Louis Miller

After leaving the Forward in 1905 due to editorial differences with Cahan, Miller established a Yiddish daily newspaper of his own, Di Warheit (The Truth), which attained a measure of success until its readership was shattered with the coming of World War I. Efim Samuilovich Bandes was born to a Jewish family in April 1866 in Vilna (today's Vilnius, Lithuania), then part of the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire.

While barely a teenager, Efim (who later took the name Louis Miller) and his older brother joined a revolutionary circle headed by Aaron Zundelevich, seeking the overthrow of the antisemitic Tsarist regime in Russia.

[2] To avoid a similar fate, the Bandes brothers were forced to flee the country, briefly living in a series of European metropolises that included Zurich, Berlin, and Paris.

[3] Miller immediately joined the fledgling Russian Workers Union (Russian: Russkii Rabochii Soiuz; Yiddish: Rusisher Arbayter Fareyn) that had emerged in the city around this time, thereby making contact with a number of leading Jewish left wing political activists of the day, including Nicholas Aleinikoff (founder of the group), writer and journalist Abraham Cahan, Gregory Weinstein, trade union activist Leon Malkiel, and future journalist Victor Jarros.

[4] The Workers Union maintained a significant library of political reading material and conducted meetings which delved into Russian current events and various social questions of the day.

[3] Cahan and Miller both used their access to the rostrum of these political lectures to hone their oratorical skills, additionally making contact with prominent Socialist leaders of the day, including the German-speaking journalist Alexander Jonas and exiled nobleman Sergei Schevitsch.

[3] Whereas Cahan's perspective expressed by the Forward was socialist and internationalist, Miller came to outspokenly support the ideas of Zionism — belief in the necessity of establishment in the Middle East of a Jewish national homeland.