that a man can suffer in life, in the hope to realize at any sacrifice the means of repairing the funds without exposing the mode of their expenditure to the malignant misconstruction for which the adversaries would eagerly seize on it, and to the injury of inquirers by holding out a motive for hypocrisy.

It is for this reason that enormous disbursements which consumed more than the whole surplus so much in question of late, were concealed with Spartan tenacity and fortitude, throughout the desperate struggle to bury them under a gratuitous personal restitution.

That this explanation carries its own condemnation with it is evident, and to no one so keenly as to him who was caught in his inexperience on the horns of this cruel dilemma. Let no one suppose that he can solve it without more than human illumination, which has not yet dawned upon the most experienced in missionary work among the Jews. It is a problem before us still, more difficult than all others in this work put together. A short experience of the writer among the proscribed converts of the Warszawiak mission—black-listed throughout Jewry, and not wanted by Christian employers—has shown us present suffering and patience enough to give ample scope for funds many times larger than we have sought to account for. The appeal

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of this misery, houseless, naked and starving in our streets, is overpowering to ordinary sensibility: but coming from the brethren of our Lord as suffering for His sake, no one with a spark of love for Him can face it down. You must keep away from it altogether, or be submerged by it. Mr. Warszawiak must be conceded the impossibility of living in these scenes of persecution and distress on account of Jesus Christ without stripping himself often, emptying his pocket daily, and drawing at all hazards on any funds at his disposal for missionary purposes, to help his suffering brethren. It should be remembered that the Nicolas funds were bestowed expressly for this object originally, as we have shown. They were to more than half their amount burdened with interest to her, and therefore great efforts were made to have them productive to that extent as capital for the ostracized Jews to do business on their own account. Business investment is proverbially loss in a great proportion of cases; and in a thousand ventures, large and small, there needs no proof that much loaned money has been lost and little or nothing recovered. We have personally tried it, to some extent, in this very field, and speak that we do know.

As we before intimated, the explanation of this business goes far back. The call for secret aid was of course simultaneous with the beginning of Jewish persecution, and that was simultaneous with the first baptism of a Jew into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and with every subsequent baptism like that in the eight years of Mr. Warszawiak's ministry here.

The secret charities of the Mission therefore antedated the existence of any of the funds in question, and involved them all. Involved them, not through any purposed perversion from their original design, but through the tremendous stress of circumstances such as we have described, acting upon a generous peculiarity of temperament and early condition, to which those who have known Mr. Warzawiak intimately are able to give the entire credit of the errors which we are required in his behalf to acknowledge and deplore. Those errors were compounded of a pious optimism as to the future of receipts and repayments, of a childlike inexperience (in the past) of the cost and value of money, and of an absolute incontinence of money in the presence of distress, especially that of the martyrs of Jesus. This composite fault we are not allowed by Mr. Warszawiak to gloze in the least. On the contrary, the severest censure of his conduct is his own. Was he not quite too yielding to the cries of those actually perishing for their professed faith in Christ? “If so, it was a grievous fault—and grievously hath he answered it.” For, (though not the direct author of his trouble), the weak spot in his conduct, the generous mistake that “left him naked to his enemies,” and the mystery that confounded his friends, was this prodigal charity, and the persistent concealment of it as doubly enforced by solicitude for the sincerity of Christian profession on the part of converts and for the just repute of the Gospel itself as preached in its purity.

The humble confession and renunciation of this fault under the correcting hand of God's providence by the cruelest ministry of Satan, we find to be practical and sincere with relation to charitable funds for the future as well as the past, by the fullest evidence in conduct, reaching to the sacrifice of that personal regard which has been too generally the hinge on which generous contributions turned (cutting it off at the root by his refusal henceforth to accept donations, as already announced); and reaching also to abnegation of that independence in administration which he had cherished with the tenacity of a positive and determined temperament, while it was justified by the possession of unequalled ability in the management of missionary work among Jews.

Such are the grounds on which our honored brother hopes that the good will pardon his acknowledged mistakes and acquit him of intentional wrong. We, on these grounds—together with intimate experience of the humility, docility and sweetness of the most perfervid and intense of spirits, of the profusion of his charity in heart and hand, and of the absolute self-devotion he shows in a work to which he is called in the hottest fires that the human spirit can endure—

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we on our part feel abundantly warranted in not only confirming our love toward him but also in reposing our confidence in his integrity and in his high calling of God as a Chosen Messenger to the Chosen Race, on more solid foundations than ever.

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It remains now to indicate more definitely the principal channels of benevolence that we have been able to trace to the exhaustion of the funds in question (and very much more), and to the satisfactory solution of the whole vexed question, that we have announced on our own behalf.

In the first place: More than all of the Synagogue Fund went out, from year to year, through the home for houseless Jewish outcasts, which Mr. Warszawiak had opened on his private responsibility in 1892—throughout a period well remembered, of industrial prostration here, and of wholesale expulsion of indigent Jews from parts of Europe, when general attention was forced upon the perishing condition of myriads crowding into New York city. The Home was an institution too extensive and public to be concealed like the daily aid to Jewish families; but the source of its support has been untold until now.

In brief, the account is as follows, in round numbers, which are vouched for by facts of public notoriety:

The large house, No. 65 Avenue D, was hired at $1,000 a year; furnished throughout as a hotel for forty guests, with a large room for meetings, &c., at a cost of about $3,500; manned with superintendent and servants on a pay roll of $200 a month; and filled constantly for three or four years with more or less transient refugees, whose entertainment with the various classes for instruction, such as the sewing school, &c., cannot have cost so little as $10 a day on the average. These items of current expenditure, taken by the year and multiplied by three years (which were really nearer four) make up with the furnishing an understated total of $21,650. Of this amount, Mr. Warszawiak credits between $6,000 and $7,000 to special contributions for the purpose, including the expenses for a few months which were assumed by the New York City Mission Society. Deducting $7,000 on these accounts, there were still left more than $14,650 on Mr. Warszawiak's unhappy shoulders at last.

The public has been informed of the demand for the turning over of the Synagogue Fund to the City Mission Society, and of Mr. Warszawiak's consequent transfer of that fund to the custody of Miss Douglas in Scotland. But it has not been known that the bulk of that transfer was effected with borrowed money, on which Mr. Warszawiak also borrowed money to pay interest. However, all that deposit was returned by Miss Douglas, as we have before stated, on July 4, 1895, with an addition of £125, making a total of £2,400, or $11,616. Now what was done in the three and a quarter years from that date to the present, to account for the expenditure of those $11,616?

Mr. Warszawiak thought that anybody ought to be able to answer that question. But we were dull as the rest, and had to have the course of expenditure explained to us thus:

Allowing the current contributions to the mission to have met its regular expenses for the eighteen months following the return of the $11,616 to the end of 1896—of which a balanced and audited account was published—there remained the whole of 1897 and three-fourths of 1898 (21 months) for the continuance of those running expenses, for which, owing to the outbreak of the “Christian” persecution, there were no extraneous supplies to speak of from February, 1897, on. Nevertheless, in assured expectation of the ecclesiastical vindication which the evidence in the case unequivocally demanded, the mission work was not slackened, but rather increased in expense through the necessity for extra help during the long ecclesiastical conflict. Omitting February, 1897, and three months of vacation, here were seventeen months which, on but the usual scale of expenditure as seen in the previously published accounts, would account for nearly once and a half the amount returned by Miss Douglas in 1895! In all this time the outside donations were but as the drop of the bucket. We have no longer to account for the moneys that have been talked of, but on the contrary, for the continuance of the mission work which those moneys were inadequate, by a large margin of

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deficit, to support! The solution of this substitute mystery will, we think, prove the most interesting communication that we have to make.

The reader will have observed that we are already in our accounting far beyond the combined totals of the Synagogue Fund and the Nicolas funds: but the end is yet far off. We have not alluded to the great expense of the six-weeks ecclesiastical trial, for counsel, copyists, investigations of evidence on both sides, losses suffered by scores of witnesses by attendance lavishly wasted in delays and postponements by the prosecution and paid for by the defendant, with miscellaneous expenses too numerous to mention. We have not mentioned the large unreported extras that were lavished throughout the history of the mission in emergencies of all sorts for the assistants, such as long sickness and doctors' bills, deaths and undertaker's bills, transportation of families from distant parts and foreign lands, furnishing houses, and so on: all out of private purse; nor those well-known expenditures in the education of converts for the ministry, of which the living vouchers now laboring in mission fields far and near are or may be known and read of all men: all out of funds “unaccounted for,” or, rather, unaccountable!

But what shall we say of the more than one hundred converts baptized in the course of this history, and, whether good or bad, almost invariably flung as outcasts on the hands of their spiritual father and sole refuge? Although all hopes of aid had been sedulously suppressed in them, yet in every single case persecution broke instantly forth like fire, cutting off the martyrs from every possible way of subsistence. The work of succor became imperative daily. Evictions on every hand must be prevented with money; starving families must be fed from week to week, from month to month, and often in great part by the year. And yet, no less imperative seemed the necessity for opening avenues of self-supporting industry for the proscribed men, women and children. All were anxious to work, but no work could be had—and it is just so now, under our personal observation, in the case of any one who but exchanges the synagogue for the mission. Better far to be the most notorious criminal just out from his latest turn of State prison, than to be a Jewish confessor of the Lord Jesus Christ in this “Christian” city.

To create manufactories or trades for these converts, to provide materials for home industry, to stock small shops or baskets and pushcarts for trade, were among the principal ways of meeting the present distress. The need of money for these purposes was endless, and to the utmost extent of means and credit Mr. Warszawiak struggled with it single-handed, as he had done from the hour of the first baptism years before. Many enterprises were devised and assisted, of which samples hardly necessary to repeat are cited to us in abundance. For instance, Mr. B— was set up in the manufacture of small leather goods, employing also other Jewish-Christian outcasts. Not less than one thousand dollars went away in this channel alone. A party of four went into the cloth business to the modest amount of $500. Scores of perishing families were helped over and over again to peddler stocks of five to ten dollars each. A few were sent back to their old-country homes, and others were assisted to scatter to cities where their chances might be better than in this focus of persecution. But as “the beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water,” so is the beginning of relief. Beginning, you can never stop, nor even keep within any bounds. Shall you therefore never begin? never do anything? Who can tell us what to do, even now, after all this experience? Mr. Warszawiak has estimated his private contributions of business capital and family relief for converts in desperate circumstances, at little if any less than $10,000, and the need still grows as fast as the Gospel makes progress among the Jews. Again we ask, What is to be done? or can we decide to do nothing?

All of these never-reported and never-mentioned charities, of whatever date, belong to the eight years of Mr. Warszawiak's ministry as a whole; a continuing and accumulating burden handed down to the last, in loans for payment of loans, and loans for interest on loans, and in debts of every necessary kind on every hand. For instance: about $2,500 had been raised somehow and paid as interest

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to that disinterested Friend of Israel, Madame Nicolas, besides the $650 instalment hereinbefore mentioned of the restitution forced by imminent imprisonment through false accusation (easy to disprove but only after it would have done its intended work of public degradation.) Many other debts remain. Expenditure for travel abroad in the effort already described to effect liquidation of all the great charity debt unbeholden to any but himself; sustenance of family and mission employees in the meantime: and many other things, during a year and a half now passed without a thousand dollars of outside help all told: these and the preceding classes of expenditure have turned the real mystery to the opposite of that which the Christian public has been worried about all over the world. The question is no longer “What has Warszawiak done with all that money?” but “How in the world can he have got the money to do what he has done?” This new mystery, as we have said, is the most interesting of all. Shall we unfold it?

It is this:—the modest salary of the missionary has (largely) gone for these things: so have the special gifts sent him in the glow of admiration, for his personal comfort: so have the considerable sums received by Mrs. Warszawiak in certain years from her parents, and all her rich jewelry left from the lavish opulence of a paternal home forsaken for Christ: so has every article of furniture and personal property in the household—everything now in pawn—and lastly, much of the necessary food from days of semi-starvation in that household, whereof we are cognizant. And still, harassed and distracted by debts to landlords and tradesmen and money-lenders, the missionary and his family struggle on in their deep poverty that abounds unto the riches of their liberality and labors more abundant in the Gospel, among the thronging Jews that gather to No. 424 Grand street.

It is hard to do and suffer thus, only to be cast out for it in the Christian world as an impostor, hypocrite, and thief. It is, indeed, with singular literality, to “fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ” from the Church to which He belonged in the days of his flesh.

We called this statement “The Whole Truth” when we began: but we now find that the half cannot be told within our limits, even if we had the records of Heaven's chancery, which alone can reveal it in the Last Day, when He shall come whose reward is with Him to give to every man according as his work shall be.

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CONDITION AND FUTURE OF THE MISSION.

The defence of a monstrously wronged, defamed and persecuted servant of our Lord—involving the visible interest of the eminent work committed to him—has been forced upon us as the first purpose of the foregoing epistle. That is done. We believe that “the past is secure,” and the Friends of Israel may now find leisure to attend to the present and future of the work. Of this we say, as we said before, that it is not of man nor by man. Its persistence in power under suppression and orphanage could not be accounted for by second causes, either visible or supposable. Quoting from our Preliminary Notice, of June 30, 1897:

“Not only is the preaching of Christ Crucified continued tri-weekly by our brother Warszawiak with uncompromising boldness before uninvited Jewish congregations that literally crowd and overflow the place;—with weekly inquirers and seekers of baptism, who expect nothing and get nothing but loss for Christ—but the same miraculous token of the Holy Spirit's return to Israel had rested on that tabernacle continually throughout the six months of Mr. Warszawiak's late absence and extremest humiliation; `persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.' This fact is a wonder and a `sign' without resemblance in all the prior history of Jewish missions.”

There is therefore no personal appeal either for or against this work. As it has been, so it will be (by continued grace of God) a work of the Divine-human love and sacrifice; to be hereafter not only administered, but also, so far as possible, executed, in all departments, by service as disinterested, free and self-sacrificing as the gifts of its supporters. Far too much in the past, as in missionary work generally, has been spent on hirelings; until the idea of doing anything for nothing seems to have been well-nigh lost, but in a few exceptions. While the Shepherd

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on whom the gathering, care and nurture of all the flock devolves continually should he liberated from temporal distraction or privation (as for two years past he has not been), the Mission will the more urgently appeal for the devotion of self-supporting helpers in every subsidiary capacity; realizing that salaries gather hirelings, and that it is better to be short-handed, if it must be so, than to support men and women who cannot or will not do anything for the Lord without pay.

On the general subject of finance we have to repeat Mr. Warszawiak's announcement that he has determined absolutely to have nothing henceforward to do with the money or the financial management of the Mission, and begs them not to commit any further gifts to his hands, but to entrust them with all confidence to Mr. Wm. Cowper Conant, of No. 466 West 151st Street, New York, who has consented freely to act as Treasurer of the Mission; will deposit all funds received in the National Broadway Bank of New York, or other sound financial institution made known; will render frequent itemized accounts to every contributor; and will issue in conjunction with our report a retrospective financial statement as full and complete as possible under existing circumstances.

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TO A CHRISTIAN WORLD.

The above report was shown me by those* undersigned, who now request that I append a statement of my own. Believing it to be in accordance with the Master's will, I write to say:

[*This word was obscured in the original: either “those” or “these”—JMH ed.]

I. That the above is in accordance with truth, and that I am deeply sorry and humiliated for the unwise ways in which I have, through lack of experience, been using various moneys entrusted to me by Christian people.

II. That I crave the forgiveness of one and all who considered themselves wronged through my misjudgment in connection with money matters.

III. On all that is holy and dear to my soul I hereby assure every one who ever sent me a donation during the entire period of my missionary career, that the money, small or large, has been to the best of my judgment honestly used for the extension of the work in which I was engaged and the upkeeping and upbuilding of the Master's Kingdom among my brethren the Jews.

IV. That it is absolutely false in every particular, that I ever in my life was engaged in gambling or speculating with funds of the mission or any other funds whatsoever; the refuted testimony of the hired Jew-Detectives to the contrary notwithstanding.

V. Out of respect to my much beloved late pastor, the Rev. Dr. John Hall—who was the Moderator at my so-called trial in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, and who, as every one knows, had it put on record that he believed “the charges were not proven” and therefore disagreed with those in the Session who voted against me, firmly believing in the innocence of the accused)—I will refrain from saying anything here of that famous trial (?) behind closed doors in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

VI. It is untrue that my dear wife and I have any such intention as to return back to our parents and become Jews again for the sake of the money they offer us or for any other pretext, or bribe of any kind. It is true that our parents use every device and make every effect to gain that end, doubtless believing that “now is the time”; but all their efforts have met with the same determined refusal from our side as heretofore, and we trust they are convinced by this time that we are, by the help of God, determined and more than willing to rather suffer persecution, shame and disgrace under the yoke of Christ, and starve and die as Christians, than live in all the happiness and luxury they can possibly give us for becoming backsliders. This I state, at the request of Mrs. Warszawiak, and because the rumor is thick everywhere.

VII. It is an untruth that our Mission has been given up or closed up. By divine grace and help I have been able in spite of every opposition and hinderance to conduct the work of Christ among my brethren continually in the very same Mission house—No. 424 Grand Street, New York City—as hitherto; and our meetings are attended by large numbers of Jews filling the Mission Hall to its utmost capacity, and eagerly listening to the preaching of “the truth as it is in

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Jesus.” That many of our dear Jewish brethren have also given their hearts to Christ and openly confessed Him before the world in baptism and have thenceforward “witnessed a good confession” in spite of persecution and the loss of all things, is an open record for all who wish to know and see for themselves.

VIII. I here desire to bear my humble testimony that as “all things work together for good to them that love God” so have all these bitter trials through which we passed and still do pass, been working much good to my own heart and soul, teaching me the more, the better, and the closer, to rely and lean on Jehovah-Jesus only, as to all that concerns my Christian life and service for Him, as in every other matter.

IX. Words cannot tell the sufferings we have endured in the past, especially in these last eighteen months, neither do I wish to relate these now before you, but looking heavenward I hear my soul plead with its Redeemer—

Put now, Lord, any burden upon me, only sustain me; do with me, Lord, whatever thou pleasest, only uphold me; send me, Lord, anywhere, only go Thou with me; sever, Lord, any tie, only the one that binds me to thee, to thy cause, thy service, and thine own heart. Yes, dear Lord: crush me even unto dust and ashes, if so be thy will; only raise me up again that I may worship and glorify thee for ever! is the heartfelt prayer of

Yours faithfully in the Master's service

HERMANN WARSZAWIAK,

30 St. Mark's Place, New York.

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TREASURER'S STATEMENT.

I desire to say that I will be strictly accountable for the safety and proper disposal of all moneys committed directly to my hands, for general or special purposes connected with the support of the American (Warszawiak) Mission to the Jews, and will render, as often as practicable, detailed accounts of the whole, personally to each donor.

The sums that passed through my hands or came within my knowledge during the twelve months ended September 30, 1898, were the following:

DISBURSEMENTS.

WM. COWPER CONANT,

466 West 151st St., New York.

Sept. 30, 1898.