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Title: The Jews
Author: Hilaire Belloc
Release Date: November 26, 2015 [eBook #50556]
Language: English
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THE JEWS
* * * * * *
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_:
EUROPE AND THE FAITH
"Mr. Belloc has developed a side of history which is a wholesome
antidote to self-satisfied Anglicanism; and he has produced a
brilliant and burningly sincere historical essay which sweeps his
reader along. It is certainly the best book he has written."--_The
Church Times._
THE OLD ROAD
With Illustrations by William Hyde, a Map and Route Guides. New
Edition.
THE STANE STREET
A Monograph. With Illustrations by William Hyde, and Maps.
* * * * * *
THE JEWS
by
HILAIRE BELLOC
[Illustration: Hebrew text]
Constable & Company, Limited
London Bombay Sydney
First Published 1922
Second Impression 1922
To
MISS RUBY GOLDSMITH
MY SECRETARY FOR MANY YEARS AT KING'S
LAND AND THE BEST AND MOST INTIMATE OF
OUR JEWISH FRIENDS, TO WHOM MY
FAMILY AND I WILL ALWAYS OWE
A DEEP DEBT OF GRATITUDE
PREFACE
The object of this book is more modest, I fear, than that of much which
has appeared upon that vital political matter, the relation between the
Jews and the nations around them.
It does not propose any detailed, still less, any positive legal
solution to what has become a pressing problem, nor does it pretend to
any complete solution of it. It is no more than a suggestion that any
attempt to solve this problem ought to follow certain general lines
which are essentially different from those attempted in Western Europe
during the time immediately preceding our own. I suggest that, if the
present generation in both parties to the discussion, the Jews and
ourselves, will drop convention and make a principle of discussing the
problem in terms of reality, we shall automatically approach a right
solution.
We have but to tell the truth in the place of the falsehoods of the last
generation. Therefore, of the three principles upon which this essay
reposes, the principle that _concealment_ must come to an end seems to
me more important than the principle of mutual recognition, or even the
principle of mutual respect. For it may well be that my judgment is at
fault in the matter of Jewish national consciousness; it may well be
that I exaggerate it, and it is certain that one party to a debate
cannot be possessed of the full knowledge required for its settlement;
the other side must be heard. But neither my judgment nor the judgment
of any man can be at fault on the value of truth and the ultimate evil
consequences of trying to build upon a lie.
The English reader (less, I think, the American) will often find in my
sentences a note that will seem to him fantastic. The quarrel is already
acute here in London, but it has not here approached the limits which it
has reached long ago elsewhere; and a man accustomed to the quieter air
in which all public affairs have, until recently, been debated in this
country, may smile at what will seem to him odd and exaggerated fears.
To this I would reply that the book has been written not only in the
light of English, but of a general, experience. I will bargain that were
it put into the hands of a jury chosen from the various nationalities of
Europe and the United States it would be found too moderate in its
estimate of the peril it postulates. I would further ask the reader, who
may not have appreciated how rapidly the peril approaches, to consider
the distance traversed in the last few years. It is not very long since
a mere discussion of the Jewish question in England was impossible. It
is but a few years since the mere admission of it appeared abnormal. The
truth is that this question is not one which we open or close at will in
any European nation. It is imposed successively upon one nation after
another by the force of things. It is this force of things, this
necessity for national well-being, and for the warding off of disorder,
which has thrust the Jewish question to-day upon a society still
reluctant to consider it and still hoping it may return to its old
neglect. It cannot so return.
I will conclude by asking my Jewish, as well as my non-Jewish, readers
to observe that I have left out every personal allusion and every
element of mere recrimination. I have carefully avoided the mention of
particular examples in public life of the friction between the Jews and
ourselves and even examples drawn from past history. With these I could
often have strengthened my argument, and I would certainly have made my
book a great deal more readable. I have left out everything of the kind
because, though one can always rouse interest in this way, it excites
enmity between the opposing parties. Since my object is to reduce that
enmity, which has already become dangerous, I should be insincere indeed
if from mere purpose of enlivening this essay I had stooped to
exasperate feeling.
I could have made the book far stronger as a piece of polemic and
indefinitely more amusing as a piece of record, but I have not written
it as a piece of polemic or as a piece of record. I have written it as
an attempt at justice.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
THE THESIS OF THIS BOOK 3
The Jews are an alien body within the society they
inhabit--hence irritation and friction--a problem is
presented by the strains thus set up--the solution of
that problem is urgently necessary.
An alien body in any organism is disposed of in one
of two ways: elimination and segregation.
Elimination may be by destruction, by excretion or
by absorption--in the case of the Jews the first is abominable
and, further, has failed--the second means exile:
it has also failed--the third, absorption, the most probable
and most moral, has failed throughout the past,
though having everything in its favour.
There remains segregation, which may be of two
forms: hostile to, or careless of, the alien body, or friendly
to it and careful of its good--in this latter form it may
best be called _Recognition_. The first kind of segregation
has often been attempted in history--it has been partially
successful over long periods--but has always left
behind it a sense of injustice and has not really solved
the problem--also it has always failed in the end.
The true solution is in the second kind of segregation,
that is, recognition on both sides of a separate Jewish
nationality.
CHAPTER II
THE DENIAL OF THE PROBLEM 17
In the immediate past the problem was shirked in
Western Europe by a mere denial of its existence--some
were honestly ignorant of the existence of a Jewish
nation--some thought the difference one of religion
only--more admitted the existence of a separate nation
but thought a convenient fiction, that it did not exist,
necessary to the modern state.
This ignorance or fiction has broken down in our own
time--partly through the necessary reaction of truth
against any falsehood--partly through the increasing
numbers of the Jews in Western countries--more through
the great increase of their power.
Yet, though this old "Liberal" fiction about the
Jews is dead, having proved unworkable in the face of
fact, it had something to be said for it--it secured peace
for a while--it chose models from the past--and it was
based on a certain truth, to wit, that the Jew takes on
very rapidly the superficial characters of the nation in
which he happens for the time to be living--moreover it
was desired by the Jews themselves--example of the
old Jewish Peer and his claim "to be let alone"--practical
proof of the failure in his case.
At any rate the old "Liberal" fiction is now quite
useless--the problem is admitted and must be solved.
CHAPTER III
THE PRESENT PHASE OF THE PROBLEM 43
The Jewish problem, present throughout history, has
assumed a particular character to-day--it is the character
of a sharp reaction against the old pretence that
Jews were identical with the nations in which they
happened to live--it first took the form of irritation
only--it was suddenly exasperated in a very high degree
by the Jewish revolution in Russia--but long before
this the increasing power of Jews in public life, the anti-Semitic
writing on the Continent, the Dreyfus agitation,
the South African War, and the Jewish leadership of
Socialism had prepared the way--The situation on the
outbreak of the Great War--Bolshevism--a short
description to be expanded in a later chapter--Bolshevism
is a Jewish movement, _but not a movement of the
Jewish race as a whole_--its particular effect was to
release criticism of Jewish power which had hitherto
been silent from fear of, or sympathy with, Capitalism.
Men hesitated to attack the Jews as financiers because
the stability of society and of their own fortunes was
bound up with finance--but when a body of Jews also
appeared as the active enemies of existing society and of
private fortune, the restraint was removed--since the
Bolshevist movement open (and hostile) discussion of
the Jewish problem has become universal.
CHAPTER IV
THE GENERAL CAUSES OF FRICTION 69
The strain between Jewry and its hosts in Islam and
Christendom much older than any modern cause can
account for--the true causes are both general and particular--I
call those _general_ which are ineradicable and
proceed from the contrasting natures of the two races,
_particular_ those which depend upon the will on either
side and can be modified to the advantage of both.
The general cause of friction being a contrast in fundamental
character, we note that the common accusations
brought against Jews are false, as are the common praises
given him by those not of the race.--In each case what has
to be noted is not a series of virtues or vices special to
the Jew, but the racial character or tone of each quality.
These examined--the Jewish courage--examples--the
Jewish generosity--the strength of Jewish patriotism--the
consequent indifference to our national feelings--accusations
arising therefrom, especially in time of war--the
Jewish power of concentration--of eloquence--the
Jewish tendency to "push" a Jewish success and hide
a Jewish failure or danger--the evil effects of this tendency
in our mutual relations.
The poverty of the Jewish people--false effect produced
by a few great Jewish fortunes--the instability of these--cringing
of wealthy Europeans to Jewish money-dealers--dependence
of our politicians on wealthy Jews--evil
effect of this in the attempt to regulate domestic affairs
of Eastern Europe.
The ill effect of the partially Jewish financial monopoly--especially
with Parliamentary corruption as pronounced
as it is to-day.
CHAPTER V
THE SPECIAL CAUSES OF FRICTION 99
I have called "Special" causes of Friction those
which are remedial at will by either party--they would
seem to be, on the Jewish side, the habit of secrecy and
the habit of expressing a sense of superiority--on our
side a disingenuousness and unintelligence in our treatment
of Jews and a lack of charity.
The deplorable Jewish habit of secrecy--the use of
false names--examples--excuses for same not adequate--a
regular code of such names which deceive us but can
be decoded by fellow Jews.
The expression of superiority by the Jew--our statesmanship
has never sufficiently allowed for it--examples
of this expression--Jewish interference in our religion--or
national quarrels--and other departments which are
alien to Jewish interests--on the other hand this quality
has been a preservation of the race--the Jew should
note the corresponding sense of superiority on our side--even
the poor hack-writer, if he be of European blood,
feels himself superior to the Jewish millionaire.
CHAPTER VI
THE CAUSE OF FRICTION UPON OUR SIDE 123
This department of our inquiry often neglected
through an error--it is presumed that, because we are
the hosts and the Jew alien to us, no responsibility falls
on us--this error forgets that the Jew is permanently
with us and that every permanent human relation
involves responsibility.
The first cause of friction on our side is _disingenuousness_
in our dealings with the Jew--examples of this--we
conceal from the Jew our real feelings--we deceive
him--the richer classes who intermarry with Jews and
enter into business partnership with them especially
to blame--the populace more straightforward--this
deceiving of the Jew leaves him troubled when the quarrel
comes to a head--he has not heard what is said behind
his back.
Disingenuousness in our suppression of the Jewish
problem in history--gross examples of it in contemporary
life and particularly in the popular press--Jews called
"Russians," "Germans," anything but what they are.
Unintelligence a second cause of friction--example:
our treatment of Jewish immigration--we hate it, yet
allow it because we dare not give it its right name--unintelligent
treatment of the Jew in fiction--unintelligence
in our astonishment at his international position--example
of the cabinet minister's cousin who got into
trouble.
Last cause, lack of charity--people won't put themselves
in the shoes of the Jew and see how things look
from _his_ side--we do not (as we should) mix with Jews
of every class and address their societies--Summary--A
warning against the idea that the friction between the
Jews and ourselves is unimportant--it has bred catastrophe
in the past and may in the future.
CHAPTER VII
THE ANTI-SEMITE 145
Error of neglecting to study Anti-Semitism on account
of its extravagance--it is a most significant thing, however
ill-balanced--character of the Anti-Semite--he does
not recognize a Jewish problem to be solved but only a
Jewish race to be hated--this hatred his whole motive--his
self-contradictions--his delusion--his strength--the
press still on the whole boycotts the Anti-Semitic movement--but
it is growing prodigiously--its great power
of _documentation_--its vast accumulation of evidence--effect
this will have when it comes out.
The Jews met Anti-Semitism by nothing but ridicule--this
weapon insufficient and bound to fail--their enemies
have countered it by accumulating _facts_--the latter a
much stronger weapon so long as the erroneous Jewish
policy of secrecy is maintained.
Danger to the Jews of the Anti-Semitic movement--(1)
because of its intensity--(2) because of its formidable
accumulation of evidence, which cannot be permanently
suppressed--(3) and most important, because it is
allied to a now widespread and more moderate, but very
hostile, feeling, to which it acts as spear-head.
CHAPTER VIII
BOLSHEVISM 167
The revolution in Russia will be the historical point of
departure whence will date the renewed hostility to the
Jew in Western Europe.
Examination of that revolution--it was (as said in
Chapter III) "_a_ Jewish movement, _but not a movement
of the Jewish race_:" importance of this distinction--unfortunately
the two different terms "Jewish race"
and "a Jewish movement" are confused in the popular
mind.
The Revolution not the result of an accident or of a
universal plot--element of racial revenge--the Jew not
a revolutionary--special character of the Russian situation--Industrial
Capitalism, the great evil of our time,
there recent and weak--therefore open to special attack--an
international evil--the only two international
forces applicable were the Jews and the Catholic Church--why
the Catholic Church cannot _directly_ attack industrial
Capitalism--why the Jew who happens to be opposed
to it can and does directly attack it--neither our instinct
for property nor our Nationalism an obstacle in his
case.
Grave perils to the Jew arise from his identification
with Bolshevism--the more reason to meet these perils
by a sane treatment of the Jewish problem.
CHAPTER IX
THE POSITION IN THE WORLD AS A WHOLE 189
The Jewish problem varies (1) according to the extent
to which Jews have acquired control and domination in
various places; (2) according to the tradition of each
community in approaching the problem; (3) according to
the strength in each community of the four international
forces, which are the Catholic Church, Islam, Industrial
Capitalism, and the Socialist revolt against this last.
The individual Jew does not feel that he is in a position
of control or even that he is interfering with his hosts--yet
that is the universal complaint against him--it is a
corporate or collective power--more and more resented.
The position in Russia--repeated--in the Marches of
Russia and Roumania and Poland--in Central Europe--in
Occidental Europe--Ireland an exception.
The position in the United States--Mr. Ford and the
great effect of his action.
The Western tradition more favourable to the Jews
than the Eastern--problem of the Jews and Islam--position
of the Catholic Church--effect of Industrial
Capitalism and of its converse, Socialism, upon the
problem.
CHAPTER X
THE POSITION OF THE JEWS IN ENGLAND 215
England has gone to both extremes with the Jew.
The Jew in the Roman time and in the Middle Ages--his
monopoly of Usury in _early_ Middle Ages--The
exile of all English Jews under Edward I--their return
under Cromwell--followed by a growing alliance between
the English State and the Jews--largely due to cosmopolitan
commercial interests of Britain--also to common
hostility towards the Catholic Church--aided by great
wealth and security of this country--in the later nineteenth
century the Jews, in spite of their small numbers,
colour every English institution, especially the Universities
and the House of Commons--the interests of the
two races began to diverge before the Great War--none
the less a formal alliance maintained through the control
of the politicians by Jewish finance--its culmination in
the attempt to form an Anglo-Judaic state in Palestine.
CHAPTER XI
ZIONISM 231
The chief interest of the Zionist experiment lies in its
reaction upon the _international_ position of the Jew--yet
that point is not yet discussed--what will be the
effect of the experiment on the position of Jews _outside_
Palestine, necessarily the vast majority of the race?--an
inevitable alternative--either the Jews lose their
international position through loss of the fiction that
they are not a nation--or the Zionist experiment breaks
down--effect especially in Eastern Europe.
Special effect of the experiment on Great Britain--difficulty
of maintaining sacrifice for purely Jewish
interests--which now clash with British--unpopularity
of such sacrifice inevitable--grave error of first appointment
to the headship of the New State--unworthiness of
the politician chosen for that position.
CHAPTER XII
OUR DUTY 249
This but a consequence of the conditions established in
Chapters IV, V and VI--our double duty of mixing with
the Jews and of recognizing their separate nationality--necessity
of _openly_ admitting this separate nationality
in conversation and social habits--in spite of difficulties
opposed by convention--in this the wealthier classes
should follow the lead of the populace--folly and danger
of _Fear_ in this matter--the fear of Jewish power a
degrading and exasperating thing to the European--delay
makes it worse--our plain duty is to recognize
this alien nation, to respect it, and to treat it frankly as
we do every nationality other than one's own.
CHAPTER XIII
THEIR DUTY 271
Only a brief mention--for interference or advice in
domestic concerns of Jewry would be an impertinence--but
it is clear that all specially Jewish institutions favour
the right policy for which I plead--those already in
existence--schools, newspapers, Jewish societies--all
increase of these institutions should be welcome, because
they emphasize and make clear the separate nationality
of the Jew.
CHAPTER XIV
VARIOUS THEORIES 277
This chapter is a digression on the various theories on the
Jewish race and its fortunes which have arisen in history
and some of which are still present.
The theory that reconciliation is impossible--its
attachment to the idea of a special curse or blessing.
The theory of a mysterious necessary alliance between
Israel and Britain--its most extravagant forms.
The theory that the Jews are the necessary _flux_ of
Europe, without which our energies would decline--note
on the intellectual independence of the Jew and
on his original effect on our thought--demand for a
Jewish history of Europe and Islam combined.
The theory that the Jewish problem is domestic only
and no concern of ours--its error, since the relations are
mutual.
The two theories of the Jew as a malignant enemy
of our innocent selves, and of our malignant enmity
against the innocent and martyred Jew--both erroneous.
The theory that the Jewish problem is _now_ solving
itself by absorption--this theory false and due to a
misunderstanding of history and a neglect of acute
modern and recent differentiation--Mr. Ford's epigram
on "the melting-pot."
Fantastic theory that no Jewish national type exists!
CHAPTER XV
CONCLUSION. HABIT OR LAW? 301
Granted that the solution I advance (a full recognition
of separate nationality) is the just solution, should
it be expressed in law?--Not, I think, until it has first
appeared in our morals and social conventions--to begin
with laws and regulations on _our_ side would inevitably
breed oppression--but the suggestion of separate institutions
coming from the Jewish side should be welcomed--urgency
of a settlement--modern quarrels are growing
fiercer, not less--but for my part I say, "Peace to
Israel."
THE THESIS OF THIS BOOK
CHAPTER I
THE THESIS OF THIS BOOK
It is the thesis of this book that the continued presence of the Jewish
nation intermixed with other nations alien to it presents a permanent
problem of the gravest character: that the wholly different culture,
tradition, race and religion of Europe make Europe a permanent
antagonist to Israel, and that the recent and rapid intensification of
that antagonism gives to the discovery of a solution immediate and
highly practical importance.
For if the quarrel is allowed to rise unchecked and to proceed
unappeased, we shall come, unexpectedly and soon, upon one of these
tragedies which have marked for centuries the relations between this
peculiar nation and ourselves.
The Jewish problem is one to which no true parallel can be found, for
the historical and social phenomenon which has produced it is unique. It
is a problem which cannot be shirked, as the last generation both of
Jews and of their hosts attempted to shirk it. It is a problem which
cannot be avoided, nor even lessened (as can some social problems), by
an healing effect of time: for it is increasing before our eyes. It must
be met and dealt with openly and now.
That problem is the problem of reducing or accommodating the strain
produced by the presence of an alien body within any organism. The alien
body sets up strains, or, to change the metaphor, produces a friction,
which is evil both to itself and to the organism which it inhabits. The
problem is, how to relax those strains for good and to set things
permanently at their ease again.
There are two ways to such a desirable end.
The first is by the elimination of what is alien. The second is by its
segregation. There is no other way.
The elimination of an alien body may take three forms. It may take a
frankly hostile form--elimination by destruction. It may take a form,
also hostile but less hostile--elimination by expulsion. It may take a
third form, an amicable one (and that far the most commonly found in the
natural process of physical nature and of society)--elimination by
absorption; the alien body becomes an indistinguishable part of the
organism in which it was originally a source of disturbance and is lost
in it. These three ways sum up the first method, the method of
elimination.
The second method, if elimination shall prove impossible or undesirable,
is that of segregation; and this again may be of two kinds--hostile and
amicable. We may segregate the alien element without regard to its own
ends or desires: the segregation of it being upon a plan framed solely
from the point of view of the organism invaded, and the reduction of the
strain or friction it creates effected by the mere cutting of it off
from all avenues through which it can affect its host.
But we may also segregate the alien irritant by an action which takes
full account of the thing segregated as well as of the organism
segregating it, and considers the good of both parties. In this second
and amicable policy the word segregation (which has a bad connotation)
may be replaced by the word _recognition_.
This book has been written under the conception that all solutions of
the Jewish problem other than this last are either impracticable, or bad
in morals, or both.
It is written to advocate a policy wherein the Jews on their side shall
openly recognize their wholly separate nationality and we on ours shall
equally recognize that separate nationality, treat it without reserve as
an alien thing, and respect it as a province of society outside our own.
It is written under the conviction that any attitude which falls short
of this policy or is very different from it will now soon breed
disaster.
The solution by way of destruction is not only abominable in morals but
has proved futile in practice. It has been the constant temptation of
angry popular masses in the past, when the Jewish problem has come to a
head not once but a thousand times in various parts of our civilization
during the last twenty centuries. From the pitiless massacres of
Cyrenaica in the second century to the latest murders in the Ukraine
that solution has been attempted and has failed. It has invariably left
behind it a dreadful inheritance of hatred upon the one side and of
shame upon the other. It has been condemned by every man whose judgment
is worth considering and especially by the great moral teachers of
Christendom. It is, indeed, hardly a policy at all, for it is blind. It
is a gesture of mere exasperation and not a final gesture at that.
The second form of elimination--expulsion--though theoretically
sustainable (for a community has a right to organize its own life and no
aliens therein have a claim to modify that life or to disturb it), is
none the less in practice, and as regards this particular problem, only
one degree less odious than the first. It means inevitably a mass of
individual injustice, as well as common spoliation and every other
hardship. It is almost impossible to dissociate it from violence and ill
deeds of all kinds. It leaves behind it almost as strong an inheritance,
if not of shame on the one side, at any rate of rancour upon the other,
as does the first. And what condemns it finally is that it is not, and
cannot be, complete.
For it is in the nature of the Jewish problem that this solution is only
attempted at moments and in places where the strength of the Jews has
declined; and this invariably means their corresponding strength in some
other quarter.
A particular society attempting this solution of expulsion may succeed
for a time so far as itself is concerned, but that inevitably means the
reception of the exiled body by another district, and, sooner or later,
the return of the force which it was hoped to be rid of. The greatest
historical example of this is, of course, the action of the English. The
English alone of all Christian nations did adopt this solution in its
entirety. A strong national kingship, a government highly organized for
its time, an insular position and a singular unanimity of national
purpose promoted the expulsion of the Jews from England at the end of
the thirteenth century; for more than three and a half centuries that
expulsion was maintained, and England alone of the various divisions of
Christendom was in theory free of the alien element and nearly as free
in practice as it was in theory.
But, as we all know, in the long run the experiment broke down. The Jews
were readmitted in the middle of the seventeenth century, and nowhere
have they come to greater strength than in the very nation which
attempted this solution of the problem with such drastic thoroughness
five hundred years ago. None of the other parallel attempts up and down
Europe were of the same thoroughness as the English attempt. Their
failure came, therefore, more quickly. But such failure would seem in
any case to be inevitable. Quite apart, therefore, from the moral
objection which attaches to it, there is the practical experience that a
solution is not to be found upon such lines.
Lastly, there is elimination by absorption. This would obviously be the
most gentle, as it is the most evident, of all methods. It is further a
normal and most usual method of nature herself when a living organism
has to deal with disturbance excited by the presence of an alien body.
So natural and so obvious is it that it has been taken by many men of
excellent judgment upon both sides as a matter of course. It has been
taken for granted that if absorption has not taken place in the past it
has only been due to an ill-will artificially nourished and maintained
against the Jews on our side, or by the unreasoning exclusiveness of the
Jews on theirs.
Even to-day, in spite of a vast increase during our own generation, both
in the public appreciation of the problem and in its immediate gravity,
there are very many men who still regard absorption as the natural end
of the affair. These, though dwindling, are still numerous upon the
non-Jewish side; upon the other, the Jewish side, they are, I think, a
very small body. For I note that even those Jews who think absorption
will come, admit it with regret, and certainly the vast majority would
insist with pride upon the certain survival of Israel.
But here again I maintain that we have the index of history against us.
In point of fact absorption has not taken place. It has had a better
chance than any corresponding case can show: ample time in which to
work, wide dispersion, constant intermarriage, long periods of tolerant
friendship for the Jew, and even at times his ascendancy. If ever there
were conditions under which one might imagine that the larger body would
absorb the smaller, they were those of Christendom acting intimately for
centuries, in relation with Jewry. Nation after nation has absorbed
larger, intensely hostile minorities: the Irish, their successive
invaders; the British, the pirates of the fifth and eighth centuries and
the French of three centuries more; the northern Gauls, their
auxiliaries; the Italians, the Lombards; the Greeks, the Slav; the
Dacian has absorbed even the Mongol: but the Jew has remained intact.
However we explain this--mystically or in whatever other fashion--we
cannot deny its truth. It is true of the Jews, and of the Jews alone,
that they alone have maintained, whether through the special action of
Providence or through some general biological or social law of which we
are ignorant, an unfailing entity and an equally unfailing
differentiation between themselves and the society through which they
ceaselessly move.
It is not true that conditions in the past differed from present
conditions sufficiently to account for so strange a story. There have
been generations and even centuries (not co-incident indeed throughout
the world, but applying now to one country, now to another) where every
opportunity for absorption existed; yet that absorption has never taken
place. There was every chance in Spain at one moment, in Poland at
another, but there was the best chance of all in the short but brilliant
period of Liberal policy which has dominated Western Europe during the
last three generations. That policy has had the fullest play: it has
left the Jews not only unabsorbed, but more differentiated than ever,
and the political problem they present more insistent by far than it was
a century ago.
The thing might have come where there was a chaos of peoples, as in
pagan Alexandria in the four centuries from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., or in
modern New York. It might have come where there was a particularly
friendly attitude, as in mediaeval Poland or modern England. It might
even have come, paradoxically, through the very persecution and strain
of times and places where the Jews suffered the most hostile treatment:
for their absorption might have been achieved under pressure though it
had failed to be achieved under attraction. As a fact it has never come.
It has never proved possible. The continuous absorption of outlying
fractions, a process continually going on wherever the Jewish nation is
present, has not affected the mass of the problem at all. The body as a
whole has remained separate, differentiated, with a strong identity of
its own under all conditions and in all places, and the _a priori_
reasoning, by which men come to think this solution reasonable, is
nullified by an experience apparent throughout history. That experience
is wholly against any such solution. It cannot be.
There remains, then, only the solution of segregation; a word which (I
repeat) I use in a completely neutral manner though it has unhappily
obtained in this and other issues a bad connotation.
Segregation, as I have said, may be of two kinds. It may be hostile, a
sort of static expulsion: a putting aside of the alien body without
regard to that body's needs, desires or claims; the building of a fence
round it, as it were, solely with the object of defending the organism
which reacts against invasion, and suffers from the presence within it
of something different from itself.
Or it may take an amicable form and may be a mutual arrangement: a
recognition, with mutual advantage, of a reality which is unavoidable by
either party.
The first of these apparent solutions has been attempted over and over
again throughout history. It has had long periods of partial success,
but never any period of complete success; for it has invariably left
behind it a sense of injustice upon the Jewish side and of moral
ill-ease upon the other.
There remains, I take it, no practical or permanent solution but the
last. It is to this conclusion that my essay is meant to lead. If the
Jewish nation comes to express its own pride and patriotism openly, and
_equally openly to admit the necessary limitations imposed by that
expression_; if we on our side frankly accept the presence of this
nation as a thing utterly different from ourselves, but with just as
good a right to existence as we have; if we renounce our pretences in
the matter; if we talk of and recognize the Jewish people freely and
without fear as a separate body; if upon both sides the realities of the
situation are admitted, with the consequent and necessary definitions
which those realities imply, we shall have peace.
The advantage both parties--the small but intense Jewish minority, the
great non-Jewish majority in the midst of which that minority
acts--would discover in such an arrangement is manifest. If it could be
maintained--as I think it could be maintained--the problem would be
permanently solved. At any rate, if it cannot be solved in that way it
certainly cannot be solved in any other, and if we do not get peace by
this avenue, then we are doomed to the perpetual recurrence of those
persecutions which have marred the history of Europe since the first
consolidation of the Roman Empire.
It has been a series of cycles invariably following the same steps. The
Jew comes to an alien society, at first in small numbers. He thrives.
His presence is not resented. He is rather treated as a friend. Whether
from mere contrast in type--what I have called "friction"--or from some
apparent divergence between his objects and those of his hosts, or
through his increasing numbers, he creates (or discovers) a growing
animosity. He resents it. He opposes his hosts. They call themselves
masters in their own house. The Jew resists their claim. It comes to
violence.
It is always the same miserable sequence. First a welcome; then a
growing, half-conscious ill-ease; next a culmination in acute ill-ease;
lastly catastrophe and disaster; insult, persecution, even massacre, the
exiles flying from the place of persecution into a new district where
the Jew is hardly known, where the problem has never existed or has been
forgotten. He meets again with the largest hospitality. There follows
here also, after a period of amicable interfusion, a growing,
half-conscious ill-ease, which next becomes acute and leads to new
explosions, and so on, in a fatal round.
If we are to stop that wheel from its perpetual and tragic turning,
there seems to be no method save that for which I plead.
The opposition to it is diverse and formidable but can everywhere be
reduced upon analysis to some form of falsehood. This falsehood takes
the shape of denying the existence of the problem, of remaining silent
upon it, or of pretending friendly emotions in public commerce which are
belied by every phrase and gesture admitted in private. Or it takes the
shape of defining the problem in false terms, in proclaiming it
essentially religious whereas it is essentially national. Worst of all,
it may be that very modern kind of falsehood, a statement of the truth
accompanied by a statement of its contradiction, like the precious
modern lie that one can be a patriot and at the same time international.
In the case of the Jews, this particular modern lie takes the shape of
admitting that they are wholly alien to us and different from us, of
talking of them as such and even writing of them as such, and yet, in
another connection, talking and writing of them as though no such
violent contrast were present. That pretence of reconciling
contradictions is the lie in the soul. Its punishment is immediate, for
those who indulge it are blinded.
All opposition that ever I have met to the solution here proposed is an
opposition sprung from the spirit of untruth; and if there were no other
argument in favour of an honest and moral settlement of the dispute, the
one argument based on Truth would, I think, be sufficient. It is a
social truth that there is a Jewish nation, alien to us and therefore
irritant. It is a moral truth that expulsion and worse are remedies to
be avoided. It is an historical truth that those solutions have always
ultimately failed; the recognition of those three truths alone will set
us right.
Such is the main thesis of this book, but it needs an addition if its
full spirit is to be apprehended, and that addition I have attempted to
express in the last chapter.
If the solution I propose be the right solution, it yet remains to be
determined whether it should first take the form of new laws from which
a new spirit may be expected to grow, or first take the form of a new
spirit and practice from which new laws shall spring. The order is of
essential importance; for to mistake it, to reverse the true sequence of
cause and effect, is the prime cause of failure in all social reform.
As will be seen by those who have the patience to read to the end of my
book, I have, in its last pages, pleaded strongly for the _second_
policy. It would be impossible to frame in our society, and in face of
the rapidly rising tide of antagonism against the Jews, new laws that
would not lead to injustice. But if it be possible to create an
atmosphere wherein the Jews are spoken of openly, and they in their turn
admit, define, and accept the consequences of a separate nationality in
our midst, _then_, such a spirit once established, laws and regulations
consonant to it will naturally follow.
But I am convinced that the reversing of this process would only lead
first to confusion and next to disaster, both for Israel and for
ourselves.
THE DENIAL OF THE PROBLEM
CHAPTER II
THE DENIAL OF THE PROBLEM
I have stated the Problem. There is friction between the two races--the
Jews in their dispersion and those among whom they live. This friction
is growing acute. It has led invariably in the past (and consequently
may lead now) to the most fearful consequences, terrible for the Jew but
evil also for us. Therefore that the problem is immediate, practical and
grave. Therefore a solution is imperative.
But I may be--and indeed I shall be--met at the outset by the denial
that any such problem exists. Such was the attitude of all our immediate
past; such is the attitude of many of the best men to-day on both sides
of the gulf which separates Israel from our world.
I must meet this objection before going further, for if it be sound, if
indeed there is no problem (save what may be created by ignorance or
malice), then no solution is demanded. All we have to do is to enlighten
the ignorant and to repress the malicious: the ignorant, who imagine
there is an alien Jewish nation among them, the malicious, who treat as
though they were alien, men who are, in fact, exactly like ourselves and
normal fellow-citizens.
I do not here allude to the great mass of convention, hypocrisy and fear
which pretends ignorance of a truth it well knows. I am speaking of the
sincere conviction, still present in many--particularly those of the
older generation--that no Jewish problem exists.
It is honestly denied by a certain type of mind that there is any such
thing as a Jewish nation; there can therefore be no friction between it
and its hosts: the thing is a delusion. Let us examine that mind and see
whether the illusion is on our side or no.
It was the attitude familiar to the nineteenth century, and agreeable to
that one of its political moods in which it found itself best satisfied:
the negative attitude of leaving the Jewish nation unrecognized; of
creating a fiction of single citizenship to replace the reality of dual
allegiance; of calling a Jew a full member of whatever society he
happened to inhabit during whatever space of time he happened to sojourn
there in his wanderings across the earth. That was the attitude
agreeable on the political side to everything which called itself
"modern thought." Such was the doctrine proposed by the great men of the
French Revolution. Such was the attitude accepted almost
enthusiastically by Liberal England, that is, by all the dominant public
life of England during the Victorian period. Such was the policy which
once obtained universal favour throughout the whole of our Western
civilization. That was the attitude which the West actually attempted to
impose upon Eastern States, and the last effect of its rapidly-declining
credit is to be found in certain clauses of the Treaty of Versailles:
for that attitude is still the official attitude of all our governments.
In the Treaty of Versailles and the other treaties following the Great
War the Jews of Eastern Europe were put under a sort of special
protection, but not in a straightforward and positive fashion. The word
"Jew" was never blurted out--it was replaced by the word "minority"--but
the intention was obvious. The underlying implication was: "We, the
Western governments, say there is no Jewish problem. The idea of a
Jewish nation is a delusion and the conception of the Jew as something
different from a Pole or a Rumanian is a mania. If you in the East are
still benighted in this matter, at any rate we will prevent your
ignorance or obsession from leading you to persecution." The same men
who made these declarations proceeded to erect a brand-new
highly-distinct Jewish state in Palestine, with the threat behind it of
ruthlessly suppressing a _majority_ by the use of Western arms.
Both actions were the consequence of that confused position I have just
defined (history will call it the _last_ example), which, though much
weakened in public opinion, was still honestly taken for granted by
_some_ of the Parliamentarians who framed the Treaty, and was certainly
felt to be of personal advantage to _all_: the position that there is no
Jewish nation when the admission of it may inconvenience the Jew, but
very much of a Jewish nation when it can advantage him.
Those who defended this position did so from various standpoints; but
these may all be regarded as so many degrees in a certain way of looking
at the Jewish people. It was till lately the attitude of the majority of
educated Frenchmen, Englishmen and Italians. It was, so to speak, the
_official_ political attitude of Western Europe with its parliamentary
governments and other corresponding institutions.
The most extreme form of this opinion was to be found in people who
spoke of the Jew as nothing other than a citizen with a particular
religion. A state would be dominantly Catholic or Protestant, but it
would contain smaller religious bodies, eager minorities, for which a
place had to be found, side by side with the more or less indifferent
majority. Catholic France had a five per cent and wealthy Huguenot
minority. Protestant England had a seven per cent and poor Catholic
minority. Protestant Holland had a large minority--more than a third--of
Catholics, and so forth. It had become odious to nineteenth century
thought that religious differences (which it regarded as nothing more
than shades of doubtfully-held private opinion) should be the concern of
the State. A large number of people thought of the Jews, not as a race,
but only as a religion; and regarding all religion thus, they concluded
that it could involve no diminution of citizenship.
At the other end of the scale you had public men who fully appreciated
the ultimate difficulties which would certainly arise from this
inconclusive settlement of the matter. These regarded the Jews as a
quite distinct nationality, and even as a nationality likely to clash
with the national needs of its hosts; they would even (in private)
express their hostility towards that nationality. None the less, they
thought it must be treated in public life as though it did not exist.
These men were most emphatic in their private letters and
conversation--that the Jewish problem was _not_ a religious but a
national one. Nevertheless (they said) it was necessary _to-day_ to mask
that problem by a fiction and to _pretend_ that the Jew was just like
everybody else save for his religion. All other solutions (they said)
demanded a knowledge of history and of Europe not to be expected of the
public at large; again, the Jews were so powerful that if _they_ desired
the fiction to be supported they must be humoured. At any rate, recourse
must be had, in our time at least, to this make-believe.
To the new and already antagonistic attitude towards the Jews now rising
so strongly everywhere throughout Western Europe (which is in part a
reaction from the nineteenth century position), this old-fashioned way
of denying the Jewish race or ignoring its existence by a fiction
appears morally odious, and we wonder to-day why it commanded universal
support. It involved a falsehood, of course, often a conscious
falsehood; and it was also undignified; for there appears to our
generation something as grotesque in denying the existence of the Jewish
nation as in denying our own. But that the fiction was maintained
sincerely, and that the grotesque and undignified side of it went
unperceived, we can assure ourselves in a few moments' converse with any
one of that older generation which maintained it and still represents it
among us.
It might have continued to flourish for yet another generation, at any
rate among the leading classes of this commercial community, but for two
new developments which broke it down, each development the result of so
large a toleration. The first was the growth of numbers, the second of
influence. What made that old falsehood glaring and that old grotesque
apparent was the enormous increase throughout all the West of the Jewish
poor, accompanied by the enormous increase of the power exercised by the
Jewish rich in public affairs. Men grew angry at finding themselves
pledged to a pretence that Jews were not, when their presence was
everywhere unavoidable, in the streets, and in the offices of
government. The fiction was possible when a very few financiers, mixed
with and lost in the polite world, were alone concerned. It became
impossible in the face of the vast new ghettoes of London, Manchester,
Bradford, Glasgow, and the formidable and growing list of Jewish and
half-Jewish Ministers, Viceroys, ambassadors, dictators of policy.
This contempt for and irritation with what I have called the nineteenth
century attitude, the Liberal attitude, was already apparent before the
end of that century. It was muttering during the South African war in
England and the Dreyfus case in France; it became vocal in the first
years of this century, especially in connection with parliamentary
scandals; with the Bolshevist rising in 1917 it became clamorous. It
will certainly grow. We already have a formidable minority prepared to
act against the interest of the Jew. It will in all probability become,
and that shortly, a majority. It may appear at any moment, on some
critical occasion, on some new provocation, as an overwhelming flood of
exasperated opinion.
All the more does it behove us to treat the old-fashioned neutrality and
fiction fairly; to examine it even with a bias in its favour; to set
down all that can be said in its defence before we reject it, as I think
we must now all reluctantly reject it. I say "reluctantly"; for after
all it was the fixed mood of our fathers, who did great things: we feel
their reproach when we abandon it, and there are still present with us
very many of our elders to whom our new anxiety is abhorrent.
We must remember in the first place that the treating of the Jew in the
West as no Jew at all, but a plain citizen like the rest, worked well
enough for a time. One might almost say that there was no Jewish problem
consciously present to the mind of the average educated Englishman or
Frenchman, Italian, or even western German, between, say, the years 1830
and 1890. A very small body of Jews in England and France, in Italy and
the rest of the West, were vaguely associated with wealth in the popular
mind; a large proportion of them were distinguished for public work of
various kinds; many of them with beneficence. The presence of such men
could not conceivably lead to political difficulties--or at least, so it
then seemed. The stories of persecution that came through from Eastern
Europe, even examples of friction between great bodies of Jews there and
the natives of the States where they happened to find themselves, were
received in the West with disgust as the aberrations of imperfectly
civilized people.
Even in the valley of the Rhine, where the Jew was more numerous and
better known "in bulk," the convention of the more civilized West was
accepted. The doctrines, the abstraction of the French Revolution in
this matter had prevailed.
Here any reader with an historical sense will at once point out that the
space of time I have just quoted--1830 to 1890--is ridiculously short.
Any treatment of a very great political problem, centuries old, which
works for only sixty years and then begins to break down is no
settlement at all. But I would reply that this period was especially a
time in which historical perspective was lost. Men, even highly educated
men, in the nineteenth century, greatly exaggerated the foreground of
the historical picture.
You may note this in any school manual of the period, where all the four
centuries of our Roman foundation are compressed into a few sentences,
the dark ages into a few pages, the whole vast story of the Middle Ages
themselves into a few chapters; where the mass of the work is invariably
given to the last three centuries, while of these the nineteenth is
regarded as equal in importance to all the rest put together.
This false historical perspective is apparent in every other department
of their political thought. For instance, although capitalism, huge
national debts, the anonymity of financial action and the rest of it,
did not begin to flourish fully until after the first third of the
nineteenth century, and though anyone might (one would think) have been
able to discover the exceedingly unstable character of that society, yet
our fathers took it for granted as an eternal state of things. Your
Victorian man with £100,000 in railway stock thought his family
immutably secure in a comfortable income, and what he thought about
capitalism he thought also about his newly-developed anonymous press,
his national frontiers, his tolerance of this, his intolerance of that,
his parliaments and all the rest of it. It is no wonder if, under such a
false sense of permanence and security, he lost historical perspective
in this other and graver matter we are here discussing.
But apart from the argument that what I have called the nineteenth
century or Liberal attitude towards the Jews worked well for its little
day (at least, in Western Europe), there is also the fact that under
special circumstances something very like it has worked well for much
longer periods in the past. Take, for example, the position of the Jews
in such a town as Amsterdam. The reception of a Jew as a citizen exactly
like others, though he was present in very large numbers, the fiction
denying his separate nationality, has held for generations in that
community and it has procured peace and apparent contentment upon both
sides. And what is true to this day of Amsterdam has been true in the
past for long periods in the life of many another commercial and
cosmopolitan society: that of Venice, notably, and, in a large measure,
that of Rome; in that of Frankfort, of Lyons, and of a hundred cities at
special times. It was true of all Poland for generations.
One might add to the list indefinitely, but always with the
uncomfortable knowledge, as one wrote, that the experiment invariably
broke down in the long run.
Again, there was to be advanced for this Liberal attitude of the
nineteenth century the very powerful argument that while to one party in
the issue, the Englishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, etc., it seemed
well enough and certainly did no harm, it was highly acceptable to the
other. The Jew as a rule not only accepted but welcomed this particular
way of dealing with what _he_ at any rate has always known to be a very
grave problem indeed. For the Jew has a racial memory beyond all other
men. The arrangement seemed to give him all the security of which his
racial history (a thing of which every Jew is acutely conscious) had
made him ardently desirous. I think we should add (though the phrase
would be quarrelled with by many modern people) that this fiction
satisfied the Jew's sense of _justice_. For it is no small part of the
problem we are examining that the Jew does really feel such special
treatment to be his due. Without it he feels handicapped. He is, in his
own view, only saved from the disadvantage of a latent hostility when he
is thus protected, and he is therefore convinced that the world owes him
this singular privilege of full citizenship in any community where he
happens for the moment to be, while at the same time retaining full
citizenship in his own nation.
Now, if in any conflict an arrangement seems workable enough to one
party and is actually acclaimed by the other, it is not lightly to be
disregarded.
If, for instance, a man and his tenant quarrel about the tenure of a
field upon a very long lease, the tenant caring little about nominal
ownership but very much about his inviolable tenure, the landlord quite
agreeable to a very long lease but keen on retaining the titular
ownership, that quarrel can be easily settled. One could give any name
to the tenant's position other than the name of "owner," yet satisfy all
his practical demands. A rough parallel exists between such a position
and the attempt at a settlement which marked the nineteenth century.
What the Jew wanted was not the proud privilege of being called an
Englishman, a Frenchman, an Italian, or a Dutchman. To this he was
completely indifferent (for his pride lay in being a Jew, his loyalty
was to his own, and what is more, he might at any moment fold up his
tent and go off to another country for good). What the Jew wanted was
not the feeling that he was just like the others--that would have been
odious to him--what he wanted was _security_; it is what every human
being craves for and what he of all men most lacked: the power to feel
safe in the place where one happens to be. On the other hand, his hosts
had not yet found any practical inconvenience in granting this demand.
They did not know the historical argument against it, or they thought it
worthless, because they thought the past barbarous and no model for
their own action. So a compromise was arrived at, the fiction was
solidly established, and the Jew, though remaining a Jew, became a
German in Hamburg, a Frenchman in Paris, an American in New York, as he
wandered from place to place, and for a long lifetime no one felt
himself much the worse for the false convention.
The next argument in favour of this policy was the fact that it drew
upon a number of ideas, each one of which at some time or another had
been taken for granted by our ancestors in each one of their numerous
(but unsuccessful) attempts to deal with the problem after their own
fashion.
For instance, a modern objector says: "What rubbish to treat Jews as
though they merely represented a religion! We all know they represent a
_nation_!" But all manner of legislation in the past, even in times and
places where the difference between Jews and Europeans was most marked,
has perpetually fallen back upon that very point of religion alone.
Over and over again you find it the test of policy: in early, and again
in fifteenth century Spain, under Charlemagne's rule in Gaul, in early
mediaeval England, at Byzantium, and to this day in Eastern parts where
the Jew is subject to perpetual interference. Exception was in all these
made for the Jew who abandoned his religion. His nation was left
unmentioned.
It is pertinent to quote such a simple and recent example as the body of
Prussian officers, now happily extinct. It was a standing rule in the
smarter Prussian regiments (I believe in nearly all) that no Jew could
get his commission. The Prussian system left the granting of
commissions, in practice, to the existing members of the regimental
staff; they treated their mess as a Club and they blackballed Jews. But
they would admit _baptized_ Jews, and did so in considerable numbers.
Was the Jew less of a Jew in race through his baptism? Throughout all
the centuries that religious criterion, which the modern reformer cries
out against as a piece of humbug and a mask for the real political
problem, has been the criterion taken. It is true that the modern
solution did not attempt a religious segregation. On the contrary, the
Liberal thought of the nineteenth century held all such segregation in
abhorrence; but it had this in common with the older fashion, that it
made religion the point of interest, and to that extent masked the more
real point of nationality and allegiance.
Lord Palmerston, making his famous speech on the sanctity of a Greek
Jew's bedstead, and insisting that the said Greek Jew was an English
citizen; Lord Palmerston carefully avoiding the word "Jew" and
pretending throughout his speech that the Greek Jew in question was as
much an Englishman as himself, was in a very different mood from a
Spanish fifth-century Bishop admitting a Jew to Office on condition of
his conversion. Yet the two had this in common, that neither regarded
the Jew as the member of another nation, but each (for very different
reasons) as no more than the member of a religion.
To Palmerston, this Greek Jew about whose bedstead he made his famous
speech, and onto whose bedstead hangs to this day the phrase "Civus
Romanus Sum," was above all a fellow-citizen. He may have seemed to
Palmerston a doubtful sort of Englishman because his home was Greece,
but he certainly did not seem doubtful because he happened to be a Jew.
Palmerston would have thought that only a matter of private opinion, and
would no more have regarded a Jew as an alien on account of this private
opinion than he would have regarded as alien a fellow-Member of the
House of Commons who preferred roast mutton to boiled.
Take, again, another aspect of the nineteenth century liberal idea: the
recognition of citizenship. You have had that over and over again in the
attempted solutions of the past. It was the very essence of the Roman
method. For though the Government of the Roman Empire was much too
concerned with realities and with enduring work to accept any fiction in
the matter, or to pretend in practice that the Jew was not a Jew;
though, on the contrary, the Romans recognized at once the gulf between
the Jews and themselves, and recognized it not only by their cruelty to
the Jew but also by the privileges they granted him; yet it was always
their policy to admit _citizenship_ as the primary distinction. The Jew
who could claim that he was a full Roman citizen was, in the eyes of a
Roman Tribunal, much more important in that capacity than in his social
capacity as Jew. His "point," as we should say in our modern slang, was
his citizenship, not his Judaism. So, I say, this solution has for a
further argument the fact that in one part or another it is in touch
with the various attempts our race has made in the past to solve the
problem.
There is yet another argument strongly in favour of the Liberal fiction
which was attempted in the immediate past, and thought to have been
successfully established. It is the consonance of that fiction with the
whole body of modern custom and law, with the whole mass of modern
economic and social habit.
We travel so much, we mix so much, our economic activities are at once
so complicated, so interlocked, and (unhappily) for the most part so
secret, that any other way of meeting the Jews would have seemed--at any
rate if it had appeared in the shape of a positive law--a monstrous
anachronism. A man must meet his friends' friends and treat them as a
normal part of the general society in which he moves. As the Jew
permeated the society of the West everywhere (small though his numbers
were in the West), as he everywhere intermarried with Europeans of the
wealthier class, to insist in his presence upon his separate nationality
would have been odious; it would have been like making a guest feel out
of place in one's home.
What is more, to by far the greater part of the wealthier and governing
classes of the Western States the difference of race was so far masked
that it had almost come to be forgotten. Sometimes a shock would revive
it. An English squire would find, for instance, that a relation of his
by marriage, whose Jewish name and descent he had never bothered about,
was cousin to, and in close connection with, a person of a totally
different name--an Oriental name--mixed up in some conspiracy, say,
against the Russian State. Or he would learn with surprise that a
learned University man with whom he had recently dined was the uncle of
a socialist agitator in Vienna. But the shock would be a passing one,
and the old mood of security would return.
With the growth of plutocracy the anomaly of treating Jews as
individuals separate from the rest of the community increased. The most
important men in control of international finance were admittedly
Jewish. The Jew's international position made him always useful and
often necessary in the vast international economic undertakings of our
time. The anonymity which had come to be taken for granted throughout
modern capitalism made it seem absurd or impossible, always highly
unusual, and probably futile, to search for a separate Jewish element in
any particular undertaking.
There is one last argument for this Liberal policy, which has a strong
practical value, though it is exceedingly dangerous to use it in the
defence of that policy because it cuts both ways. It is the argument
that the Jew ought to be thus treated as a citizen exactly like the rest
and given no position either of privilege or disability, because he
does, as a fact, mould himself so very rapidly to his environment.
When men say--as they are beginning to do--that a Jew is as different
from ourselves as a Chinaman, or a negro, or an Esquimaux, and ought
therefore to be treated as belonging to a separate body from our own,
the answer is that the Jew is nothing of the kind. Indeed, he becomes,
after a short sojourn among Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans or Americans,
so like his hosts on the surface that he is, to many, indistinguishable
from them; and that is one of the main facts in the problem.
That is the real reason why to the majority of the middle classes in the
nineteenth century, in Western countries, the Jewish problem was
nonexistent. Were you to say it of any other race--negroes, for
instance, or Chinamen--it would sound incredible; but we know it in
practice to be true, that a Jew will pass his life in, say, three
different communities in turn, _and in each the people who have met him
will testify that he seemed just like themselves_.
I have known a case in point which would amuse my non-Jewish readers but
perhaps offend my Jewish readers were I to present it in detail. I shall
cite it therefore without names, because I desire throughout this book
to keep to the rule whereby alone it can be of service, that nothing
offensive to either party shall be introduced; but it is typical and can
be matched in the experience of many.
The case was that of the father of a man in English public life. He
began life with a German name in Hamburg. He was a patriotic citizen of
that free city, highly respected and in every way a Hamburger, and the
Hamburg men of that generation still talk of him as one of themselves.
He drifted to Paris before the Franco-German War, and, there, was an
active Parisian, familiar with the life of the Boulevards and full of
energy in every patriotic and characteristically French pursuit; notably
he helped to recruit men during the national catastrophe of 1870-71.
Everybody who met him in this phase of his life thought of him and
talked of him as a Frenchman.
Deciding that the future of France was doubtful after such a defeat, he
migrated to the United States, and there died. Though a man of some
years when he landed, he soon appeared in the eyes of the Americans with
whom he associated to be an American just like themselves. He acquired
the American accent, the American manner, the freedom and the restraints
of that manner. In every way he was a characteristic American.
In Hamburg his German name had been pronounced after the German fashion.
In France, where German names are common, he retained it, but had it
pronounced in French fashion. On reaching the United States it was
changed to a Scotch name which it distantly resembled, and no doubt if
he had gone to Japan the Japanese would be telling us that they had
known him as a worthy Japanese gentleman of great activity in national
affairs and bearing the honoured name of an ancient Samurai family.
The nineteenth century attitude almost entirely depended upon this
marvellous characteristic in the Jews which differentiates them from all
the rest of mankind. Had that characteristic power of superficial
mutation been absent, the nineteenth century policy would have broken
down as completely as the corresponding Northern policy towards the
negro broke down in the United States. Had the Jew been as conspicuous
among us, as, say, a white man is among Kaffirs, the fiction would have
broken down at once. As it was, all who adopted that policy, honestly or
dishonestly, were supported by this power of the Jew to conform
externally to his temporary surroundings.
The man who consciously adopted the nineteenth century Liberal policy
towards the Jews as a mere political scheme, knowing full well the
dangers it might develop; the man only half conscious of the existence
of those dangers; and the man who had never heard of them but took it
for granted that the Jew was a citizen just like himself, with an
exceptional religion--each of those three men had in common, aiding the
schemes of the one, supporting the illusion of the other, the amazing
fact that a Jew takes on with inexplicable rapidity the colour of his
environment. That unique characteristic was the support of the Liberal
attitude and was at the same time its necessary condition.
The fiction that a man of obviously different type and culture and race
is the same as ourselves, may be practical for purposes of law and
government, but cannot be maintained in general opinion. A conspiracy or
illusion attempting, for instance, to establish the Esquimaux in
Greenland as indistinguishable from the Danish officials of the
Settlement, would fail through ridicule. Equally ridiculous would be the
pretence that because they were both subjects of the same Crown an
Englishman in the Civil Service of India was exactly the same sort of
person as a Sikh soldier. But with the Jews you have the startling truth
that, while the fundamental difference goes on the whole time and is
perhaps deeper than any other of the differences separating mankind into
groups; while he is, within, and through all his ultimate character,
above all things a Jew; yet in the superficial and most immediately
apparent things he is clothed in the very habit of whatever society he
for the moment inhabits.
I say that this might seem to many the last and strongest argument in
favour of the old-fashioned Liberal policy, but I repeat that it is a
dangerous argument, for it cuts both ways. If a food which disagrees
with you looks exactly like another kind of food which suits you, you
might use the likeness as an argument for eating either sort of food
indifferently. You might say: "It is silly to try to distinguish; one
must admit, on looking at them, that they are the same thing"; but it
would turn out after dinner a very bad practical policy.
There is indeed one last argument which to me, personally, and I suppose
to most of my readers, is stronger than all the rest, for it is the
argument from morals.
If the Liberal attitude of the nineteenth century had proved a stable
one, omitting that element in it which is a falsehood and therefore a
factor of instability, one could retain the rest; _then_ it would
satisfy two appetites common to all men--appetite for justice and the
appetite for charity.
Here is a man, a neighbour present in the midst of my society. I put him
to inconvenience if I treat him as an alien. I like him; I regard him as
a friend. To treat such a man as though he were, although a friend,
something separate, not to be admitted to certain functions of my
community, offends the heart, as it also offends the sense of justice.
Such a man may possess a great talent for, say, administration. Like all
men possessed of a great talent, he must exercise it. You maim him if
you do not allow him to exercise it. A rule forbidding him to take part
in the administration of the society in which he finds himself, or even
a feeling hindering him in such activities, creates, not only in him,
but in those who are his hosts, a sense of injustice; and if it were
possible to adopt a policy wherein the separate character of the Jew
should be always in abeyance, so that he could be at the same time an
Englishman and yet not an Englishman, or a Frenchman and yet not a
Frenchman, then we should have a settlement which all good men ought to
accept.
Unfortunately that solution is false because, like many appeals to a
virtuous instinct, it is sentimental. We call "sentimental" a policy or
theory which attempts to reconcile contradictions. The sentimental man
will equally abhor crime and its necessary punishment; disorder and an
organized police. He likes to think of human life as though it did not
come to an end. He likes to read of the passion of love without its
concomitant of sexual conflict. He likes to read and think of great
fortunes accumulated without avarice, cunning or theft. He likes to
imagine an impossible world of mutually exclusive things. It makes him
comfortable.
Now we commit the fault of the sentimental man (the gravest of practical
faults in politics) when we cling at this late date to a continuance of
the old policy. You cannot have your cake and eat it too, you cannot at
the same time have present in the world this ubiquitous fluid, yet
closely organized Jewish community, and _at the same time_ each of the
individuals composing it treated as though they were _not_ members of
the nation which makes them all they are. You cannot at the same time
treat a whole as one thing and its component parts as another. If you
do, you are building on contradiction and you will, like everybody who
builds on contradiction, run up against disaster.
* * * * *
I am minded to give the reader another anecdote (again taking care, I
hope, to suppress all names and dates to prevent identification, which
might irritate my Jewish readers or too greatly interest their
opponents). As a younger man it was my constant pastime to linger at the
bar of the House of Lords and listen to what went on there. I shall
always remember one occasion when an aged Jew, who had begun life in
very humble circumstances, had accumulated a great fortune and had
purchased his peerage like any other, rose to speak in connection with a
resolution or with a bill dealing with "aliens"--the hypocrisy of the
politician, and the popular ferment against the rush of Jewish
immigrants into the East End between them gave rise to that
non-committal name. This old gentleman very rightly pushed all such
humbug aside. He knew perfectly well that the policy was aimed at "his
people"--and he called them "my people." He knew perfectly well that the
proposed change would introduce interference with their movement and
would subject them to humiliation. He spoke with flaming patriotism,
and I was enthralled by the intensity, vigour and sincerity of his
appeal. It was a very fine performance and, incidentally (considering
what the man was!), it illustrated the vast difference between his
people and my own. For a life devoted to accumulating wealth, which
would have killed nobler instincts in any one of us, had evidently
seemed to him quite normal and left him with every appetite of justice
and of love of nation unimpaired. He clinched that fine speech with the
cry, "What our people want is to be let alone." He said it over and over
again. I am sure that in the audience which listened to him, all the
older men felt a responsive echo to that appeal. It was the very
doctrine in which they had been brought up and the very note of the
great Victorian Liberal era, with its national triumphs in commerce and
in arms.
Well, within a very few years the younger members of that very man's
family came out in Parliamentary scandal after scandal, appearing all in
sequence one after the other--a sort of procession. They had been let
alone right enough! But they had not let _us_ alone. I ask myself,
sometimes, How would it sound if some years hence any one of those
descendants--having by that time been given his peerage (for they are
rich men and all of them in professional politics)--should return to
that cry of his ancestor and ask to be "let alone"? There would be no
response _then_ in the breasts of the contemporaries who might hear him.
Manners will so much have changed in this regard that he would be
interrupted. But I do not think that my hypothetical descendant of that
rich old Jew is likely to make any such speech. I think that when the
time comes for making it, the whole idea of "letting alone" will be
quite dead.
I have quoted this old man's speech with no invidious intention but only
as an actual example of the way in which the "letting alone" of this
great question breaks down. I am as familiar as any Jewish reader of
mine with names that have dignified public life in the past, Jewish
names, Jewish peers: and I recall in particular the honoured name of
Lord Herschell to the friendship between whose nearest and my own I
preserve a grateful and sacred memory.
* * * * *
But to return to the failure of the sentimental argument.
The sentimental argument fails because it involves contradictions--that
is, incompatibility of fact.
Even if one had not this strictly rational principle to guide one, there
is the whole of history to guide one. It is true that the pretence of
common citizenship has worked now for a shorter, now for a longer,
period, but never indefinitely. You always come at last to a smash. The
Jew is welcomed in mediaeval Poland; he comes in vast numbers; all goes
well. Then the inevitable happens and the Jew and the Pole stand apart
as enemies, each accusing the other of injustice, the one crying out
that he is persecuted, the other that the State is in danger by alien
activity within. Spain alternatively pursued this policy, and its
opposite; the whole history of Spain--the original seat of Jewish
influence in Europe after the general exile--is a history of alternating
attempts at the sentimental solution and a savage reaction against it:
the reaction of the man, who, fighting for his life, strikes out
violently in terror of death. That is the history not only of Spain but
of every other country at one time or another.
Indeed, we have before our very eyes to-day the beginning of exactly
such a reaction in the West of Europe and the United States of America,
and it is the presence of that reaction which has caused this book to be
written. The attempt at a Liberal solution has already failed in our
hands; if it had not failed there would be no more to be said, or, at
any rate, we could postpone the discussion until the actual difficulty
began. But we have only to look around us to see that, after these few
years, this one lifetime, during which the experiment has flourished in
the highest part of civilization, it is already breaking down.
Everywhere the old questions are being asked, everywhere the old
complaints are being raised, everywhere the old perils are reappearing.
We must seek some solution, for if we fail to find it we know from the
past what tragedies are in store for us both. There is a problem, a most
direct and urgent problem. Once it is recognized, a solution of it is
necessarily demanded.
But it is not enough to show that the mere denial of the existence of
that problem--the old nineteenth century Liberal policy--was false and
bound to break down. It is just as necessary, if we appreciate how
practical and immediate the problem is, to state it and illustrate it
from contemporary events. It is not enough to show that the attempted
Liberal policy has failed. One must also, before trying to discover a
solution, analyse the nature of the problem as it presents itself at the
moment, and that is what I propose to do in the next chapter.
THE PRESENT PHASE OF THE PROBLEM
CHAPTER III
THE PRESENT PHASE OF THE PROBLEM
I said in my last that the old solution of ignoring or denying the
Jewish problem was bound to break down and had broken down, and this was
tantamount to saying that the problem persists. But I said one must go
farther and state the full nature of that problem as it stands at this
moment before one could attempt a practical solution.
It is not enough to say that a person who imagines himself immortal and
immune from disease is, as a fact, dangerously ill, and that the
break-down of his health has disproved his theory. One must go on to
find out exactly what is the matter with him, and, if possible, what the
cure for the trouble may be.
The Jewish problem in its larger sense I have defined in the first
chapter of this book, and that as I think every one defines it,
including all the many Jews who have discussed the matter. It is the
presence within one political organism of another political organism at
friction with it: the strains set up by such an unnatural state of
affairs; the risk of disaster to the lesser body and of hurt to both if
it remain unremedied. The true solution therefore is only to be
discovered in some policy which will permanently relieve the strain and
re-establish normal relations. The end of such a solution should be the
functioning, as far as possible, of both parties, at their ease and
without disturbance one to the other.
But this general statement of the problem--that it is the presence to
each party of an alien body and the consequent irritation and friction
on each--is not enough. We must pursue it more closely and develop it in
greater detail, describing how the friction and the irritation are
increasing: insisting that they have even become a menace. Then only can
we set out to discover as far as possible by analysis what exact
character the disease bears and why it is of this character. Only after
all this can we explore a remedy.
When we look round the modern world, say the last twenty years, we
discover, in widely separate places, and among very different interests,
and inhabiting the most diverse characters, the presence of what is for
many a new political feeling: it runs from irritation to exasperation,
from grumbling to invective; it is everywhere directed against the Jews.
One activity after another, in which the Jews are variously in the right
or in the wrong, or indifferent, has aroused hostility in varying
degrees--but increasing--and though the danger-spots are still, as I
have said, dissociated in the main, yet they are beginning to coalesce
and to form large areas inimical to Israel.
It is objected of the Jew in finance, in industry, in commerce--where he
is ubiquitous and powerful out of all proportion to his numbers--that he
seeks, and has already almost reached, dominion. It is objected that he
acts everywhere against the interests of his hosts; that these are being
interfered with, guided, run against their will; that a power is
present which acts either with indifference to what we love or in active
opposition to what we love. Notably is it said to be indifferent to, or
in active opposition against, our national feelings, our religious
traditions, and the general culture and morals of Christendom which we
have inherited and desire to preserve: that power is Israel.
These feelings grew as one example after another of the Jewish strength,
the Jewish cohesion, arrived to feed them. How violent they were to
become might be seen by taking as a special example their extreme form,
called "Anti-Semitism." When we come, later in this book, to examine
that modern phenomenon, we shall find it to be not only a proof of the
insistence and gravity of the problem we are trying to solve, but also
some explanation of its nature.
Upon a world thus already exasperated, and in some large sections
exasperated to the point of unreason--for the anti-Semitic drive was,
and is, full of unreason--there suddenly fell the double effect of the
Bolshevist revolution: a revolution which struck both at the benevolent
who would hear no harm of the Jews, and those who had hitherto shielded
or obeyed them as identified only with the interests of large Capital.
It was a blow in flank under which staggered both the supporters of
Jewish neutrality and the dependants upon Jewish finance.
The old Liberal policy still officially held the field; but when this
shattering explosion came it compelled attention. Bolshevism stated the
Jewish problem with a violence and an insistence such that it could no
longer be denied either by the blindest fanatic or the most resolute
liar.
Such was, in its largest lines, the recent historical sequence leading
up to the state of affairs we now find. Let us trace that sequence in
more detail and from a little farther back.
A lifetime ago, when the Liberal policy was founded and when conditions
were favourable to its establishment, the populace might still nourish
its traditional antagonism to the Jew, but in the West of Europe his
numbers were very limited (only a few thousand in France and England
combined, and hardly as many in Italy).
He belonged for the most part to the classes that did not come into
direct competition with the poor of the large towns. From the
countrysides he was absent. He had not attempted to govern his hosts as
a politician, nor, in any large measure, to indoctrinate them through
the Press. The rapid decline of religion at that time broke down one
barrier, and the transformation of the governing classes from the old
territorial Lords to the modern plutocracy broke down another. The
convention that the Jew was indistinguishable from the citizens of the
country in which he happened to live, or, at any rate, from that in
which he had last lived, was further fostered by the break-up of that
cosmopolitan aristocratic society which had marked the eighteenth
century, and which could note and register the movements of prominent
individuals from nation to nation. The new industrial fortunes and the
new international finance both contributed to the same end, while the
Jew also began to compete successfully in every one of the liberal
professions without as yet dominating any of them. No conflicts had
arisen between the Jewish race and the national interests of any
European people, with the exception perhaps of the Poles; and these were
subject and silenced.
Throughout all this time, from the years after Waterloo to the years
immediately succeeding the defeat of the French in 1870-71, the weight
and position of the Jew in Western civilization increased out of all
knowledge and yet without shock, and almost without attracting
attention. They entered the Parliaments everywhere, the English Peerage
as well, and the Universities in very large numbers. A Jew became Prime
Minister of Great Britain, another a principal leader of the Italian
resurrection; another led the opposition to Napoleon III. They were
present in increasing numbers in the chief institutions of every
country. They began to take positions as fellows of every important
Oxford and Cambridge college; they counted heavily in the national
literatures; Browning and Arnold families, for instance, in England;
Mazzini in Italy. They came for the first time into European diplomacy.
The armies and navies alone were as yet untouched by their influence.
Strains of them were even present in the reigning families. The
institution of Freemasonry (with which they are so closely allied and
all the ritual of which is Jewish in character) increased very rapidly
and very greatly. The growth of an anonymous Press and of an
increasingly anonymous commercial system further extended their power.
It is an illusion to believe that all this great change was Jewish in
origin. The Jew did not create it, he floated upon it, but it worked
manifestly to his advantage, and we find him at the end of it
represented on the governing institutions of Western Europe fifty or one
hundredfold more than was his due in proportion to his numbers. The Jews
intermarried everywhere with the leading families and, before any sign
that a turn of the tide had taken place, they had already achieved that
position in which they are now being assailed and to oust them from
which such strong efforts are preparing.
Perhaps the first event which cut across this unbroken ascent was the
defeat of the French in 1870-1. Not that its effects were immediate in
this field, but that a nation defeated is the more likely to raise a
grievance, real or imaginary; in seeking a cause for social misfortunes
following on its military disasters, it will naturally fix upon an
international rather than a national one, and blame its alien population
rather than its own. Moreover, the date of the French defeat was also
the date on which was overthrown the temporal power of the Papacy. In
this also the Jews had played their part. It gave them the opportunity
to play a still greater part in the immediate future of the new Italy.
Within a few years Rome was to see a Jewish Mayor who supported with all
his might the unchristianizing of the city and especially of its
educational system.
One small but significant factor in the whole business of these 70's and
early 80's--the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth
century--was the rise to monopoly of the Jewish international news
agents, among which Reuters was prominent, and the presence of Jews as
international correspondents of the various great newspapers, the most
prominent example being Opper, a Bohemian Jew, who concealed his origin
under the false name of "de Blowitz," and for years acted as Paris
correspondent for _The Times_, a paper in those days of international
influence.
The first expression of the reaction that was at hand was to be found in
sundry definitely anti-Semitic writings appearing in Germany and France,
most noticeable in the latter country.
Their effect was at first slight, though they had the high advantage of
extensive documentation. The great majority of educated men shrugged
their shoulders and passed such things by as the extravagancies of
fanatics; but these fanatics none the less laid the foundation of future
action by the quotation of an immense quantity of facts which could not
but remain in the mind even of those who were most contemptuous of the
new propaganda. In these books special insistence was laid upon exposing
what the Jews themselves call "crypto-Judaism"--that is, the presence
everywhere throughout Western Europe of men in important public
positions who passed for English, French or what not, but were really
Jews.
In many cases (I have already quoted the poet Browning and the
distinguished family of Arnold) these people were not hiding their
religion but had simply drifted from the original Jewish community of
which their ancestors had been members, but in most others there was
more or less present an element of conscious secrecy. It was evidently
the object of those who produced the literature I am describing to
attack that secrecy in particular and to undo its effects; and, as I
have said, even where their fanaticism was most ridiculed, the vast
array of facts which they marshalled could not be without its effect
upon the memory of their contemporaries.
There next appeared a series of direct international actions undertaken
by Jewish finance, the most important of which, of course, was the
drawing of Egypt into the European system, and particularly into the
system of Great Britain.
Of more effect upon public opinion was the excitement of the Dreyfus
case in France and, immediately afterwards, of the South African War, in
England.
The characteristic of the Dreyfus case was not the discussion upon the
guilt or innocence of the unfortunate man from whom it takes its title,
but the immense international clamour with which it was surrounded. This
local affair was made an affair of the whole world, and men took as
passionate an interest in it in the remotest corners of civilization as
though they had been the principals actually engaged.
Such a phenomenon could not but astonish the mass of onlookers who had
hitherto not given the Jewish question a thought, and when there was
added to it the great ordeal of the South African War, openly and
undeniably provoked and promoted by Jewish interests in South Africa,
when that war was so unexpectedly prolonged and proved so unexpectedly
costly in blood and treasure, a second element was added to the growing
feeling, not yet, indeed, of antagonism to Jewish power (half cultured
France was Dreyfusard, and much more than half England favoured the Boer
War at its origin), but of interest in the Jewish question, of
curiosity, on the part of the average citizen, who had not hitherto
heard of it.
The original minority which had begun to oppose Jewish power, with
their extreme left wing of Anti-Semites, and their core of men whose
quarrel was rather with the financial control of the modern world than
with any racial problem, tended to grow. As always happens with a
growing movement, events appeared to suit themselves to that growth and
to promote it.
The Panama scandals in the French Parliament had already fed the
movement in France. The later Parliamentary scandals in England, Marconi
and the rest, afforded so astonishing a parallel to Panama that the
similarity was of universal comment. They might have passed as isolated
things a generation before. They were now connected, often unjustly,
with the uneasy sense of a general financial conspiracy. They were, at
any rate, connected with an atmosphere essentially Jewish in character.
Meanwhile there had already begun one of those great migratory movements
of the Jews which have diversified history for two thousand years and
which are almost always the prelude to each new disturbance in the
equilibrium of the Jews and each new resuscitation of the Jewish problem
in its most acute form.
The great reservoir of the Jewish race was, of course, that country of
Poland which had so nobly succoured the Jews during the persecutions of
the late Middle Ages. Poland had made itself an asylum for all the Jews
who cared to go to it, and was now, after the infamous partition
inaugurated by Prussia, still the home of something like half the Jews
of the world. The hatred of the Jews entertained by all classes of
Russians, the persecutions they suffered from the fact that Russia,
since the partition, governed that part of Poland where they were most
numerous, started the new exodus. The movement was a westerly one,
mainly to the United States, but there also arose in connection with it
a novel growth of great ghettoes in the English industrial towns, more
particularly in London, while New York was slowly transformed from a
city as free of Jewish population as London and Paris had been in the
past, to one in which a good third or more of its inhabitants became
either entirely Jewish or partly Jewish.
This vast immigration, which was in full swing just before the outbreak
of the great war, and which was adding so active a leaven to the
increasing ferment, which had even planted the beginnings of a ghetto in
Paris and which was affecting the whole of the West, was supplemented by
one more factor of the first importance.
Modern capitalism, by which the Jew had so largely benefited, but which
he did not originate and in which prominent, though few, Jewish names,
were so immixed, had for its counterpart and reaction the _socialist_
movement. This, again, the Jews did not originate, nor at first direct;
but it rapidly fell more and more under their control. The family of
Mordecai (who had assumed the name of Marx) produced in Karl a most
powerful exponent of that theory. Though he did no more than copy and
follow his non-Jewish instructors (especially Louis Blanc, a Franco-Scot
of genius), he presented in complete form the full theory of Socialism,
economic, social, and, by implication, religious; for he postulated
Materialism.
After Karl Marx came a crowd of his compatriots, who led the industrial
proletariat in rebellion against the increasing power of the capitalist
system, and began to organize a determined revolt.
Before the Great War one could say that the whole of the Socialist
movement, so far as its staff and direction were concerned, was Jewish;
and while it took this purely economic form in the West, in the East--in
the Russian Empire--it took a political form as well, and the growing
revolutionary force in that Empire was equally Jewish in direction and
driving power.
Such was the situation on the eve of the Great War. Men were beginning
to be thoroughly alive to what was meant by the Jewish problem. The old
security was dispelled for ever; but as yet only a minority, though now
a large one, was prepared to deal with that problem and to discuss it
openly. All that was official, and particularly the Press, with its vast
influence, had as yet refused in any department to face the realities of
the position. The convention forbidding public allusion to the Jewish
question was still very strong. On the surface it seemed as though the
old Liberal policy still stood firm and, indeed, unshakeable. The Jews
were in every place of 'vantage: they taught in the Universities of all
Europe; they were everywhere in the Press; everywhere in finance. They
were continually to be found in the highest places of Government and in
the chanceries of Christendom they had acquired a dominant power which
none could question. But the challenge against this unnatural position
necessarily worked against great odds, it remained private and had
great difficulty in finding expression. None the less, it extended, and
by 1914 had become serious.
The immeasurable catastrophe of the war--with which the Jews had nothing
to do and which their more important financial representatives did all
they could to prevent--fell upon Europe. It seemed at first as though,
in the face of that overwhelming tragedy, what had been so rapidly
growing--I mean the debate and conflict upon Jewish claims--would be
silenced. The Jews were found fighting gallantly in all the armies.
Their services were generously acknowledged, though the cruel ambiguity
of their situation was hardly realized. Considering that they had no
national interest in the fight, it must have seemed to them a mere
insanity, crucifying their nation to no purpose. For Zangwill put the
matter well indeed when he said that those who eagerly and spontaneously
joined the first recruiting (and these were numerous) did so "for the
honour of Israel." The sacrifice was not without fruit. In its presence
many a complaint was silenced and much was revealed which, but for it,
would have remained unprobed. The Christian family in its bereavement
saw at its side a Jewish neighbour who had lost his son in what was no
concern of his race; the Christian priest witnessed the agony of the
young Jewish soldier. The defender of the Western nations saw at his
side not only the Jewish conscript (who should never have been called)
but the Jewish volunteer. Thus, the first to enlist from the United
States was a Jew, later promoted, whom I had the pleasure and honour of
meeting on Mangin's staff at Mayence. I hope he may see these lines.
It looked as though in the presence of such a suffering, which the Jews
shared with us, the growing quarrel between them and ourselves would be
appeased. Men who had been prominent not only for their discussion of
the Jewish problem, but for their direct and open antagonism to Jewish
power and even to the most legitimate of Jewish claims, were now
compelled to silence. Reconciliation was in the air ... when, in the
very heat of the struggle, came that factor, incalculably important,
which now rules all the rest; I mean the factor of what is called
_Bolshevism_.
This new Jewish movement changed the whole face of things and, coming on
the top of the rest, has transformed the problem for all our generation.
Henceforth it was to be discussed quite openly. Henceforth it could only
become, more and more, the chief problem of politics and give rise to
that menacing situation upon a solution of which depends the security of
our future.
For the Bolshevist movement, or rather explosion, was Jewish.
That truth may be so easily confused with a falsehood that I must, at
the outset, make it exact and clear.
The Bolshevist Movement was _a_ Jewish movement, but not a movement of
the Jewish race as a whole. Most Jews were quite extraneous to it; very
many indeed, and those of the most typical, abhor it; many actively
combat it. The imputation of its evils to the Jews as a whole is a grave
injustice and proceeds from a confusion of thought whereof I, at any
rate, am free.
With so much said let me return to the affair.
What is called "Labour," that is, the direction of the proletarian
revolt against capitalist conditions, had, as we have seen, been
directed in the main by the Jew. His energy, his international quality,
his devotion to a set scheme, prevailed. All this was not peculiar to
Russia but present throughout the industrialized areas of the West.
By the word "directed" I do not mean any conscious plan. I mean that the
Jews, with their perpetual movement from country to country, with their
natural indifference to national feeling as a force counteracting class
feeling, with their lucid thought and their passion for deduction, with
their tenacity and intellectual industry, had naturally become the chief
exponents and the most able leaders. They formed, above all, the cement
binding the movement together throughout the world. It was they, more
than any others, who insisted on a clear-cut solution upon the lines
which their compatriot Karl Marx had copied from his greater European
contemporaries, and made definite in his famous book on Capital.
But there was all the difference in the world between this intellectual
leadership, this organization of socialism by Jews _while Socialism
still remained a mere theory_, and the control and actual management of
it in a great State when it passed from theory to practice.
The words "social revolution" were still but words in 1914 and men did
not take them too seriously. But when in 1917 a socialist revolution was
accomplished suddenly at one blow, in one great State, and when its
agents, directors and masters were seen to be a close corporation of
Jews with only a few non-Jewish hangers-on (each of these controlled by
the Jews through one influence or another), it was quite another
matter. The thing had become actual. The menace to national traditions
and to the whole Christian ethic of property was immediate. More
important than all, so far as the Jewish problem is concerned, many who
had remained silent upon it on account of convention, avarice or fear,
were now compelled to speak. From that moment, in early '17, it became
the chief political problem of our time: coincident with, intimately
mixed with, but in all its implications superior to, the great economic
quarrel on to which it was now grafted.
The story may be briefly told. The Russian State, ill-equipped for
modern war, had passed during the end of the year 1916 through a strain
which it had found intolerable. Russian Society, after the mortal losses
sustained, was upon the eve of dissolution, and the formidable
revolutionary movement which had for years left its direction and
organization in Jewish hands broke out, for the third time in our
generation: but this time successfully.
After rapidly accelerating phases it settled into the situation which
has endured from the early part of 1918 to the present day. In the towns
the freely-elected Parliament was repudiated and a "Dictatorship of the
Proletariat" was declared. The workshops were in future to be run by
Committees, in the Russian "Soviets," and similar organizations were to
control agriculture in the villages, where the peasants had already
seized the land and were streaming back from the dissolved armies to
their homes.
In practice, of course, what was set up was no proletarian Government,
still less anything so impossible and contradictory in terms as a
"dictatorship" of proletarians. The thing was called "The Republic of
the Workmen and Peasants." It was, in fact, nothing of the sort. It was
the pure despotism of a clique, the leaders of which had been specially
launched upon Russia under German direction in order to break down any
chance of a revival of Russian military power, and all those leaders,
without exception, were Jews, or held by the Jews through their domestic
relations, and all that followed was done directly under the orders of
Jews, the most prominent of whom was one Braunstein, who disguised
himself under the assumed name of Trotsky. A terror was set up, under
which were massacred innumerable Russians of the governing classes, so
that the whole framework of the Russian State disappeared. Among these,
of course, must specially be noted great numbers of the clergy, against
whom the Jewish revolutionaries had a particular grudge. A clean sweep
was made of all the old social organization, and under the despotism of
this Jewish clique the old economic order was reversed. Food and all
necessities were controlled (in the towns) and rationed, the manual
labourer receiving the largest share; and none any share unless he
worked at the orders of the new masters.
The agricultural land was in theory nationalized, but in practice the
Jewish Committees of the towns were unable to enforce their rule over
it, and it reverted to the natural condition of peasant ownership. But
the Jewish Committees of the towns were strong enough to raid great
areas of agricultural production for the support of themselves and their
troops and of their dependants in the cities, who had come close to
starvation through the breakdown of the social system.
What followed later is of common knowledge: the attempts at
counter-revolution, led by scattered Russians and other military
leaders, all failed because the peasants believed that their
newly-acquired farms were at stake and eagerly volunteered to defend
them, the greatly increased misery of the towns, the slow decline of
industrial production (in spite of the most rigid despotism, enforcing
conscript labour), and the general deliquescence of society.
If the motives of the men who thus brought the whole of a Christian
State into ruins within a few weeks were analysed, we should, it is to
be presumed, discover something of this sort: their main motive was the
pursuit of the political and economic ideals of which they were the
spokesmen and which already so many of their compatriots, the Jews,
throughout the rest of Europe, had espoused--communism so far as
property was concerned; the Marxian doctrine of socialist production and
distribution; the Socialist doctrine imposed by arbitrary and despotic
arrangements, favouring those who had in the past been least favoured.
In this economic and political group of motives the leading motive was
probably enough, the doctrine of Communism in which these men, for the
most part, sincerely believed.
To this must be added an equally sincere hatred of national feeling,
save, of course, where the Jewish nation was concerned. The conception
of a Russian national feeling seemed to these new leaders ridiculous,
as, indeed, the conception of a national feeling must seem ridiculous to
their compatriots everywhere; or, if not ridiculous, subsidiary to the
more important motives of individual advantage and to the righting of
such immediate wrongs as the individual may feel. The Christian religion
they naturally attacked, for it was abhorrent to their social theory.
They also had a certain crusading, or propagandist, ideal running
through the whole of their action--the desire to spread Communism far
beyond the boundaries of what had once been the Russian State. It is
this which has led them to intrigue throughout Central, and even in
Western, Europe, in favour of revolution.
Though these were the main motives, other motives must also have been
present.
It is impossible that Committees consisting of Jews and suddenly finding
themselves thus in control of such new powers, should not have desired
to benefit their fellows. It is equally impossible that they should have
forgone a sentiment of revenge against that which had persecuted their
people in the past. They cannot but, in the destroying of Russia, have
mixed with a desire to advantage the individual Russian poor the desire
to take vengeance upon the national tradition as a whole; it has even
been said--but denied, and I know not where the truth lies--that Jews
were among those guilty of the worst incident which we now know in all
its revolting details--the murder of the Russian Royal family--father,
mother and girls, and the unfortunate sickly heir, the only boy.
Further, it is impossible, with Jewish Committees thus in control of the
Russian treasury and of Russian means of communication, that they should
not have had some sympathy with their compatriots who were so largely
in control of Western finance. However sincere their detestation of
capitalism (for probably in most of them the opinion is held sincerely
enough), it is in the nature of things that one of their blood and kind
should, however misguided they may think him, appeal to them more than
one of ours. And it is this which explains the half alliance which you
find throughout the world between the Jewish financiers on the one hand
and the Jewish control of the Russian revolution on the other. It is
this which explains the half-heartedness of the defence against
Bolshevism, the perpetual commercial protest, the continued
negotiations, the recognition of the Soviet by our politicians, the
clamour of "Labour" in favour of German Jewish industrialism and against
Poland: all that has taken place wherever Jewish finance is powerful,
particularly at Westminster.
But, be this as it may, the tremendous explosion which we call
Bolshevism brought the discussion of the Jewish problem to a head. The
two forces which had hitherto held back the discussion of that problem
were that Liberal fiction which had ruled for more than a generation,
according to which it was indecent even to mention the word Jew, or to
suggest that there was any difference between the Jew and those who
harboured him; and, secondly, the fact that the Jews were erroneously
regarded by most of the well-to-do people in the West--that is, by most
of those who had the control of the Press and therefore of all public
expression--as so controlling wealth that they were at once the natural
guardians of property and so placed that an attack upon them jeopardized
the wealth of the critic. The man who had gone into the City, or who
had his life spent upon the Bourse in Paris, or who was negotiating any
great capitalist enterprise, who had to do in whatever capacity with the
running of the great banks or with the international means of
communication by sea and land, even the man who got his precarious
living by writing--each and all had hitherto felt that a public silence
upon the Jewish problem was necessary to his private welfare.
Those who recognized the gravity of the problem had hitherto been moved
by fear to be silent upon it, at least in public, though in private they
were often voluble enough. Those who recognized it in a lesser degree
had also been affected by the same fear. Lastly, you had the large class
who were under no necessity for restraint, whether from fear or any
other cause, but who were quite content to leave things as they were so
long as they received their regular salary or dividends, and who were
profoundly convinced that any interference with the Jew would imperil
those dividends or that salary.
The Jewish Bolshevist movement put an end to that state of mind. The
people who had hitherto been silent through avarice, convention, or
fear, now found themselves between an upper and a nether millstone.
Hitherto they had at least believed that to keep silence was to secure
or to advance their economic position. Now they found, suddenly risen
upon the flank of that position, a new and formidable Jewish force
determined upon the destruction of property. There was no longer any
reason to keep silent. There was a growing need to speak. And though the
old habit, the old secrecy, was still strong upon them, the necessity
for combating Jewish Bolshevism was stronger still. All over Europe the
Jewish character of the movement became more and more apparent. The
leaders of Communism everywhere proclaimed that truth by adopting the
asinine policy of pretending that the revolution was Russian and
national; they attempted--far too late--to hide the Jewish origins of
its creators and directors, and made a childish effort to pretend that
the Russian names so innocently put forward were genuine, when the real
names were upon every tongue. Yet at the same time they were receiving
money and securities of the victims through Jewish agents, jewels
stripped from the dead or rifled from the strong boxes of murdered men
and women. In one specific instance the promise of a subsidy to a
Communist paper in London was traced to this source; it was proved that
the Englishman involved was a mere puppet and that the Jewish
connections of the family through marriage were the true agents in the
transaction. In another a Trade Deputation was pompously announced under
Russian names, which turned out upon inspection to consist, as to its
first member, of a man engaged all his life in the service of a Jewish
firm, as to the other, of a Jew who was actually the brother-in-law of
Braunstein! The diplomatic agent nominated and partially accepted by the
British Government to represent the new authority of the Russian towns
was again a Jew, Finkelstein, the nephew by marriage of a prominent Jew
in this country. He passed under the name of Litvinoff. So it was
throughout the whole movement, in every capital and in every great
industrial town.
We must not neglect the very obvious truth that in all this there was
ample fuel for the flame. The industrial proletariat throughout the
world was equally disgusted and equally ready for revolt. The leadership
of the movement may be Jewish but its current was not created by the
Jew. To imagine that is to fall into the most childish errors of the
"Anti-Semite." The stream of influence arose from the sufferings and the
burning sense of injustice which industrial capitalism had imposed on
the dispossessed mass of wage earners. They were (and are) naturally
indifferent as to whether those whom they hope may be their saviours
come from Palestine, Muscovy or Timbuctoo. They are interested in
economic freedom: in the doctrine of socialism and in its results, not
in the personality of those who guide them.
Their position is comprehensible enough: but my point is, that the
directing minority of Western European capitalism which had hitherto
been silent upon the Jewish problems from the motives I have described
were now released; they were free to speak their mind, and began to
speak it. The volume of their protest cannot but increase. The cat, as
the expression goes, is out of the bag, or, to put it in more dignified
language, the debate will now never more be silenced. It is admitted
that the revolutionary leadership is mainly Jewish. It is recognized as
clearly now as it has long been recognized that international finance
was mainly Jewish; and even those who would tolerate silence upon the
one peril will certainly not tolerate it upon the other.
The danger is, indeed, not over. The debate will take place--that is no
peril, but a good; the danger is rather that, as restraint is gradually
removed, the natural antagonism to the Jewish race, felt by nearly all
those who are not of it and among whom it lives, may take an irrational
and violent form, and that we may be upon the brink of yet one more of
those catastrophes, of those tragedies, of those disasters which have
marked the history of Israel in the past.
To avert this, to discover some solution of the problem while there is
yet time, to prevent deeds which would bring us to shame and that small
minority among us to suffering, should be the object of every honest
man.
THE GENERAL CAUSES OF FRICTION
CHAPTER IV
THE GENERAL CAUSE OF FRICTION
The immediate cause of the new gravity apparent in the Jewish problem is
the Revolution in Russia. The completely new feature of open discussion
now attaching to it (a thing which would have seemed incredible in
England twenty years ago) is the leadership the Jews have assumed in the
economic quarrel of the proletariat against capitalism.
Most people, therefore, on being asked the cause of friction between the
Jews and their hosts at this moment will reply (in England, at least)
that it lies in the anti-social propaganda now running loose throughout
Industrial Europe. "Our quarrel with the Jews," you will hear from a
hundred different sources, "is that they are conspiring against
Christian civilization, and in particular against our own country, under
the form of social revolutionaries."
Such a reply, though it is the almost universal reply of the moment in
this country, is most imperfect.
The friction between the Jews and the nations among which they are
dispersed is far older, far more profound, far more universal. For a
whole generation before the present crisis arose, the comparatively
small number of men who were hammering away steadily at the Jewish
problem, trying to provoke its discussion, and insisting on its
importance, were mainly concerned with quite another aspect of Jewish
activity--the aspect of international finance as controlled by Jews.
Before that aspect had assumed its modern gravity the reproach against
the Jews was that their international position warred against our racial
traditions and our patriotisms. Before that again there had been the
reproach of a different religion and particularly of their antagonism to
the doctrine of the Incarnation and all that flowed from that doctrine.
And there had been even, before that great quarrel, the reproach that
they were bad citizens within the pagan Roman Empire, perpetually in
rebellion against it and guilty of massacring other Roman citizens.
In another civilization than ours, in that of Islam, another set of
reproaches had arisen, or rather another species of contempt and
oppression. After long periods of peace there would come, in particular
regions, the most violent oppression. Within the last few years, for
instance, a Jew in Morocco was treated as though he was hardly human. He
had to turn his face to the wall when any magnate was passing by. He had
to dress in a particular manner to mark him off as something degraded
among his fellow-beings. He might not ride through the gate of a town,
but had to dismount. There were twenty actions normal to civic life in
the Moroccan city which were forbidden to the Jew.
All this is as much as to say that the friction between the Jews and
those among whom they live is always present, and has always been
present, now latent, now rising furiously to the surface, now grumbling
through long periods of uncertain peace, now boiling over in all the
evils of persecution--which is as much as to say that this friction
between Jew and non-Jew, while finding different excuses for its action
on different occasions, has been a force permanently at work everywhere
and at all times.
What is the cause of it? What is its nature?
The matter is very difficult to approach, because we are not dealing
with things susceptible of positive proof. You can prove from historical
record that the thing has existed. You can show its terrible effects,
ceaselessly recurrent throughout all our history. But it is another
matter to analyse the unseen forces which produce it, and any such
analysis can be no more than an attempt.
I take it that the causes of this friction, with all its lamentable
results, are of two kinds. There are, first, _general_ causes for it, by
which I mean those causes which are always present and are ineradicable.
Their effort may be summed up in the truth that the whole texture of the
Jewish nation, their corporate tradition, their social mind, is at issue
with the people among whom they live. There are, next, special causes,
by which I mean social actions and expressions which lead to friction
and could be modified, the two chief of which are the use of secrecy by
the Jews as a method of action and the open expression of superiority
over his neighbours which the Jew cannot help feeling but is wrong to
emphasize.
I will deal with these in their order, and first consider the general
causes; though I must admit at the outset that a mere summary of them is
no sufficient explanation of the phenomenon. There would seem to be
something more profound and even more mysterious about it. For it will
be universally conceded that, while the closest intimacy and respect is
possible between individuals of the two opposing races, the moment you
come to great groups, and especially to the popular instinct in the
matter, the gravest friction is apparent. It is an issue too deep than
to be accounted for by mere differences of temper. It is as though there
were some inward force filling men on either side, not indeed with
necessary hostility--it is against any such necessity that all this book
is written--but certainly with conflicting ends.
It is first to be noted that most of the accusations made against the
Jews by their enemies and most of the very proper rebuttals of those
accusations advanced by the Jews and their defenders, miss the mark
because they attempt to put in abstract form what is really something
highly concrete. And this is equally true of the praise bestowed upon
the Jews, of the special virtues ascribed to them and of the denials of
these virtues.
They miss the mark because they attempt to express in terms of one
category what should be expressed in terms of another. They are doing
what a man does when he compares two pictures by their outline while in
point of fact their interest lies in colour, or when he affirms
something of a tune the fundamental point of which something is not the
air at all but the instruments upon which it is played: as who should
say that "God save the King" was "shrill" because he heard it played on
a penny whistle or "booming" because he heard it played on a
violoncello. The real point to note is not that the Jews appear to us
(or we to them) to possess certain abstract qualities and defects, but
that in their case each quality or defect has a special character, a
special national _timbre_ which it lacks in ours.
Thus you will hear the Jews arraigned by their enemies for three such
vices as cowardice, avarice and treason--to take three of the commonest
accusations. You examine their actions and you find innumerable
instances of the highest courage, the greatest generosity and the most
devoted loyalty: but courage, generosity and loyalty of a Jewish kind,
directed to Jewish ends, and stamped with a highly distinctive Jewish
mark.
The man who accuses the Jews of cowardice means that they do not enjoy a
fight of his kind, nor a fight fought after his fashion. All he has
discovered is that the courage is not shown under the same
circumstances, nor for the same ends, nor in the same mode. But if the
word courage means anything, he cannot on reflection deny it to actions
of which one could make an endless catalogue even from contemporary
experience alone. Is it cowardice in a young man to sacrifice his life
deliberately for the sake of his own people? Did that young Jew show
cowardice who killed the Russian Prime Minister, the antagonist of his
people, after the first revolution following on the Russo-Japanese war?
Was it cowardice to walk up in a crowded theatre, surrounded by all the
enemies of his race, and shoot their chief in their midst? Is it
cowardice to stand up against the vast alien majority, and to do so over
and over again, perhaps through a whole lifetime, insisting on things
that are grossly unpopular with that majority and running a risk the
whole time of physical violence? You find Jews adopting that attitude
all over Europe. Can one think it is cowardice which has permitted the
individuals of this nation to maintain their tradition unbroken through
two thousand years of intermittent torture, spoliation and violent
death? The thing so stated is ridiculous, and it is clear that those who
make such an accusation are confounding their own form of courage with
courage as a universal attribute.
They think that because Jews show courage under other circumstances and
in another way from themselves, corresponding to another appetite, as it
were, therefore it is no longer courage: to think like that is to
confess yourself very limited.
I can testify, myself, to any number of courageous acts which I have
seen performed by Jews. I am not alluding to acts of courage in warfare,
of which there is ample evidence, but to acts of a sort in which our
race would not have shown the same quality or _timbre_ of courage. I
will cite one case.
Rather more than twenty years ago, when feeling on the Dreyfus case was
at its height and when the feeling of the French Army in particular was
at white heat, I happened to be in the town of Nîmes, through which, at
the time, a body of troops was passing. The café in which I sat was
filled with young sergeants. There were hardly any civilians present
beside myself. There came into the place an elderly Jew, very short in
stature, highly marked with the physical characteristics of his race, an
unmistakable Jew. He was somewhat bent under the weight of his years,
with fiery eyes and a singularly vibrating intonation of voice. He was
selling broadsheets of the most violent kind, all of them insults
against the Army. He came into this café with the sheets in his hand so
that all could see the large capital letters of the headlines, and
slowly went round the assembly ironically offering them to the lads in
uniform with their swords at their side, for they were of the cavalry.
Every one knows the French temper on such occasions--a complete silence
which may at any moment be transformed into something very different.
One sergeant after another politely waved him aside and passed him on.
He went round the whole lot of them, gazing into their faces with his
piercing eyes, wearing the whole time an ironical smile of insult,
describing at intervals the nature of his goods, and when he had done
that he went out unharmed.
It was an astonishing sight. I have seen many others as astonishing and
as vivid, but for courage I have never seen it surpassed. Here was a
man, old and feeble, the member of a very small minority which he knew
to be hated, and particularly hated by the people whom he challenged.
Because he held one of his own people to be injured, he took this
tremendous risk and went through this self-imposed task with a sort of
pleasure in that risk. You may call it insolence, offensiveness, what
you will: but you cannot deny it the title of courage. It was courage of
the very highest quality.
I repeat: you may see evidence of that sort of courage in Jewish action
throughout the world and in every age. You have the beginning of it in
the Siege of Jerusalem; to-morrow, if the fear which we now all
entertain should unhappily prove well founded, we shall see it again
upon the same scale.
Take avarice. When the Jew is accused of avarice by his enemies they
are reading into him that vice in a form of which _they_ know themselves
capable, which _they_ themselves practise, which _they_ fully
understand, but which _he_ never practises in their fashion. The Jew is
adventurous with his money. He is a speculator, a trader. He is also a
man who thinks of it in exact terms. He is never romantic about it. But
he is almost invariably generous in the use of it. Our race, when it
yields to the vice of avarice, is close, secretive, uncharitable. He is
pitiless and sly in accumulation. He is vociferous in his insistence
upon the exact terms of an agreed compact. He is also tenacious in the
pursuit of anything which he has set out on, the accumulation of money
among the rest. He is almost fanatical in his appetite for success in
whatever he has undertaken, the accumulation of money among the rest.
But to say that the money, once accumulated, is not generously used, is
nonsense. There is not one of us who could not cite at once a dozen
examples of Jewish generosity upon a scale which makes us ashamed.
Nor is it true to say that this generosity has ostentation for its root,
or, as it is called, "Ransome," either. Though a love of magnificence is
certainly a great passion in the Jewish character, it does not account
for the most of his generosity. It is a generosity which extends to all
manner of private relations, and if you will take the testimony of those
who have been in the service of the Jews and are not Jews themselves,
that testimony is almost universally in favour of their employers, if
those employers be men of large means.
They will tell you that they felt humiliated in serving a Jew; that the
relations were never easy; that there was always distance. But not
often that they were treated meanly. Just the other way. There has
usually been present a _spontaneous_ generosity. The same argument
applies to the cry of "Ransome." It is true that some of the more
scandalous Jewish fortunes have thrown up defences against public anger
by the return of a small proportion in the shape of public endowments:
it is an action and a motive not peculiar to them. But that does not
explain the mass of private and unheard benefaction to which we can all
testify and which is as common with the middle-class Jew as with the
wealthy. It is here as in the matter of courage a question of _kind_.
Those of our people who happen to be generous (they are rare) do not
calculate. They often forget or confuse the sums they have made away
with, as though it were mere extravagance. The Jew knows the exact
extent of his sacrifice, its proportion to his total means. Is he then
less generous? By no means. He is, in scale _more_ generous--but in a
different fashion.
It might be argued that this generosity of the Jew is a consequence of
the way in which he regards money. It comes and goes with him because he
is a speculator and a wanderer. It has been said that no great Jewish
fortune is ever permanent; that none of these millionaires ever founded
a family. This is not quite true; but it is true that considering the
long list of great Jewish fortunes which have marked the whole progress
of our civilization it is astonishing how few have taken root. But
though this conception of money may be an element in the generosity of
the Jew it does not fully explain it, and at any rate that generosity is
there, and contradicts flatly the accusation of avarice. Indeed the
general accusation of avarice fails: and _that_ is why it is a sort of
standing jest permitted even where the Jews are most powerful. It is a
jest they themselves do not resent because they know it to be beside the
mark.
The accusation of treason is on the same footing--save that it is even
more "to one side" than the others quoted. There is no race which has
produced so few traitors. It is not treason in the Jew to be
international. It is not treason in the Jew to work now for one interest
among those who are not of his people, now for another. He can only be
charged with treason when he acts against the interests of Israel, and
there is no nation nor ever has been one in which the national
solidarity was greater or national weakness in the shape of traitors
less. Indeed, that is the very accusation their enemies make against
them; that they are too homogeneous; that they hold too much together
and are too fierce in self-defence; and you cannot have that accusation
coupled with an accusation of treason. What is true is that the Jew
lends himself to one non-jewish group in its action against another. He
will serve France against the Germans, or the Germans against France,
and he will do so indifferently as a resident in the country he benefits
or the country he wounds: for he is indifferent to either. The moment
war breaks out the intelligence departments of both sides rely upon the
Jew: and they rely upon him not only on account of his indifference to
nationalism but also on account of his many languages, his travel, the
presence of his relations in the enemy country. And this is true not
only of war but of armed peace.
But it is clear that in all this there are examples of what _in us_,
would be treason. In him such actions are not treasons, for he does not
betray Israel. But they all have an atmosphere repellent to us. They are
things which if we did them (or when we do them) degrade us. They do not
degrade the Jew.
One might continue the list of such accusations indefinitely, and in
every one you would find that the root of the quarrel is not the
presence of a particular defect but the presence of a difference in
circumstances, temperament, character: a different colour and taste in
the quality or defect concerned. It is _that_ which offends. It is
_that_ which causes the misunderstandings and which leads to the
tragedies.
While this is true of the accusations made against the Jewish people it
is unfortunately equally true of the corresponding qualities which they
and their defenders advance in the rebuttal. The Jew is essentially
patriotic: that is true. But not patriotic to our ends or in our way. He
is essentially self-respecting. But not self-respecting to our ends or
in our way. A personal obligation which he cannot meet, a personal and
intimate contract in which he may default, especially to one of his own
people, is abhorrent to the Jew; but not in our way. He has not our
shame of bankruptcy for instance, but much more than our shame of
personal borrowing. Drunkenness, a vice most offensive to human dignity,
is with him the rarest vice: with us the commonest. But our sense of
dignity in repose he has not, nor does he feel our sense of injured
dignity in mummery. His tenacity, which all know and all in a sense
admire and which is far superior to our own, is also a narrower
tenacity, or at any rate a tenacity of a different kind. He will follow
one end where we will follow many. His wonderful loyalty to all family
relations we know: but we do not appreciate it because it is outside our
own circle. Even his intellectual gifts, which are less affected by this
matter of _timbre_, have something alien to us in them. They are
undeniable but we feel them to be used for other ends than ours: they
are coldly used when ours are used enthusiastically: they are used with
intensity when we use them with carelessness.
If we leave the controversial field and concern ourselves with an
appreciation of Jewish qualities, apart from our like or dislike of them
and apart from their difference in intimate texture, as it were, from
our own, they may be summarized I think as follows:--
The Jew concentrates upon one matter. He does not disperse his mind. And
this concentration carries with it strength and weakness. It has been
said in connection with it (all such terms are metaphorical) that his
mind is not elastic. But this is a great element in his success. I have
noticed that the Jew having once taken up a particular task shows an
indifference to other tasks which, from our standpoint, is marvellous.
How many instances could not one cite of two Jewish brothers, the one
occupied in finance, the other in science, or the one in politics, the
other in music, and how clearly do we see in those instances the
complete indifference of the Jew to things outside the province he has
undertaken! How remarkable in our eyes is his resistance to any
temptation which might lead him away from his end. The Jew who is
devoted to science, for instance, remains completely indifferent to its
opportunities for enrichment. The Jew who is devoted to philosophy (and
what great names he can show in this sphere throughout the centuries!)
lives in poverty and is perfectly content so to live. The Jew devoted to
any particular ideal of social change devotes himself entirely to that,
and ends his task often more powerful, hardly ever more wealthy, nearly
always much poorer than when he began it. Above all he refuses to be
distracted for a moment from his goal.
Another character which is affiliated to this first leading character of
the Jew would seem to be the lucidity of his thought. The Jew's argument
is never muddled. That is one of his prime assets not only in all
discussion but in all action. It is also, if a cause of strength, a
cause of the enmity he arouses: or (to use my milder term) of the
"friction."
For an exactly constructed process of reasoning, from which there is no
escape, has in it (for those less capable of it) something of the bully.
A man may feel the conclusion to be false: perhaps he _knows_ it to be
false. He lacks the power to express his reasons. He may not know how to
state the principles which his adversary has left out of account, or
when to bring them into discussion, and he feels the iron logic offered
to him like a pistol presented at the head of his better judgment. But
for strength and for weakness also, lucidity is the mark of the Jew's
mind. He carries that lucidity into the smallest details of whatever he
may perform.
One must add to all this a certain intensity of action which is very
noticeable and which again is a cause of friction between himself and
those about him. Hear a Jew speaking, especially a Jew speaking upon the
revolutionary platform, and note the _high voltage_ at which the current
is working. The energy which he uses is not the energy of a large flame
but of a well-directed blow-pipe: a stream of heat. He is wholly
absorbed, not in his own expression, but in actively penetrating the
mind of his hearers. And here again is that difference in quality to
which I have alluded. One might say indifferently that the Jew is never
eloquent or that he is always eloquent when he speaks upon things that
possess his soul. He is not eloquent in our fashion; but he is at any
rate astonishingly effective in his own.
The Jew has this other characteristic which has become increasingly
noticeable in our own time, but which is probably as old as the race:
and that is a corporate capacity for hiding or for advertising at will:
a power of "pushing" whatever the whole race desires advanced, or of
suppressing what the whole race desires to suppress. And this also,
however legitimately used, is a cause of friction.
Men get the feeling of a swarm in the presence of such action. They also
get the feeling of being tricked: and it breeds bad blood.
In the aspect of the deliberate use of secrecy I shall deal with this
character in my next chapter, for I think in that aspect it is a
particular cause of friction which can be eliminated. But the general
capacity and instinct of the Jew for corporate action in the "booming"
of what he wants "boomed" and the "soft pedalling" of what he wants
"soft pedalled" is ineradicable. It will always remain a permanent
irritant in its effect upon those to whom it is applied. The best proof
of it is that after the most violent "boom," after the talents of some
particular Jew, or the scientific discovery of another, or the
misfortunes of another, or the miscarriage of justice against another,
has been shouted at us, pointed and iterated until we are all deafened,
there comes an inevitable reaction, and the same men who were half
hypnotized into the desired mood are nauseated with it and refuse a
repetition of the dose.
The converse is true. Men who find that some important matter has been
suppressed, some bad scandal in the State or some trick in commerce
because Jewry desired it to be suppressed, are soon on the alert. They
will not suffer the operation as quietly the second time as they did the
first. Indeed they tend if anything to grow too suspicious. Anyhow, in
both cases this ineradicable racial habit, a cause perhaps of Jewish
survival and certainly an element of Jewish strength, is also a cause of
acute friction between them and us.
But a mere category of this kind is, as I have said, useless to explain
the fundamental quality, the hidden root, of the ceaseless conflict
between the very soul of the Jew and the soul of the society around him.
All these points are but manifestations of some profound, some
subterranean power for contrast, the value of which we cannot grasp, but
the effects of which are only too apparent. And there remains in the
minds of those who most rely upon this race and of those who most
suspect them the sense of an impassable gulf between them and ourselves.
It is the recognition, the admission of such a contrast, the telling of
the truth about it, the working upon it as a necessary condition, which
must form the foundation for any solution at which we can arrive.
* * * * *
There is one feature in the European's attitude towards the Jews which
must be specially dealt with, and that is the false impression that the
friction between us and them is in the main a quarrel with their wealth.
That impression has been greatly weakened by the recent revolutionary
activity of the Jew surging up from the depths, appearing upon the
surface, and producing the great upheaval in Russia, and the attempted
upheavals elsewhere. But though the new Jewish revolutionary movement
has shaken the old insistence on Jewish wealth it is hard to eradicate
it. It has been present throughout the ages, and will remain at the back
of people's minds perhaps for ever, because the few Jews who do
concentrate on piling up great fortunes concentrate on that task so
entirely. Yet the impression is false and is the fruitful cause of the
worst misunderstandings.
For the Jews are not a rich nation, and the very fact that they stand in
the popular mind--and especially in the mind of rich people in times of
corruption--for wealth, is an example of the way in which they are
misunderstood and of the way in which injustice to the Jew arises.
The Jews are a poor nation. An enemy would say that they were poor
because they did not work, but this again would be an injustice, because
the Jew works exceedingly hard and has often in the past and does still
in many places work hard, not only in negotiation and commerce but with
his hands.
We see the Jews in the Middle Ages monopolizing important manual
occupations in some districts--dyeing and shipbuilding, for instance.
And there are many parts of Eastern Europe where they work upon the land
to-day.
The Jews are a poor nation because they are an alien nation and because
their activities are for the most part condemned to working against the
grain, in a society which is not their own. But that they _are_ a poor
nation is not only true but abundantly evident to any one who has
travelled and watched their various settlements with any sympathy.
Now that they have arrived in such great numbers in the West people are
beginning to appreciate this. We have already seen how, a lifetime ago,
when the Jews of the West (I mean especially in France and England and
America) were a small number of merchants and financiers, the great
wealth of a very small number among them was not counterbalanced in our
experience by the exceeding poverty of the mass. But to-day we can see
for ourselves how true it is that, once you get below the exceptional
fortunes and a comparatively small middle-class, the Jewish nation is no
more than millions of exceedingly poor families.
Those who have watched them outside the West, those who have seen them
in their great eastern communities where the bulk of the race still
resides, in the Marches of Russia, will abundantly agree. It helps us to
understand the Jewish problem if we grasp the fact that a great part of
the Jewish complaint against us is precisely this poverty to which the
bulk of the Jews are condemned. It is all very well to sneer at the
Jewish complaint of persecution and oppression and to cite ironically,
whenever it arises, the immense fortunes of a few families like the
Rothschilds and the Sassoons, the Monds, the Samuels and the rest. From
the point of view of the average Jew that is not the way the thing looks
at all. What he notices, and notices rightly, is that he has no part in
that well-distributed, solid, permanent, inherited wealth which is the
mark of a healthy European community.
Further (a most important point already touched on in passing), these
great fortunes are ephemeral.
In the European nations you have a mass of great fortunes far larger in
number, and even in total, than the Jewish financial fortunes. But those
great fortunes have been in the past and are still, wherever our society
is healthy, permanent. They run through European history in the shape of
the great families, in the shape of the _nobility_.
The great territorial families in this country have been wealthy for
centuries and remain in established wealth, and the same is in the main
true of the great Italian families, it is obviously true of the great
German families, and, in spite of the great changes of the last century
and a half, it is still largely true of the old French families. It is
not true of the Jewish families. The vast Jewish fortunes which have
marked history rise suddenly and melt again almost as suddenly. A Jew
will begin in some very small way--as a pawnbroker in Liverpool, for
instance, or a very small bookseller in Frankfort. You will find his son
a great banker, his grandson so wealthy as to command politics for a
generation, and then (if you will watch the process in the past--to
take a modern unfinished instance is of course misleading) _at last, and
soon, the name disappears again, and disappears for ever_.
Whom have you representing to-day the few great Jewish fortunes of the
early Middle Ages in England? They were all ruined before the end of the
thirteenth century. Whom have you representing the later great Jewish
fortunes on the Rhine, the fortunes of the sixteenth century and the
early seventeenth? They have utterly gone. Who have you left
representing the considerable Jewish houses of Medieval Venice? of
Genoa? of Rome?
The causes of this rapid fluctuation are many. They all attach to the
peculiar position, as well as to the peculiar character, of the Jew. We
find them partly in the passion for speculation which the Jewish
intelligence naturally harbours. We find them still more, I think, in
the instinctive opposition to the Jew which his alien surroundings
perpetually arouse.
It is, however, important to remember this last point. From our point of
view the Jew, when he does get rich, seems to get much too rich and to
get rich much too quickly, and he exercises far too much power through
his wealth; for we think of him the whole time as an alien with no right
to any position. But the Jew sees it in a very different light. In his
point of view his effort to accumulate wealth is always heavily
handicapped. When he succeeds he only succeeds through his own tenacity
and the patriotic co-operation of his fellows, and he always holds his
new-found wealth on an insecure tenure. What looks to us like the
breakdown of a Jewish fortune through speculation, seems to the Jew the
fatal recurrent result of unending opposition.
In connection with the illusion of a wealthy Jewish race, you have, of
course, the matter which I briefly mentioned above, the connection
between our wealthier, and therefore governing classes, and the Jewish
wealth of the moment. A great part of the illusion, as I have said, is
due to the fact that the gentry of every epoch come into contact with
the Jew _only_ as a rich man, and it is the capital modern vice of our
own gentry, their passion for mere wealth and their subservience to it,
which has largely accounted for this dangerous misunderstanding.
Look around you in Western Europe to-day and see what people mean by
this story of Jewish wealth. See who the people are that allude
continually to it and spread the idea of it. They are the rich
Europeans, who, in their subservience to crude wealth, in their habit of
gauging everything by that wealth and of submitting to almost any
indignity for the purpose of obtaining more wealth, marry their
daughters to Jews, serve Jewish interests, and, while perpetually
sneering at the Jew behind his back, call him to his face by his most
intimate name and make the most of his hospitality. Which of them ever
knows a middle-class Jew, let alone a poor Jew? Why, most of them are
actually ignorant of the fact that this mass of poor Jews exists at all!
They serve the Jew when he is wealthy and only when he is wealthy. They
envy him basely as a wealthy man and only as a wealthy man. They
prostitute their dignity, they sell their fellow-Europeans, not from any
genuine affection for the Jewish race--indeed there is no class in the
community, closely intermixed with the Jews as they are, which feel the
friction more than the gentry--but simply from a thirst for money, which
they happen to find held in great masses by a few Jewish families.
It is most noticeable that other aspects of Jewish activity remain
unused by the wealthy class, the gentry--and therefore by the State.
Whether it would be wise to use them or not is another matter. At any
rate, the motive for leaving them unused is the fact that they are not
connected with wealth. The Jewish intelligence which might so often have
served the policy of a Statesman is largely left unused. The
cosmopolitan position of the Jew when it is used is used for little more
than spying; and that profound force, the historical memory of the Jew,
is neglected almost altogether. With this neglect goes a natural and
evil result, the failure on the part of the European governing classes,
especially to-day, to safeguard the community against the troubles which
are bound to arise from the clashing of interests between the Jews and
the people among whom they dwell.
It may sound paradoxical, but it is true, that if the Statesmen of
Europe, and the hereditary families of the European nations who still
take so much part in the conduct of those nations, had thought less of
the Jewish money power and more of the Jews as a whole they would have
benefited both parties in a very different fashion. We have seen the
artificial protection of the Jews of Eastern Europe because individual
Statesmen have been subservient to the commands of very rich individual
Jewish bankers. But the thing has been done blunderingly. It has served
only to anger the independent nationalities of the East, notably the
Poles, the Roumanians and the Hungarians who have experience of the
difficulties inseparable from an alien minority. Our politicians have
treated the whole affair externally and mechanically, merely obeying
orders without trying to understand.
The ultimate result of such interference by our Western politicians is
unhappily certain. The last state of the Jews in Eastern Europe will be
worse than the first. Their sufferings will be greater than in the past,
and that because, instead of acting from attempted comprehension and
sympathetic comprehension of the Jewish difficulties the politicians,
who have acted as the servants of a few wealthy Jews, have merely obeyed
the orders of these rich men and have done so with the secret reluctance
that always accompanies self-surrender to a wage.
Is it not apparent, as we look through history, that the permanent power
of the Jew or, at any rate, the celebrity of his nation is utterly
distinct from those chance accumulations of wealth which a few
individuals owe to the national passion for speculation and a
cosmopolitan position?
One after another the striking Jewish names of history are the names of
Jews who have ardently pursued some moral or intellectual thesis; most
of them--I had nearly said _all_ of them--were poor men, and for the
most part men deliberately poor because they preferred, as it is in the
Jewish nature to prefer, the immediate work in hand to any other
consideration.
It is these names that remain and are permanent and are the glory of the
Jewish race.
* * * * *
There is one aspect of this Jewish wealth which I hesitate whether to
put among the general or among the particular causes of the friction
between that nation and its hosts.
It falls certainly among the general causes in the sense that it is
connected with the Jewish character as a whole and not with any special
method in that character's action. It is connected, I mean, with their
very nature, and they cannot change that nature. On the other hand, it
might be put among the particular causes on account of its quite modern
and probably ephemeral character: it is, as it were, a particular cause
of the friction proceeding from the general causes of character just
enumerated, and this cause of friction is the presence of Jewish
MONOPOLY.
It is an exceedingly dangerous point in the present situation. I do not
think that the Jews have a sufficient appreciation of the risk they are
running by its development. There is already something like a Jewish
monopoly in high finance. There is a growing tendency to Jewish monopoly
over the stage for instance, the fruit trade in London, and to a great
extent the tobacco trade. There is the same element of Jewish monopoly
in the silver trade, and in the control of various other metals, notably
lead, nickel, quicksilver. What is most disquieting of all, this
tendency to monopoly is spreading like a disease. One province after
another falls under it and it acts as a most powerful irritant. It will
perhaps prove the immediate cause of that explosion against the Jews
which we all dread and which the best of us, I hope, are trying to
avert.
It applies, of course, to a tiny fraction of the Jewish race as a
whole. One could put the Jews who control lead, nickel, mercury and the
rest into one small room: nor would that room contain very pleasant
specimens of their race. You could get the great Jewish bankers who
control international finance round one large dinner table, and I know
dinner tables which have seen nearly all of them at one time or another.
These monopolists, in strategic positions of universal control are an
insignificant handful of men out of the millions of Israel, just as the
great fortunes we have been discussing attach to an insignificant
proportion of that race. Nevertheless, this claim to an exercise of
monopoly brings hatred upon the Jews as a whole.
The thing is deservedly hated because it is exceedingly unnatural and
exceedingly tyrannical. It would be tyrannical even for one of our own
people to hold us up in the supply of things essential to us. It is
intolerable in a people alien to us. When we come to discuss, in the
next chapter, the unfortunate use of secrecy by the Jews (the most
potent, perhaps, of the particular causes which have lead them into
their present peril) we shall better understand another odious feature
in this modern monopoly of control, which is the way in which it spreads
underground and out of sight leaving the world in general ignorant that
this, that and the other individual Jew is its master in the matter of
some essential thing which he controls.
To put it plainly, these monopolies must be put an end to.
Before the Great War there was only one of which Europe as a whole was
conscious, and that was the financial monopoly. Yet here the monopoly
was far less perfect than in the case of the metals. The Great War
brought thousands upon thousands of educated men (who took up public
duties as temporary officials) up against the staggering secret they had
never suspected--the complete control exercised over things absolutely
necessary to the nation's survival by half a dozen Jews, who were
completely indifferent as to whether we or the enemy should emerge alive
from the struggle.
Incidentally, the wealth of these few and very wealthy Jews has been
scandalously increased through the war on this very account. And at the
moment in which I write the French press, which has a longer experience
in the free discussion of the Jewish question than any other, is
exposing the abominable increase in value of the Rothschild's lead
mines, an increase mainly due to the use of lead for the killing of men.
But lead is only one of the monopolies, as I have said. A whole group
already exists and the extension of the system is going on as rapidly as
an epidemic. Not only must it cease before any solution of the Jewish
question can be attempted, but the process must be reversed. If the
various national Cabinets do not interfere to protect these monopolies,
then good-bye to any attempt at justice for the Jew. In the legitimate
anger against a few pitiful dozens among the worst specimens of the
nation, Israel as a whole will be sacrificed.
There is in this formation of monopolies, as in the more reputable
activities of the nation, even in its more justly famous activities,
even in its glories, that element of racial character which is never
absent from any Jewish action. And that is why I have put the point,
modern and ephemeral as it is, among the general causes of trouble.
The reason these general monopolies are formed by Jews is that the Jew
is international, tenacious and determined upon reaching the very end of
his task. He is not satisfied in any trade until that trade is, as far
as possible, under his complete control, and he has for the extension of
that control the support of his brethren throughout the world. He has at
the same time the international knowledge and international indifference
which further aid his efforts.
* * * * *
But even were the quite recent monopolies in metal and other trades
taken, as they ought to be taken, from these few alien masters of them,
there would remain that partial monopoly (it is not at all a complete
monopoly) which a few Jews have exercised not only to-day, but
recurrently throughout history, over the highest finance: that is, over
the credit of the nations, and therefore to-day, as never before, over
the whole field of the world's industry.
Should that partial financial monopoly remain uncorrected it will
produce a sufficient hostility against the Jews to precipitate, of
itself, the next general attack upon them.
It may be argued that this fear is groundless because the control has
now lasted for a long time. It has lasted a lifetime even in its present
hardly complete form: and it is secure because its operations are
removed from general observation, and because it is mixed up with the
interests of all the wealthier classes.
I am afraid these arguments will not hold. Although the Jewish control
of finance is not a thing which touches the public at large, yet all
educated men down to a comparatively low stratum of society are fully
aware of it, and every man who is aware of it resents it. It is resented
almost as much by the mass of poor Jews as by the non-Jews, but in a
different way.
Again, although this financial monopoly does not directly affect the
economic life of the private citizen, he is beginning to understand more
and more how it indirectly affects it. It affects him, for instance,
through his patriotism. He will not submit to be told that, in order to
suit the convenience of these alien bankers, he must forgo the rights of
victory and allow some enemy whom he has justly chastised to escape the
consequences of that chastisement. Still more urgently will he deny the
right of the Jewish bankers to interfere with the national reparation
due to him for damage wantonly done in the course of hostilities.
Again, international finance does not live separate from private
activities. It touches at last a mass of individual enterprises, and
through those individual enterprises its action is questioned and
examined by a host of private citizens.
Yet again, the Jews who thus control international finance are at work
in many other capacities. For instance, some of them stand behind those
great Industrial Insurance schemes which are so detestable to the mass
of the people. Action against these may arise any moment. If such action
comes one may be certain that the individual attacked will be remembered
in his capacity of international financier quite as much as in his
capacity of a battener upon the lapsed premiums of the poor. Sooner or
later the character of this monopoly, to which men of a lifetime ago
were indifferent through ignorance but of which to-day all the educated
part of the community is aware and deeply resents, will be appreciated
and equally resented at a lower level still. When society is
sufficiently filled with indignation against it, then the explosion will
come. If that explosion only affected the rich Jews immediately
concerned no one would much regret it. There would be little harm done.
But the trouble is that it will almost certainly affect the whole nation
to which those individuals belong.
I may be told that to put an end to this state of affairs is impossible
so long as parliamentary government, with its profound corruption,
endures; that the only force capable of dealing with the plutocratic
evil of alien monopoly upon this scale is a king; and that a king we
have not, among modern nations. To which I answer that the parliamentary
system will not last for ever. It is already in active dissolution among
ourselves, and badly hit elsewhere. The king may not be so far off as
people think him to be.
At any rate, in one way or another the thing will cease, and will
probably cease in violence. The danger is that if it ceases in violence
a vast number of innocent will be involved with the guilty.
THE SPECIAL CAUSES OF FRICTION
CHAPTER V
THE SPECIAL CAUSES OF FRICTION
There are two special forces upon the Jewish side which nourish and
exasperate the inevitable friction between the Jewish race and its
hosts. It will be well to deal with these before passing to the
corresponding forces upon our side. For to find a remedy it is necessary
to diagnose the disease.
The two main Jewish forces which exasperate and maintain the sense of
friction between the Jews and their hosts are first of all the Jewish
reliance upon secrecy, and, secondly, the Jewish expression of
superiority.
1. THE JEWISH RELIANCE UPON SECRECY
It has unfortunately now become a habit for so many generations, that it
has almost passed into an instinct throughout the Jewish body, to rely
upon the weapon of secrecy. Secret societies, a language kept as far as
possible secret, the use of false names in order to hide secret
movements, secret relations between various parts of the Jewish body:
all these and other forms of secrecy have become the national method. It
is a method to be deplored, not because its indignity and falsehood
degrade the Jew--that is not our affair--but rather on account of the
ill-effects this policy produces on our mutual relations. It feeds and
intensifies the antagonism already excited by racial contrast.
But before we go further it is essential to be just; for no one
understands anything if he attacks it unjustly.
The Jewish habit of secrecy--the assumption of false names and the
pretence of non-Jewish origin in individuals, the concealment of
relationships and the rest of it--have presumably sprung from the
experience of the race. Let a man put himself in the place of the Jew
and he will see how sound the presumption is. A race scattered,
persecuted, often despised, always suspected and nearly always hated by
those among whom it moves, is constrained by something like physical
force to the use of secret methods.
Take the particular trick of false names. It seems to us particularly
odious. We think when we show our contempt for those who use this
subterfuge that we are giving them no more than they deserve. It is a
meanness which we associate with criminals and vagabonds; a piece of
crawling and sneaking. We suspect its practisers of desiring to hide
something which would bring them into disgrace if it were known, or of
desiring to over-reach their fellows in commerce by a form of falsehood.
But the Jew has other and better motives. As one of their community said
to me with great force, when I discussed the matter with him many years
ago at a City dinner, "When we work under our own names you abuse us as
Jews. When we work under _your_ names you abuse us as forgers." The Jew
has often felt himself so handicapped if he declared himself, that he
was half forced, or at any rate grievously tempted, to a piece of
baseness which was never a temptation for us. Surely all this carefully
arranged code of assumed patronymics (Stanley for Solomon, Curzon for
Cohen, Sinclair for Slezinger, Montague for Moses, Benson for Benjamin,
etc., etc.) had its root in that.
The Jew can plead something further in extenuation of this practice.
Family names did not grow up naturally with them, as with us, in the
course of the Middle Ages. The Jew retained, as we long retained in the
middle and lower ranks of European society, the simple habit of
possessing one personal name and differentiating a man from his fellows
by introducing the name of his father. Thus a Jew in the sixteenth
century was Moses ben Solomon, just as the Cromwells' ancestor of the
same generation was Williams ap Williams. He had not what we call a
surname or family name. In the same way until varying dates, early in
France and England and other Western countries, much later in Wales,
Brittany, Poland and the Slav countries of the East, a man was known
only by his personal name, distinguished, if that were necessary, by
mentioning also the name of his father, or, in some cases, of his tribe.
Properly speaking the Jews have no surnames, and they may say with
justice: "Since we were compelled to take surnames arbitrarily (which
was the case in the Germanies and sometimes elsewhere as well), you
cannot blame us if we attach no particular sanctity to the custom." If a
Jew of plain Jewish name was compelled by alien force to take the fancy
name of Flowerfield, he is surely free to change that fancy name, for
which he is not responsible, to any other he chooses. There was a good
reason for the Government to force a name upon him. Only thus could he
be registered and his actions traced. But forced it was, and therefore,
on him, not morally binding.
All this is true, but there remains an element not to be accounted for
on any such pleas. There are in the experience of all of us, an
experience repeated indefinitely, men who have no excuse whatsoever for
a false name save that advantage of deceit. Men whose race is
universally known will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and
after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original
and true name be used in its place. This is particularly the case with
the great financial families. Some, indeed, have the pride to maintain
the original patronymic and refuse to change it in any of their
descendants. But the great mass of them concealed their relations one
with another by adopting all manner of fantastic titles, and there can
be no object in such a proceeding save the object of deception. I admit
it is a form of protection, and especially do I admit that in its origin
it may have mainly derived from a necessity for self-protection. But I
maintain that to-day the practice does nothing but harm to the Jew.
There are other races which have suffered persecution, many of them, up
and down the world, and we do not find in them a universal habit of this
kind.
Again, who can say that the bearing of a Jewish name to-day, or at any
rate in the immediate past, is or was a handicap in commerce where
Occidental nations were concerned? And as for the Eastern nations, the
Jews there are so sharply differentiated that a false name can be of no
service merely to hide the racial character of its bearer. There must be
another motive present.
The same arguments apply for and against other forms of secrecy. A man
may plead that if secrecy in relationship were not maintained the
dislike of Jews would lead to false accusations. The Jew is highly
individual, especially in intellectual affairs. He takes his own line.
He expresses his opinions with singular courage. And such individual
opinions will often differ violently from those of men with whom he is
most closely connected. "Why," I can understand some distinguished
Jewish publicist in England saying, "should I be compromised by people
knowing that such-and-such a Bolshevist in Moscow or in New York is my
cousin or nephew? I am conservative in temperament; I have always served
faithfully the state in which I live; I heartily disapprove of these
people's views and actions. If their relationship with me were known I
should fall under the common ban. That would be unjust. Therefore I keep
the relationship secret."
The plea is sound, but it does not cover the ground. It is not
sufficient to explain, for instance, the habit of hiding relationships
between men equally distinguished and equally approved in the different
societies in which they move. It does not explain why we must be left in
ignorance of the fact that a man whom we are treating as the best of
fellow-citizens should hide his connection with another man who is
treated with equal honour in another country. There are occasions where
national conflicts make the thing explicable. A Jew in England with a
brother in Germany and a father at Constantinople might well be excused
in 1915 for calling himself Montmorency. Yet we note that often where
there is most need to hide the connection, the connection is not hidden
at all. On the contrary, it is openly advertised. We all recollect the
name of one Jewish financier who was most unjustly treated during the
war. He had faithfully served this country and the breach of his
connection with it was (to my mind at least, and I think to most people
who can judge the matter) a very bad thing for Britain in the conflict.
Yet there was here no change of name and no attempt to hide the
connection between himself and his brother, who stood, in another
capital, for the financial policy of our enemies.
Again, the Rothschilds, present in the various capitals of Europe, have
never pretended to hide their mutual relationships, and no one has
thought any the worse of them, nor has this open practice in any way
diminished their financial power.
There must be more than necessity at work; I suggest that there is
something like instinct, or, at any rate, an inherited tradition so
strong that recourse to it seems natural.
Now it cannot be too forcibly emphasized that secrecy in any of these
forms--working through secret societies, using false names, hiding of
relationships, denying Jewish origin--specially exasperates this, our
own race, among which the Jews are thrown in their dispersion. It is
invariably discovered, sooner or later, and whenever it is discovered
men have an angry feeling that they have been duped, even in cases where
the practice is most innocent and is no more than the following of
something like a ritual.
I doubt whether the Jews have any idea how strongly this force works
against them. If a man were to say "my name is so-and-so; my father was
born at such-and-such a place in Galicia; my brother is still there in
such-and-such a business"--if he told us all that, he would not suffer
upon our appreciating later on that members of his family abroad were
connected with movements we disapproved: no, not even with a Government
in active hostility to our own. Everybody knows the international
position of the Jew. Everybody knows that he cannot avoid that position.
Everybody makes allowances for it. And I conceive that the abandonment
of this habit of secrecy is not only possible but would be very greatly
to the advantage of the whole race.
Perhaps its most absurd form (not its most dangerous form) is the
secrecy maintained by distinguished men with regard to their Jewish
ancestors. They and their Jewish relations often suppress it altogether
or, at best, touch on it rarely and obscurely. Why should they act thus?
Take the case of two men at random out of hundreds whose names are
universally known and by most people respected, the name of Charles
Kingsley, the writer, and the name of Moss-Booth, the founder of the
Salvation Army. Here are two men who in very different fields played a
great part in English life and who both owed their genius and nearly all
their physical appearance to Jewish mothers. I should have thought it to
the advantage of the Jewish race and of the individuals concerned that
this fact should be widely known. The literary abilities of Charles
Kingsley, the organizing and other abilities of Booth are not lessened
in people's eyes, but, if anything, enhanced, by a knowledge of their
true lineage. Yet the mention of that lineage is treated as though it
were a sort of insult. I have heard it wrung out in some passionate plea
for the Jewish race as a proof that they are not devoid of abilities,
but never generally published.
Surely it would be more sensible to emphasize in every possible case the
Jewish or partially Jewish origin of men who distinguished themselves,
and thus to show under what a debt Europeans stand to the Jewish blood.
To treat the matter as a sort of sacred labyrinth, as a mysterious
temple into which one may now and then be allowed to peep is ridiculous.
The Jews cannot have their cake and eat it too. If it is--surely it must
be--in their eyes a matter for pride to belong to blood which they hold
to be superior and to a tradition of such immense antiquity, then it
cannot be at the same time a matter of insult. Yet the convention is
desperately maintained by the Jews themselves. If a man tells me that he
hates the English, and in reply I say, "That's because you are an
Irishman," he does not fly at my throat. He takes it as a matter of
course that the history of the English government in Ireland excuses his
expression. So far from being insulted at being called an Irishman he
would be insulted if you said he was not an Irishman. And so it is with
many another nationality which has suffered oppression and persecution.
I can find no rational basis for a contrary policy in the case of the
Jews. Moreover the habit does this further harm: it makes men ascribe a
Jewish character to anything they dislike, and thus extends
undeservedly the odium against the race.
A foreign movement against one's nation, an unpopular public figure, a
detested doctrine, are labelled "Jewish" and the field of hate, already
perilously wide, is broadened indefinitely. It is useless to say, "The
Jews do not admit the connection, the names are not Jewish, there is no
overt Jewish element." He answers, "Jews never do admit such connection;
Jews admittedly hide under false names; Jewish action never _is_ overt."
And--as things are, until they change--there is no denying what he says.
His judgment may be as wild as you will (I have heard Sinn Feiners
called Jews!), but, so long as this wretched habit of secrecy is
maintained, there is no correcting that judgment. A universal suspicion
is engendered and spreads.
Meanwhile the same vice drags into publicity every ill-sounding Jewish
act and name and leaves in obscurity the honoured names and useful
public actions of Jewry. For a false name, like a forgery, advertises
itself.
It is not always recognized in this connection that the Jewish "booms,"
which are so fruitful a cause of exasperation, depend on this same
policy of concealment and on that account add to the volume of anger as
each new trick is discovered.
Not that the objects of these world-wide campaigns are unworthy of
attention. The Jewish actor, or film-star, or writer or scientist
selected is usually talented; the victim of injustice whose case is
advertised on the big drum has often a genuine grievance. But that the
notice demanded is out of all proportion and that its dependence on
Jewish organization is always kept hidden.
So much for the element of secret action. A great deal more might be
written upon it, but there are two reasons against enlarging thereon.
First, a full discussion would take up far too much of my space;
secondly, it would tend to add what I particularly wish to avoid in
these pages, I mean emphasis upon the errors of the Jew. It would
continue a quarrel, our whole object in which is to find peace.
2. THE EXPRESSION OF SUPERIORITY BY THE JEW
This is a very different matter. The mere _sense_ of superiority is not
something in which any special policy can be recommended, because it is
there and cannot be remedied. It is part of the whole position. But it
is possible to restrain its expression. For that purpose it is of value
to define it, to put it upon record and to estimate its effect upon our
issue.
The Jew individually feels himself superior to his non-Jewish
contemporary and neighbour of whatever race, and particularly of our
race; the Jew feels his nation immeasurably superior to any other human
community, and particularly to our modern national communities in
Europe.
The frank statement of so simple and fundamental a truth is rarely made.
It will sound, I fear, shocking in many ears. To many others it will
sound not so much shocking as comic, and to many more stupefying.
The idea that the Jew should think himself our superior is something so
incomprehensible to us that we forget the existence of the feeling. If
it be constantly reiterated, for the purpose of dealing with this great
political difficulty, it is perhaps reluctantly admitted, but still
held as sort of abnormal, bewildering truth. I contend that the
forgetfulness of that truth, the attempt to solve the problem without
that truth remaining constant and fixed in the mind of the statesman, is
in a very large measure the cause of our failure in the past; and that
the way the Jew openly acts upon it in gesture, tone, manner, social
assertion, is a very important factor in the quarrel between his race
and ours.
Consider the attitude of statesmanship in the past towards this vital
conflict. In every such attitude I think the Jewish conviction of
superiority has been omitted.
For the attitudes taken up by European statesmen in the past towards the
alien Jewish element in their midst have always been one of three
sorts:--
(1) Either they have acted as though there were no Jewish nation, as
though the Jew were merely a private citizen like any other who happened
to have peculiar opinions and customs of his own but who was not
substantially different from the men around him.
(2) Or they have attempted to suppress, or to expel, or to destroy the
Jew with ignominy and violence.
(3) Or, while recognizing the existence of the Jewish nation as
something separate from their own fellow-nationals whom they have to
administrate, the statesmen have tried to arrive at equilibrium by a
sort of pact in which Jewish separateness was recognized, _but under
conditions of disability_.
Now in all these three methods there is absent all recognition of the
Jewish feeling of superiority.
In the first it is obviously lacking because the whole idea of a Jewish
nation is absent. It is equally obviously lacking from the second
method, that of persecution: the persecutor instinctively acts as though
the Jew felt himself to be an inferior. In the third method it is also
absent, not in theory but in practice. For the statesmen who have acted
thus in the past have not attempted to give the Jews a _separate_ status
only, they have in point of fact nearly always given them an _inferior_
status. By so doing they have exasperated the Jewish national sentiment.
For instance, certain nations have treated Jews as a separate people, as
aliens, by forbidding them untrammelled residence, and enforcing
registration. But when it came to taxation or freedom from military
service, _then_ there was no special recognition of the Jew.
There is indeed a fourth attitude which has occasionally appeared in
history when States have been in active decline or have fallen into the
hands of base and weak men, and that is the exaggerated flattery and
support of a few powerful wealthy Jews by administrators who were bribed
or cowed. We are suffering from that to-day. But these exceptional cases
(they have always led to national disaster) do not form a true category
of _Statesmanship_ in the matter. Nor is there even in those who thus
actually advantage a few Jews above their own fellow-citizens, and give
them special prominence and power, so much a recognition of the Jewish
sense of superiority as a secret hatred of their Jewish masters.
Bitter as is everywhere the secret attack on the Jews by those who have
subjected themselves for gain or publicity, it is nowhere so bitter as
in the private speech of the politicians.
It would seem in the presence of so many failures in policy, and all
these failures having in common the non-recognition of this Jewish
feeling, that success can never be obtained unless we fully allow for
it. I submit that there will never be peace between any Jewish alien
minority and the community within which it may happen to reside until
those who administrate that community fully accept, and studiously avoid
the exasperation of, this state of the Jewish mind.
In statesmanship, as in every other form of human activity, exact
definition is of the first importance. We must distinguish at the outset
between this Jewish sense of superiority and any real superiority. The
statesman is not concerned with the rightness or wrongness of the Jewish
attitude. It may be a most absurd illusion, or it may be a most profound
vision. He has nothing to do with that. Having made up his mind that the
small and quite alien minority must be tolerated and must be allowed to
live as happily as possible in the midst of a community from which it so
profoundly differs, his next duty is to know thoroughly the nature of
the material upon which he is acting and with which he has to deal.
He may smile at the Jewish sense of superiority; he may even be
privately indignant; but he must be quite sure that it is a permanent
part of the nation with which he has to settle. It will never be
removed. The Jew in the East End of London, the poorest of the poor,
feels himself the superior of the magistrate before whom he is hauled,
of the policeman who keeps order in the streets, and immensely the
superior of the simple-faced soldiers and sailors, whose trade is the
most typical of our own race. He even feels himself the superior of
those whom he better understands--the negotiators: the people who live
by cunning. The expression of our faces, our gesture, our manner; the
very fact that our minds, less acute, are also broader, confirms his
feeling.
This fixed idea of superiority which appears in every phrase and
implication, is taken for granted by the Jew. It is felt, I say, by the
poorest and most oppressed, the least rich and the most unfortunate of
the Jewish people in our midst. Unfortunately--and this is the crux--it
proceeds to _unrestrained expression_. It is this which is so violently
resented. It is this which aggravates the quarrel. It is this which must
be kept in control if we are to have peace; not the sense of
superiority, that is ineradicable, but the expression of it. It appears,
as we all know, with extraordinary emphasis in the action and manner of
the few very wealthy Jews with whom the directing classes of the nation
are better acquainted. But whether he be a rich man suffering only from
alien and hostile surroundings, or a poor man suffering from all the
lowering forces of squalor, of destitution and of contempt, the Jew
feels himself the potential master of his hosts and shows it. He reposes
in the same confidence as was felt by Disraeli when he said: "The Jew
cannot be absorbed; it is not possible for a superior race to be
absorbed by an inferior." But unfortunately he does not only repose on
that foundation; he also _acts_ upon it, and that is intolerable.
We must, I say, allow for this feeling in any settlement we make; we
have also to study its consequences. Otherwise we shall be baffled by
phenomena which would seem inexplicable. But we need not allow for--on
the contrary, we should actively condemn--an open attitude of Jewish
contempt for ourselves.
Here are some consequences of this open expression of
superiority--consequences which we all discover to-day in the relations
between the Jewish people and ourselves and which are leading us into a
situation very dangerous for them and for us.
First, you have that familiar handling of European things by the Jew,
which is continually stirring the wrath of the European and as
continually leaving the Jew in wonderment what possible harm he can have
done. Thus, the Jew will write of our religion, taking for granted that
it is folly, and will marvel that we are offended. He will appear in our
national discussions, not only giving advice, but attempting to direct
policy, and will be puzzled to discover that his indifference to
national feeling is annoying. He will postulate the Jewish temperament
as something which, if different from ours, must, whether we like it or
not, be thrust upon us.
He acts in all these things as every one acts instinctively in the
presence of those whom they take for granted to be inferiors, and when
men talk of the "Jewish insolence," or the "Jewish sneer," they imply
that attitude. We are wrong if we take these things as calculated
insult. The action of the Jew, in so far as it proceeds from this sense
of superiority, is no more calculated and no more deliberately hostile
than are our own actions whenever we find ourselves in relations with
those whom we think inferior to ourselves. But we are right to point
them out, to resent them, to reprove them, and, if it became necessary,
to end them.
The Jewish problem will never be solved unless we make allowances for
the sense of superiority, take it for granted as an unavoidable evil,
and restrain our indignation in its presence; but neither will it be
solved if we permit its more and more open expression.
Another consequence of this attitude: The Jew, on account of it, makes
no effort to get into touch with the mass of the race in the midst of
which he may happen to be living. He is content to remain separate from
it, and thinks he cannot help remaining separate from them. And he shows
it. He consents to associate with the _élite_, with those who direct,
with those who have some special sort of function, but it seems to him a
waste of time to attempt communion with the rest. And he shows it. That
is what Renan meant when he said that the Jews were the least democratic
of all people. Renan, who was supported by Jewish money and lived, while
he was doing his best work, dependent on a Jewish publisher; Renan, who
was so fascinated by the history of Israel, and who decided himself to
become a scholar in all Hebraic things, understood the Jew not at all.
His judgments upon them are invariably superficial and to one side of
the truth; the judgments of a foreigner--an admiring foreigner but not a
sympathetic foreigner. And when he said that the Jews were not
democratic he was, instead of passing a judgment upon an intimate
political instinct of the Jewish people, simply noting an external
phenomenon. For the Jews are, as a fact, strongly democratic--no nation
more so--in their national relations among themselves; they only appear
undemocratic to us because they openly look down on us among whom they
live.
Another form taken by that open expression of the sense of superiority
among the Jews: It lends to all their actions in our State a certain
assurance and solidity which vastly strengthens their power of
resistance, no doubt, but also provokes their misfortunes. The religious
interpreter of history might say that they had been specially endowed
with this sense by Providence because Providence intended them to
survive as a national unit miraculously, in the face of every
disability; to remain themselves for 2,000 years under conditions which
would have destroyed any other people in perhaps a century: and yet
intended to suffer. The rationalist will say that the expression of a
sense of superiority, and the power of resistance that accompanies it
are but different names for the same thing; that but for the presence of
that expression of superiority the resistance could not have succeeded,
but for the resistance there could have been no persecution; that there
was no design in the matter, only the chance presence of a particular
quality which has produced its necessary and logical effect. But
whichever be the true explanation, the historical fact remains, that
this sense of superiority produced an open and overweening expression of
it whenever the Jews have been free to give vent to their feelings, and
that while it has had, as one great consequence, the strengthening of
the identity, permanence, survival of the Jewish people, it has also
had, for another great consequence, their recurrent oppression following
on every period of freedom.
There is one last thing to be said, which it is almost impossible to say
without the danger of giving pain and therefore of confusing the problem
and making the solution more difficult. But it must be said, because, if
we shirk it, the problem is confused the more. It is this: While it is
undoubtedly true, and will always be true, that a Jew feels himself the
superior of his hosts, it is also true that his hosts feel themselves
immeasurably superior to the Jew. We can only arrive at a just and
peaceable solution of our difficulties by remembering that the Jew, to
whom we have given special and alien status in the Commonwealth, is all
the while thinking of himself as our superior. But on his side the Jew
must recognize, however unpalatable to him the recognition may be, that
those among whom he is living and whose inferiority he takes for
granted, on _their_ side regard him as something much less than
themselves.
That statement, I know, will be as stupefying to the Jew as its converse
is stupefying to us. It will seem as extraordinary, as incredible, and
all the rest of it; but it is true, and it is a permanent truth. Unless
the Jews recognize that truth the trouble will go on indefinitely. There
is no European so mean in fortune or so base in character as not to feel
himself altogether the superior of any Jew, however wealthy, however
powerful, and (I am afraid I must add) however good. True, virtue has a
superiority of its own which cannot be hidden, and the cruel, or the
treacherous, or the debauched European cannot but feel himself morally
inferior to a Jew who is just, self-governed, merciful, generous, and
the rest of it. But we know how it is with national feelings. The type
is stronger for us than the individual; and while we may recognize
certain superior characteristics in the individual, we are thinking all
the while of the race, of the communal form, and contrasting our own
with the alien form to the disadvantage of the latter.
So difficult is it for the Jew to appreciate this factor in the problem
that his lack of appreciation has been almost as great a cause of
difficulty in the past as the same lack upon our side. We seem to him
insolent when, in our own eyes, we are merely acting normally as
superiors.
What emotion does it not create, I wonder, in some Jewish merchant or
money-dealer who has purchased a high directing place in our plutocracy
when he discovers from the gesture, the tone, the expression of some
chance poor Englishman, perhaps no more than an embarrassed hack writer,
a clear feeling of superiority? Must it not seem to him mere insolence?
"What possible claim" (he will say within himself) "has this _goy_, and
a poor unsuccessful _goy_ at that, to treat _me_ as though I were less
than he! I, who am worth millions, who am ruling and doing what I will
with his own national leaders, who dispose of his State very much as I
choose, and who belong to that nation which is wholly above all others,
the Jewish people?" Everywhere the Jew discovers the consequences of
this feeling, even though that feeling be to him so incomprehensible
that he can hardly admit its existence.
Well, whether he likes to admit it or not, it is there. Individual Jews
may be flattered for the sake of their wealth or because of the fear of
them, in which a commercial community stands. Such Jews as mistake the
current printed word which they read for the spoken words they never
hear may fall into the error of thinking that this sense of superiority
on our part did not exist. They must be warned, if ever the problem is
to be solved, that it _does_.
In their case, just as in ours, a right solution can only be arrived at
by the frank admission that the feeling is there and by the fixed
knowledge that, whether the feeling be an illusion or represent a
reality, it will not change; but also by a repression of it in our
mutual relations.
We may add to our summary of this subtle but profound cause of
disturbance the further truth that a paradox of the sort is to be found,
though perhaps less emphasized, in every other political problem. The
diplomat resident in a foreign capital has to consider not only his own
certitude that his hosts are inferior, but their certitude of their own
superiority to him and his. The general in the field may be certain of
his mastery over an opponent, but if that opponent is as yet undefeated
he will do ill to forget that he is matched by a confidence equal to his
own. Still more does the negotiator in commerce act upon this principle
and recognize it, or at least if he fails to do so, he invites disaster.
For when the commercial man is occupied in overreaching his neighbour,
his chances of success very largely depend upon his treating that
neighbour as though he really were what he believes himself to be. He
may be dealing with a stupid and vain man easily to be overmatched and
impoverished, but if he lets it appear that he regards his proposed
victim as a vain and stupid man, then he will miss his bargain.
In general, there is no success over others, nor even (which is much
more necessary), any permanent arrangement possible with others, unless
we know, allow for, and act upon the self-judgment of others, however
wrong we may believe that self-judgment to be.
It is clear that in this conflict between the Jew and, let us say, the
European (for it is between the Jew and the white Occidental race that
our present problem lies, though the same problem arises with all other
races among whom the Jew may find himself), both parties cannot be
right. A being superior to the race of man and looking on our petty
quarrels might be able to decide which of the two opponents were nearer
reality, and whether we are the better justified in our contempt of the
Jew or the Jew in his contempt of us. But in working out our own
solution without the aid of such guidance, there is no rule but for both
parties to take for granted what each regards as an illusion in the
other; to restrain its expression for the sake of reaching a settlement;
and in the settlement they arrive at, to admit as a factor necessarily
and permanently present what each still secretly regards as a folly, but
an incurable folly, in the other.
The alternative to such self-restraint is a falling back into the old
circle of submission, consequent anger accompanied by shame and
violence, and these followed by remorse.
THE CAUSE OF FRICTION UPON OUR SIDE
CHAPTER VI
THE CAUSE OF FRICTION UPON OUR SIDE
Having concluded a brief review of the causes of friction upon the
Jewish side, we must turn to the cause of friction upon our own.
At first sight it might seem that the task was superfluous. Action and
reaction are equal and opposite. If you have shown why A irritates B,
you have also presumably shown why B irritates A. Or again, if you
regard an alien minority in a community as an irritant (which it nearly
always is and which it certainly is in the case of the Jews), you have,
it would seem, sufficiently defined the position and need not trouble to
examine what part the irritated play in the matter. What is parasitical
at the worst preys upon the general body, at the best disturbs it. The
general body would appear passive. It has no part in the business but to
react against the cause of the disturbance and if possible get rid of
it. As that cause is none of its making, one need not seek for any
responsibility on its side.
The house is ours: the Jew is an intruder (an objector may say), and
there is an end of it.
But the situation is not as simple as that. Quite apart from the fact
that the Jew will certainly not allow such a description of his
activity, there is the obvious truth that where you are dealing with
two _human_ factors, that is, with two factors which have a common
nature and therefore common duties, you are also dealing with two known
and analysable organic things. You are also dealing with two sets of
wills, and these wills we know to be free, in spite of sophists. A man
and a group of men can do well or ill, both absolutely, and relatively
to some particular question in hand; and no group of men can escape
responsibility in relation to any other group with which it is in
contact. It is certain that we play a part ourselves in this quarrel
between us and the Jews. It is a part which is in a measure inevitable,
because it proceeds in a measure from the mere contrast between two
racial characters. But there is a remaining part which can be remedied
by the action of the will.
Though we cannot change that element which is inherent in our nature any
more than the Jews can change theirs, yet an understanding of it makes
all the difference; and we can certainly change those elements which are
inherent in our wills.
The proof of this is that in the long story of the relations between the
two races, there have been, in various times and places, those
exceptional chapters of calm to which I have alluded on an earlier page,
and these could not have been maintained had not the causes of friction
been modified on either side, but especially upon ours.
All that cause of friction which arises from the mere contrast of
character may be set down very briefly. It is included in what has just
been said on the general causes, the difference in nature between the
Jews and ourselves. If their form of courage, their form of generosity,
their form of loyalty is, as it is, of a different quality from ours; if
their defects show the same difference of quality or colour; if we
perpetually feel, as we do feel, the friction caused by this contrast,
so do they, presumably, feel a corresponding friction in their dealings
with us. We shall neither of us be able to change that state of affairs.
We must admit it, and we must try to understand its nature.
Above all, we must not take it for granted that a difference from
ourselves is in itself an evil in another. That is a point to be
insisted upon. When we are dealing with inanimate nature, or with
unintelligent animate nature, we do not ascribe motive, for there is no
motive to ascribe. A man does not go about with bitterness in his heart
against wasps, though the purpose of the wasp is very different from the
purpose of the man and their interests clash. He does not call the wasp
wicked, nor, save as a relief to his feelings, give it moral names. He
does not condemn the wasp. Still less does he condemn all wasps, or
anything else in nature around him that works against his interest. But
when he has to deal with other human beings, man at once begins to
ascribe a motive. He must do so, because he knows that motive is the
spring of all human action, including his own. When that motive differs
from his, contrasts with his and is therefore in any degree inimical to
his, he is inclined to ascribe an evil motive. All that is a truism as
old as the hills.
If you have not to live with those who thus differ from you there is no
great harm done, but if you have to accept them as part of your life, it
is a different matter. It is then essential to the order of the State
that this illusion of directly antagonistic motive should be watched and
restrained.
But all this concerns rather our duty in the matter than the mere cause
of friction.
The first cause of friction is that contrast which is the same whether
we describe it from the alien's point of view, as has just been done, or
from our own.
The causes of friction which lie within the province of the will, and
which are, therefore, directly a matter for reform, are of another kind.
The first of them undoubtedly is our _disingenuousness_ in our dealings
with the Jew.
This disingenuousness extends from our daily habit to our treatment of
history. It is more deep-rooted than most people are aware of, more
widespread than those who are aware of it like to admit. It affects our
relations with the Jews just as much when we are attempting to defend
their position in the State as when we attack them. Indeed, I think it
affects our relations more when we are trying to defend them than when
we attack them. The only two kinds of men who show perfect candour in
their dealings with the Jews are the completely ignorant dupe who can
hardly tell a Jew when he sees one and who accepts as a reality the old
fiction of there being no difference except a difference of religion
(which he has been taught to think unimportant) and the person called an
"Anti-Semite."
Both these types certainly say what they think. That is why in their
heart of hearts the Jews are grateful to both, although both are
intellectually contemptible. The Jew feels, I think, when he meets
either of these types, "At any rate I know where I am." But the great
bulk of men, especially among the more cultivated, are grossly
disingenuous in all their dealings with the Jews. It is the great fault
of our side which corresponds to the fault of secrecy upon theirs. And
when you have allowed for routine, for the necessities of social
intercourse, for convention and the rest, it remains a deliberately
conceived moral evil.
A man and his friend meet in the street a Jew whom they know; they
exchange ordinary civilities with him; they pass on. The moment his back
is turned each comments to his companion upon the Jewish character of
the man they have just left, and almost invariably to his disadvantage.
Now to blame this way of going on does not imply that when you meet your
Jewish acquaintance you are to offend him by saying to his face the kind
of things you say behind his back; that would be a monstrous piece of
cynicism and, in practice, insane. We do not act thus in any relation of
life. But it does mean that in the attitude, the gesture, the tone of
the voice, we play a deliberately false part in our relations with Jews,
which we do not play in our relations with any other people. A peculiar
pretence, a pretence only practised with Jews, is elaborately
maintained. There is no allusion to or admission of our real attitude,
our sense of contrast. We therefore suffer an unnatural strain; and we
relieve of the strain immediately afterwards by an exaggeration of the
contrast we have pretended to ignore. It is blameworthy in a special
degree because it is peculiar to that one case. If we admitted the Jew
as a Jew, talked to him of the things that were uppermost in his mind
and in ours, and treated him as we treat any other foreigner in our
midst, there would have been no harm done. As it is the lie has done a
double harm--to him and to us. To us by an exasperation which is
entirely our own fault, to him by deceiving him as to his true position.
The Jews who mix with the wealthiest classes to-day, especially in
London, have no true idea of their real position in the eyes of their
guests; and the fault is with their guests.
I have cited an obvious daily example, but it is the least important,
for it is passing and shallow. This disingenuousness spreads to
relations more permanent. A man goes into business with a Jew, accepts
him as a partner, works with him constantly and yet nourishes in his
heart a disloyalty to that relationship. It is a phenomenon of constant
recurrence and it poisons the relations between the two races. If a man
is prepared to enter into one of these permanent relations with another
man who differs fundamentally from himself in tradition and human
character, he must face the consequences. One of those consequences, if
he is to remain an honest man, is the acceptation of the position with
all that it implies. He cannot have the advantage--as he hopes to have
it--of the Jewish sobriety, the Jewish tenacity, the Jewish lucidity of
thought, the Jewish international relationships, the Jewish opportunity
of advancement through the aid of his fellows, and at the same time
secretly indulge in a contempt and dislike for his companion, and
relieve that suppressed feeling in his absence. Yet that is what men are
doing daily throughout the business world.
Listen to the conversation of such a man as, having thus engaged in
intimate commercial relationship with the Jew, falls upon misfortune. He
spends the rest of his life denouncing the Jews as a race and his own
companion in misfortune in particular. He has no right to do it. It is
undignified; it is puerile, but, worst of all, it is unjust. He
presumably knew what he was doing when he entered into what could not
but be a difficult relationship. The consequences of that relationship
he should accept whether they turn out well for him or ill.
We find something perhaps even worse to note in the attitude of those
who are successful in their business through an alliance with the Jew.
For in this case gratitude should be added to justice, and that
gratitude is very rarely shown. On the contrary, the non-Jewish partner
is for ever in a mood of complaint about his share. He is perpetually in
a grievance that he has been overreached, or that he has been bullied,
or that he has been robbed, save in those very rare cases where the
success is so overwhelming, the fortunes so rapid, that there is no room
for a grudge. In almost every other case that I have come across there
is that element of recrimination--behind the Jew's back--even under
conditions of success.
I know very well what can be said upon the other side. It can be said
that what I have called upon a former page the "ruthlessness" of the Jew
in commercial relations, as well as his tenacity and all the rest, make
the contest unequal; that in a partnership between Jew and non-Jew the
non-Jew is, as a fact, often overreached and is, as a fact, often left
(as the pretty vocabulary of modern commerce has it) "in the cart." But
pray why did the non-Jew enter into the alliance at all? Was it not
precisely in order that he should benefit, if he could, by those very
qualities which he later denounces? He expected that those qualities
which make for the success of the Jew in commerce would also benefit
himself. He knew that there must always be a certain amount of
competition, even within such an alliance. He backed himself to watch
his own interests under conditions which he knew perfectly well when he
entered into them. He has not a leg to stand upon in quarrelling with
the results of the relationship, for in so doing he is merely
quarrelling with his own judgment and, for the matter of that, his own
plot.
If a man cannot tolerate the contrast between the Jewish race and our
own, or if he regards that race as possessing energies which will
invariably defeat him in the competition of commerce, then let him keep
away from a Jewish alliance altogether. It is the simplest plan. But to
immix himself with the Jewish commercial activity and then to grumble at
the results is despicable.
All this is worse, of course, when one is dealing with relations even
closer than those of commerce. Those relations are numerous in the
modern world, and disingenuousness in them takes the worst possible
form. Men, especially of the wealthier classes of the gentry, will make
the closest friends of Jews with the avowed purpose of personal
advantage. They think the friendship will help them to great positions
in the State, or to the advancement of private fortune, or to fame. In
that calculation they are wise. For the Jew has to-day exceptional power
in all these things. They therefore have the Jew continually at their
tables, they stay continually under the Jew's roof. In all the
relations of life they are as intimate as friends can be. Yet they
relieve the strain which such an unnatural situation imposes by a
standing sneer at their Jewish friends in their absence. One may say of
such men (and they are to-day an increasing majority among our rich)
that the falsity of their situation has got on their nerves. It has
become a sort of disease with them; and I am very certain that when the
opportunity comes, when the public reaction against Jewish power rises,
clamorous, insistent and open, they will be among the first to take
their revenge. It is abominable, but it is true.
And this truth applies not only to friendships, it even applies to
marriages. Marriage between Christian and Jew is, in that rank, an
affair of interest, and the bitterness the relation breeds is excessive.
This disingenuousness, then--lack of candour on the part of our race in
its dealings with the Jew--a vice particularly rife among the wealthy
and middle classes (far less common among the poor), extends, as I have
said, to history. We dare not, or will not teach in our history books
the plain facts of the relations between our own race and the Jews. We
throw the story of these relations, which are among the half-dozen
leading factors of history, right into the background even when we do
mention it. In what they are taught of history the schoolboy and the
undergraduate come across no more than a line or two upon those
relations. The teacher cannot be quite silent upon the expulsion of the
Jews under Edward I or upon their return under Cromwell. A man cannot
read the history of the Roman Empire without hearing of the Jewish war.
A man cannot read the Constitutional History of England without hearing
of the special economic position of Jews under the Mediaeval Crown. But
the vastness of the subject, its permanent and insistent character
throughout two thousand years; its great episodes; its general
effect--all that is deliberately suppressed.
How many people, for instance, of those who profess a good knowledge of
the Roman Empire, even in its details, are aware, let alone have written
upon the tremendous massacres and counter-massacres of Jews and
Europeans, the mass of edicts alternately protecting and persecuting
Jews; the economic position of the Jew, especially in the later empire;
the character of the dispersion?
There took place in Cyprus and in the Libyan cities under Hadrian a
Jewish movement against the surrounding non-Jewish society far exceeding
in violence the late wreckage of Russia, which to-day fills all our
thoughts. The massacres were wholesale and so were the reprisals. The
Jews killed a quarter of a million of the people of Cyprus alone, and
the Roman authorities answered with a repression which was a pitiless
war.
One might pile up instances indefinitely. The point is, that the average
educated man has never been allowed to hear of them. What a factor the
Jew was in that Roman State from which we all spring, how he survived
its violent antagonism to him and his antagonism to it; the special
privilege whereby he was excepted from a worship of its gods; his
handling of its finances--all the intimate parallel which it affords to
later times is left in silence. The average educated man who has been
taught, even in some fullness, his Roman History, leaves that study
with the impression that the Jews (if he had noticed them at all) are
but an insignificant detail in the story.
So it is with history more recent and even contemporaneous. In the
history of the nineteenth century it is outrageous. The special
character of the Jew, his actions through the Secret Societies and in
the various revolutions of foreign States, his rapid acquisition of
power through finance, political and social, especially in this
country--all that is left out. It is an exact parallel to the
disingenuousness which we note in social relations. The same man who
shall have written a monograph upon some point of nineteenth century
history and left his readers in ignorance of the Jewish elements in the
story will regale you in private with a dozen anecdotes: such-and-such a
man was a Jew; such-and-such a man was half a Jew; another was
controlled in his policy by a Jewish mistress; the go-between in
such-and-such a negotiation was a Jew; the Jewish blood in such-and-such
a family came in thus and thus--And so forth: but not a word of it on
the printed page!
This deliberate falsehood equally applies to contemporary record. The
newspaper reader is deceived--so far as it is still possible to deceive
him--with the most shameless lies. "Abraham Cohen, a Pole"; "M.
Mosevitch, a distinguished Roumanian"; "Mr. Schiff, and other
representative Americans"; "M. Bergson with his typically French
lucidity"; "Maximilian Harden, always courageous in his criticism of his
_own_ people" (his _own_ being the German) ... and the rest of the
rubbish. It is weakening, I admit, but it has not yet ceased.
Now this form of falsehood corrodes, of course, the souls of those who
indulge in it. But that does not concern the matter of this book. Where
it comes in as a cause of friction between the two races, and a
removable cause of friction, is in the effect it has upon the Jewish
conception of their position in our society. It falsifies that
conception altogether. It produces in the Jew a false sense of security
and a completely distorted phantasm of the way in which he is really
received in our society. The more this disingenuousness is practised the
more the surprise which follows upon its discovery and the more
legitimate the bitterness and hatred which that surprise occasions in
those of whom we are the hosts. It is not only true of this country; it
is true of every other country in which the Jew has been harboured and
for a time protected. Invariably he has complained that his awakening
was rude, that he was bewildered by what seemed to him a novel and
inexplicable feeling against him; that he had thought he was among
friends and found himself suddenly among treacherous enemies. All this
would have been saved to others in the past, and will be saved to
ourselves in the near future, if this pestilent habit of falsehood were
eliminated.
Disingenuousness is, on our side, the first main cause of the friction
between the two races.
The second main cause of friction upon our side is the unintelligence of
our dealing with the Jews. That unintelligence is allied, of course, to
the disingenuousness of which I have spoken; but it is a separate thing
none the less, and we can learn from the Jews its opposite, for _their_
dealings with _us_ are always intelligent. They know what they are
driving at in those relations, though they often misunderstand the
material with which they deal. But we, over and over again, would seem
not even to know what we are driving at.
What could be more unintelligent, for instance, than the special forms
of courtesy with which the Jew is treated? I am not talking of the
elaborate, false friendship which I have just dealt with under the head
of disingenuousness, but of the genuine attempts at courtesy towards
this alien people--the courtesy expressed by those who have no intimate
relations with them, and do not desire to have intimate relations with
them. It is almost invariably, in those who commonly avoid the Jews, a
courtesy which expresses patronage on the surface of it. It may be
compared with the courtesy that rich men show to poor men--as offensive
a thing as there is in the world.
And how unintelligent is our dealing with any particular Jewish problem;
for instance, the problem of Jewish immigration! We mask it under false
names, calling it "the alien question," "Russian immigration," "the
influx of undesirables from Eastern and Central Europe," and any number
of other timorous equivalents. The process is one of cowardly falsehood,
but the falsehood is not more remarkable than the stupidity, for no one
is taken in and least of all the Jews themselves.
This unintelligence extends to many another field. How unintelligent are
the efforts of the writers who would, as it were, make amends to the
Jews for former persecution by putting imaginary Jew heroes into their
books. In this particular we offend less than did our fathers of the
Victorian period. Dickens' offence was grave. He disliked Jews
instinctively; when he wrote of a Jew according to his inclination he
made him out a criminal. Hearing that he must make amends for this
action, he introduced a Jew who is like nothing on earth--a sort of
compound of an Arab Sheik and a Family Bible picture from the Old
Testament, and the whole embroidered on an utterly non-Jewish--a purely
English character.
How unintelligent are the various defences of the Jew by the non-Jew,
even with the best intentions! You will hear people tell you solemnly,
as a sort of revelation, that there are kindly, witty Jews, Jews who are
good prize-fighters or good fencers. I well remember one old gentleman
who tried hard to convince me (as though I needed convincing) that there
were Jews who had taste. He said to me, "I do not myself go into Jewish
houses, but my son does, and he assures me that much of the decoration
is in good taste." How unintelligent is the idea that because a man's
motives are not open and because he has not the same reasons for serving
the State that you have, _therefore_ he is to be perpetually under
suspicion! How still more unintelligent is the conception that, although
he is alien, yet you cannot use him in certain special services for the
State.
This unintelligence is specially apparent in the treatment of the Jew in
his international relations. The Jew is a nomad, the non-Jew a man with
a fixed habitation. The Englishman, the Frenchman and the rest are
perpetually approaching the Jew as though he also had a fixed
habitation. We seem never to be able to get over the shock of surprise
when we learn that a particular Jew abroad is the cousin, or nephew, or
brother of another Jew with a different name in England, or with
another Jew with yet another name in Pinsk or San Francisco. Yet,
surely, this is of the very essence of the Jewish position. We ought to
take it for granted that the Jew is thus nomadic, international, spread
all over the world, migratory, as we take the same thing for granted in
birds of passage. To adopt the attitude which we almost invariably do
and to feel a shock of surprise when we discover what must in the nature
of things be the most regular feature in the civic situation of the Jew,
is to fall into that most stupid of all stupid errors, the reading of
oneself into others.
I remember the horror and scandal with which men whispered their
discovery that a man with a German name, who had got into trouble a few
years ago, was the first cousin of a Cabinet Minister. Why not? They
seemed to be struck all of a heap by the dreadful revelation that the
names borne by Jews were not always their original names, that rich and
important men often have poor relations, and that poor relations often
get embarrassed.
In terms of their own society the thing would have been simple enough.
They would have felt no surprise to hear that some man of our own race,
who had made a rapid fortune and purchased a political position,
suffered from a disreputable relative, also of our own race. But because
in the case of the Jew there were the two unusual elements of a foreign
name and distant origin, they were bewildered. They even thought it in
some way specially scandalous. They had not appreciated the material
with which they were dealing, and that is the mark of unintelligence.
But the cream of unintelligence, the form in which unintelligent
treatment of him most exasperates the Jew, is undoubtedly that typical,
that ceaseless case of the man who is perpetually crying out against
Israel, and purposing nothing--the man who nourishes a sterile
grievance; who has not even the clarity or vigour to attempt
suppression; who would be horrified at persecution, almost equally
horrified at any breach of convention, and yet continues to cry out
against a state of affairs which he does nothing to put right and for
which he has not even a theoretic solution.
The last of the main causes of friction between the Jews and ourselves
is lack of charity, and that in the simplest form of refusing to go half
way to meet the Jew, and of refusing to put ourselves in the shoes of
the Jew so as to understand his position in our society and his attitude
towards it. It is a universal fault just as common in those who daily
associate with, live off, and fawn upon Jews as in those who keep aloof
from them. It never seems to occur to anyone on our side who has to deal
with the Jewish problem, to make the imaginative effort required. And
yet we have the parallel ready to our hands. The Jew feels among us,
only with far greater intensity, what we feel when we are resident in a
foreign country--a sense of exile, a sense of irritation against alien
things, merely because they are alien; a great desire for companionship
and for understanding, yet a great indifference to the fate of those
among whom he finds himself; an added attachment, not, indeed, to his
territorial home, for he has none, but to his nation. If we could
perpetually bear in mind that parallel, the friction on our side would
be greatly modified.
There are many Jewish societies which ask nothing better than to have
occasional addresses from non-Jews. Those addresses are given, those
Societies are visited, but not nearly as much as they should be.
There is a great Jewish literature--I mean a great mass of books dealing
specially with the Jew's position from the Jew's own point of view. It
is not read or known. I may be told that the fault of all this is
largely that of the Jews themselves on account of their use of secrecy.
I do not think the objection applies. With all his use of secrecy the
Jew is there present among us for us to approach, if we will, and to
understand as best we can. And I say that the approach is not made.
It is an effort, of course. No one knows it better than I; for on more
than one occasion when I have addressed a Jewish audience I have found
myself the object of very severe language. But it is an effort which
every one ought to make who admits that there is a Jewish problem at
all, and it is an effort very rarely made. It is not only an effort
because it involves the crossing of a gulf, it is also an effort because
we find this alien thing in many ways repugnant to us. Yet people make
that effort for the purposes of the State continually where other races
are concerned. It is far more important that they should make it where
the Jews are concerned. For those other alien races, administrated for
the moment by officials of our own race, will not permanently be so
administered. The relations between them and us are for a brief time,
and they are relations that constantly change. The Jew is with us
always; and the type of contact between his race and ours will remain
much the same through an indefinitely long future as they have through
so very long a past.
* * * * *
Here, then, is the summary, as I see it, of the causes of friction
between the two races.
First, a general cause, which lies in the contrasting nature of the two
and upon the irritant effect of that contrast. This cause is not to be
eliminated, though its effects may be modified. It is a profound
contrast and a sharp irritant constant in its activity. The essential is
to recognize its real nature, not to give to it general terms of faults
and vices, but to appreciate the difference of _quality_ involved: above
all, not to tell lies about it and pretend it is not present.
Secondly, as to special causes of friction--I mean causes which on their
side, as on ours, can be, if not eliminated, at any rate modified--I
suggest that the most prominent are: 1. The sense of superiority which,
though it cannot be destroyed, can at least be checked in expression and
which, by a pretty irony, is equally strong upon both sides. 2. The use
of secrecy by the Jews themselves; partly as a weapon of defence, partly
as a method of action, always to be deplored, and of a nature
particularly exasperating to our temperament. 3. Upon our side, a
persistent disingenuousness in our treatment of this minority.
Unintelligence in their treatment: the whole made worse by an
indifference or lack of charity, a refusal to make the effort necessary
for meeting and understanding as well as we can the race which must
always be with us and which is yet so different from our own.
Now these causes of friction permanently present tend to produce what I
have called the tragic cycle: welcome of a Jewish colony, then ill-ease,
followed by acute ill-ease, followed by persecution, exile and even
massacre. This followed, naturally, by a reaction and the taking up of
the process all over again.
In our own time we have seen, quite lately, the succession of the second
to the first of these stages; we have passed from welcome to ill-ease.
That passage threatens a further passage from the second to the third;
from the third to the terrible conclusion.
We feel quite secure to-day from the last extreme of this cycle. We are
certain it will never come to persecution: that is still inconceivable.
But it is not inconceivable everywhere: and no society is free from
change. Some now alive may live to see riots even in this quiet polity
and worse in newer or less settled states.
Such a catastrophe is to be avoided by every effort in our power and a
solution to the problem presented must imperatively be sought. But in
passing we should note, for the consideration of those who may doubt the
acuteness of the problem and the immediate practical necessity for a
solution, the presence of a phenomenon which amply proves that it _is_
acute and that the solution _is_ necessary. That phenomenon is the
presence to-day of a new type, the Anti-Semite, the man to whom all the
Jews are abhorrent.
It is a phenomenon which has increased prodigiously; its rate of
increase is accelerating, and as a warning of the peril, as a proof of
its magnitude, I propose to examine that phenomenon closely in my next
chapter.
THE ANTI-SEMITE
CHAPTER VII
THE ANTI-SEMITE
To understand any problem one must study not only its real factors as
they appear to a reasonable man who sees the whole affair steadily; one
must also understand the insanities and distortions the problem has
provoked, for they singularly illustrate its character and force.
It is not enough to consider only the actual in any difficulty to be
solved, it is necessary also to consider the imaginary; because the
legend or illusion is a direct product of the truth and shows how the
truth has acted on other minds.
Thus a caricature brings out what we unconsciously know to be present in
any personality, emphasizes it, and though false in its exaggeration,
forbids us to forget it in the future. Thus any extreme, no matter how
false its lack of proportion, is of the highest value to judgment.
In a practical problem of politics there is another most weighty reason
for examining extreme and distorted opinion: which is, that in politics
we deal not only with real things but with the liking or disliking of
these things by living men: their exaggerated or ill-informed affection
or repulsion. All statesmanship lies in the apprehension of enthusiasm
and indifference.
Now there are in this great political problem presented by the Jewish
race in our midst two extremes. One we have already studied: it is the
extreme folly of falsehood, of pretending that the problem is not there.
That extreme was an almost universal folly in the immediate past,
especially in this country. It is now abandoned by all of our generation
save a few people of an official sort, and these will not long maintain
an attitude outworn and already ridiculous.
But the other extreme remains to be studied. It is, in our society,
quite a recent phenomenon, though it has gained very great strength in
recent years and is increasing alarmingly. It is the extreme of hatred.
It is the extreme manifested by those who have but one motive in their
action towards the Jewish race, and that motive a mere desire for its
elimination. It implies that there is no peace possible between the two
races; no reasoned political solution. It relies upon nothing but
antagonism. It is already very strong, and its adherents believe
themselves to be on the eve of a sort of blundering triumph.
Every one who desires to deal with this grave political matter
practically, that is, to establish a permanent policy, will be much more
concerned with the extreme here examined than with the other extreme,
which ignores the problem altogether. For this new extreme of active
hatred is flourishing; that other, older extreme no longer functions.
The near future will have to deal, in practical politics, not only with
the problem presented by the Jews as an alien power within the State,
but (what will probably prove a more difficult matter) with the hater
of the Jew, who is claiming, and rapidly achieving, power on his side.
The type is as old as the problem; it is two thousand years old. But it
waxes and wanes. Its modern name of "Anti-Semite" is as ridiculous in
derivation as it is ludicrous in form. It is partly of German academic
origin and partly a newspaper name, vulgar as one would expect it to be
from such an origin, and also as falsely pedantic as one would expect,
but the exasperated mood of which it is a label is very real.
I say the word "Anti-Semite" is vulgar and pedantic: that I think will
be universally admitted. It is also nonsensical. The antagonism to the
Jews has nothing to do with any supposed "Semitic" race--which probably
does not exist any more than do many other modern hypothetical
abstractions, and which, anyhow, does not come into the matter. The
Anti-Semite is not a man who hates the modern Arabs or the ancient
Carthaginians. He is a man who hates Jews.
However, we must accept the word because it has become currency, and go
on to the more essential matter of discovering how those to whom it
applies are moved, what the result of their action would be if (or when)
they could act freely; and, most important of all, of what they are a
sign.
The Anti-Semite is a man marked by two main characters. In the first
place he hates the Jews _in themselves_. His motive is not a hatred of
their presence in our society. His motive is not the hatred of
concealment, falsehood, hypocrisy, corruption and all the other
incidental evils of that false position. These things, indeed, irritate
him, but they are not his leading motive. His leading motive is a
hatred of the Jewish people. He is in intense reaction against this
alien thing which he perceives to have acquired so much power in his
society. The way in which it has exercised this power especially
exasperates him. But he will remain a hater of the Jewish nation when
they are despised, insignificant, and neglected, and he will remain a
hater of it even if there be then attached to its position no accidents
of secrecy, falsehood and financial corruption. The type increases
rapidly when Jews have power: it becomes almost universal when they
begin to abuse that power. It dwindles as that power declines. But it is
always the same and is an index of peril.
The Anti-Semite is a man who _wants to get rid of the Jews_. He is
filled with an instinctive feeling in the matter. He detests the Jew as
a Jew, and would detest him wherever he found him. The evidences of such
a state of mind are familiar to us all. The Anti-Semite admires, for
instance, a work of art; on finding its author to be a Jew it becomes
distasteful to him though the work remains exactly what it was before.
The Anti-Semite will confuse the action of any particular Jew with his
general odium for the race. He will hardly admit high talents in his
adversaries, or if he admits them he will always see in their expression
something distorted and unsavoury.
When an accusation is made against a Jew he cannot adopt the judicial
attitude any more than could that other extremist, the humbug who denies
the Jewish problem altogether. Just as that other person, now passing
out of our lives, would not admit a Jew to be guilty under the most
glaring evidence and was particularly unable to admit guilt in a Jew who
might be wealthy; just as he proclaimed the Jews as a whole impeccable,
so does the Anti-Semite approach every Jew with a presumption of his
probable guilt, so does he exaggerate this prejudice when he has to deal
with a wealthy Jew, and so does he consider the whole Jewish race in the
lump as probably guilty of pretty well any charge brought against it.
The contrast was very well seen in the Dreyfus case, when the old type
of extremist was still strong. He would not look at the evidence against
Dreyfus, he would not, if he could help it, mention his race. All he
knew was that Dreyfus was and must in the nature of things be innocent
and that all the diverse men who testified against him were wicked
conspirators. The new type of extremist, then but rising and not yet
master, would not listen to the strong evidence in Dreyfus' favour,
refused to re-examine the case after the chief witness had been found
guilty of forgery, made up his mind that Dreyfus was necessarily guilty
and was convinced that all his supporters were dupes or knaves.
The mere fact that the Jews exist, let alone that they are powerful,
poisons life for such a man. He is led by his lop-sided enthusiasm into
the most ridiculous errors. In this country every name of German origin
at once suggests a Jew to him. Every financial operation, especially if
it be of doubtful morality, must certainly have a Jew behind it;
wherever a number of partners, Jewish and non-Jewish, are engaged in
some bad work (as, for instance, in one of our innumerable Parliamentary
scandals), a Jew must always for this sort of person be the prime mover
and the evil genius of the whole.
As is the case with every other mania, this mania rapidly obscures the
general vision of its victim. His prejudices soon lose proportion
altogether. He comes to see the Jew in everything and everywhere, and to
accept confidently propositions which he would himself see to be
contradictory, could he give a moment's quiet thought to the matter.
Thus I have heard on all sides in the last few years these strange
assertions proceeding from the same source, yet obviously incompatible
one with the other: That modern scepticism was Jewish in its origin;
that modern superstition, our modern necromancy and crystal gazing and
all the rest of it, was Jewish in its origin; that the evils of
democracy are all Jewish in their origin; that the evil of tyrannical
government, in Prussia, for instance, was Jewish in its origin; that the
pagan perversions of bad modern art were Jewish in their origin; that
the puerility of bad church furniture was due to Jewish dealers; that
the Great War was the product of Jewish armament firms; that the
anti-patriotic appeals which weakened the allied armies came from Jewish
sources--and so on. It is indeed true that there is a Jewish quality in
all these diverse and contradictory things where a Jew mixes in them;
just as there is a Scotch, or French, or English quality when a Scot, a
Frenchman, or an Englishman is the agent. But to ascribe the whole
boiling to the Jew, and to make him the conscious origin of all, is a
contradiction in terms.
The Anti-Semite is a man so absorbed in his subject that he at last
loses interest in any matter, unless he can give it some association
with his delusion, for delusion it is.
In a sense, of course, this state of mind is a sort of compliment to the
Jewish nation. If such a preoccupation with them be not amicable it is
at least intense, and those against whom it is directed may well regard
it as a proof of their importance in the world. But that aspect of the
phenomenon is not consoling for the future of either of us--the Jew who
now nervously awaits attack, and we who desire to forestall and prevent
such attack.
The Anti-Semite is very much more numerous and very much more powerful
than might be imagined from the reading of the daily press; for the
press is still, for the most part, under the convention of ignoring the
Jewish problem and under the terror of the financial results which might
follow from a discussion of it. His universal activity is not yet to be
read of in the great newspapers; but in conversation and in the practice
of daily life we hear of it everywhere.
And here I may digress upon a modern feature which applies to all
political problems and therefore to this Jewish problem among others.
The great movements of our time have never _originated_ in the press of
the great cities. They rise and store up their energies in political
cliques, in popular gatherings, and spoken rumours long before they
appear in this main instrument for the spreading of news. That is
because the press of our great cities is controlled by very few men,
whose object is not the discussion of public affairs, still less the
giving of full information to their fellow-citizens, but the piling up
of private fortune. As these men are not, as a rule, educated men, nor
particularly concerned with the fortunes of the State, nor capable of
understanding from the past what the future may be, they will never take
up a great movement until it is forced upon them. On the contrary, they
will waste energy in getting up false excitement upon insignificant
matters where they feel safe, and even in using their instruments for
the advertisement of their own insignificant lives. In all this, the
modern press of our great cities differs very greatly from the press of
a lifetime ago. It was not always owned by educated men, but it was
conducted by highly educated men, who were given a free hand. It
therefore concerned itself with problems of real importance and it
debated upon either side real contrasts of opinion upon those matters.
This modern press of ours does none of these things; but precisely
because it is so reluctant to express real emotion it does, when the
emotion is forced upon it, let it out in a flood. Just as it would not
tell the truth when a thing was growing, so when it reaches an extreme
it will not exercise restraint. On the contrary, if the "stunt" be an
exciting one, it will push it (once it has made up its mind to talk of
it at all) in the most extreme form and to the last pitch of violence.
We have seen that plainly enough in the monstrous expressions of foreign
policy during the last ten years, and we have seen it in the abominable
hounding of individuals to which that same press has lent itself.
Now in the matter of Anti-Semitic feeling we shall have, I think,
exactly the same phenomenon repeated. That feeling is now ubiquitous. It
is spreading with an alarming rapidity, and the increase of its
intensity is even more remarkable than the increase in the numbers of
its adherents. Sooner or later--and fairly soon, I imagine--the press
will give it voice. When it _does_, it will give it voice, we may be
certain, in the most extreme, the most passionate, the most irrational
form; and when that happens, in a field where passion is already so
wild, God help its victims!
The Anti-Semitic passion, largely based though it is on imaginary
things, has adopted one method of action highly practical. It is a
method of action closely in touch with reality, and productive of
formidable results. I mean _its compiling of documents_. It has here
noted, all over Europe and America, with exactitude, and continues to
put upon record, everything which can be said to the detriment of its
victims.
It discovered at its origin, presented as a barrier against it, the
Jewish weapon of secrecy. The folly of the Jews in using such a weapon
was never better shown, for of all defences it is the easiest to break
down. The Anti-Semites countered at once by making every inquiry, by
collecting their information, by finding out and exposing the true names
hidden under the mask of false ones, by detecting and registering the
relationships between men who pretended ignorance one of the other; it
ferreted all through the ramifications of anonymous finance and
invariably caught the Jew who was behind the great industrial insurance
schemes, the Jew who was behind such and such a metal monopoly, the Jew
who was behind such and such a news agency, the Jew who financed such
and such a politician. That formidable library of exposure spreads
daily, and when the opportunity for general publication is given there
will be no answer to it.
It is the greatest mistake in the world to regard the Anti-Semite in the
vast numerical strength he has now attained all over our civilization as
wholly unpractical and therefore negligible, as a man who cannot
construct a formidable plan of action simply because he has lost his
sense of values. While the movement was growing the method of meeting it
was always that of ridicule. It was a false method. The strength of
Anti-Semitism was and is based not only on intensity of feeling, but
also on industry, an industry very accurate in its methods. The
Anti-Semitic pamphlets, newspapers and books, which the great daily
press is so careful to boycott, form by now a mass of information upon
the whole Jewish problem which is already overwhelming and still
mounting up: and all of it hostile to the Jews. You will not find in it,
of course, any material for the Defendant's Brief, but as a _dossier_
for the Prosecution it is astonishing in extent and accuracy and
correlation.
Now it is to be remembered in this connection that the human mind is
influenced by documentation in a special manner. The exact citation of
demonstrable things with chapter and verse convinces as can no other
method, and the Anti-Semite is ready with such citation on a very large
scale indeed, at the first moment when a general publicity, now denied,
shall be granted to it.
* * * * *
Moreover, this reliance of the Jew upon the futility of the Anti-Semitic
propaganda omits one very important feature. The Anti-Semitic group is
built up of men differing greatly in experience, in judgment and policy.
And it is built up of strata differing greatly in the intensity of their
hatred. It includes many a man with administrative experience, many a
man of great business capacity, of acquired fortune, of talent in
affairs. It includes men with a thorough knowledge of European
diplomacy; it includes men (in great numbers) with the literary gift of
expression for persuading their fellows. Not only is this true, but, as
I have said, it includes a large "right wing" which, because they are
more restrained in expression than the rest, will exercise a greater
weight; men who are not at all blinded by their hatred, though hatred
has become their chief motive; men who retain full capacity for
organizing a plan of action and for carrying it out. It is true that
there is a definite line which divides the Anti-Semite from the rest of
those who are attempting to solve the Jewish problem. It is the line
dividing those whose motive is peace from those whose motive is
antagonism. It is the line dividing those whose object is action,
against the Jew, and those whose object is a settlement. But on the
Anti-Semitic side of that line--that is, among those whose determination
is to suppress and eliminate Jewish influence to the extreme of their
power--there are now very many more than the original enthusiasts who
created the movement.
The Jews should further remember that to-day every one outside their own
community is potentially an Anti-Semite. Not every one, perhaps not even
yet a majority, at least in the directing and wealthier classes, is
other than friendly or indifferent to the Jews, but there has grown up
in every one not a Jew something of reaction against the Jewish power.
It requires but an accident to change this from the latent and slight
thing it is in most men to an angry passion. I have noticed that among
the most violent of Anti-Semites are those who had passed some
considerable portion of their early manhood in ignorance of the whole
problem. These come across a Jew unexpectedly in some relation hostile
to them--they lose money through some Jewish financial operation, or
they connect, for the first time, in middle age, several misfortunes of
theirs with a common element of Jewish action, or they find Jews mixed
up in some attack on their country: thenceforward they become and remain
unrepentant Anti-Semites.
The dupe, when he discovers he has been duped, is dangerous, and there
is even a considerable category of those who have suffered nothing, even
by accident, at the hand of the Jew, yet who, when they discover what
the Jewish power is, feel they have been played with, and grow angry at
the trickery.
It has been and will be with Anti-Semitism as with all movements. When
they begin they are ridiculed. As they grow they come to be feared and
boycotted; but of those that are successful it may be justly said that
the moment of success begins when they turn the corner and from a fad
become a fashion.
It is still (doubtfully) the fashion to separate oneself from the
Anti-Semitic movement. You still hear men, when they write or speak upon
the Jewish problem, no matter with what hostility to the Jew, excuse
themselves as a rule at the beginning of their remarks by saying, "I am
no Anti-Semite." For some flavour of the old ridicule still attaches to
the name. But fashions change rapidly and the new fashion which comes in
to support a growing thing, when it does arrive, arrives in a flood.
We can all of us remember the time when the talk of nationalization, the
old State Socialist talk, was the talk of a few faddists who were
everywhere ridiculed and despised. To-day it is the fashion; and the
practice of State control, State support, the universality of State
action, is such that it is those who oppose it who are now the faddists
and the cranks.
We can all of us remember the day when, in the United States, a
prohibitionist was a faddist, and a very unpopular faddist at that. We
have seen fashion catch him up with a vengeance.
We can all of us remember the day when the supporters of women's
suffrage in England were a very small group of faddists indeed: we know
what has happened there!
The forces driving men towards the Anti-Semitic camp are far stronger
than the forces acting upon these old hobbies of women's suffrage, of
prohibition and the rest. They are personal, intimate forces arising
from the strongest racial instincts and the most bitter individual
memories of financial loss, subjection, national dishonour.
For instance, any German to-day to whom you may talk of his great
disaster will answer by telling you that it is due to the Jews: that the
Jews are preying upon the fallen body of the State; that the Jews are
"rats in the Reich." For one man that blames the old military
authorities for the misfortunes following the war, twenty blame the
Jews, though these were the architects of the former German prosperity,
and among them were found a larger proportion of opponents of the war
than in any other section of the Emperor's subjects. That is but one
example; you will find it repeated in one form or another in almost
every other polity of the modern world.
The Anti-Semite has become a strong political figure. It is a great and
dangerous error at this moment to think his policy is futile. It is a
policy of action, and a policy which may proceed from plan to execution
before we know it.
There used to be quoted years ago--and I have myself quoted it with
approval--a famous question put by a close and reasonable observer of
public affairs upon the Continent, to the most prominent of Continental
Anti-Semites in that day. The question was this: "If you had unlimited
power in this matter, what would you do?" The implied answer was that
the Anti-Semite could do nothing. He could not make a law which would
segregate the Jews for they could escape that law by mixing with those
around them. He could not make a law exiling them; for, first, it would
be impossible to define them; secondly, even if that were possible,
those defined would not be received elsewhere. What could he do? The
implication was, I say, that he could do nothing; he was supposed, in
the presence of that question, to admit his futility.
Unfortunately we now know that he _can_ do something. The Anti-Semite
can persecute, he can attack. With a sufficient force behind him he can
destroy. In much of this destruction he would have, in a present state
of feeling and in most countries, the mass of public opinion behind him.
He could begin with a widespread examination of Jewish wealth and its
origins and an equally widespread confiscation. He could use the dread
of such confiscation as a weapon for compelling the divulgence of Jewish
origins where a man desired to conceal them. He could do this not only
in the case of the wealthy men, but, through the terror of wealthy men,
over the whole field of the Jewish community. He could introduce
registration and with it a segregation of the Jews. Inspired as he would
be by no desire for a settlement agreeable to them, but solely for a
settlement agreeable to _himself_, he could aim at that harsh
settlement, and even though he might not reach his goal, it is not
pleasant to envisage what he might do on his way to it.
But even though the Anti-Semite fail to acquire full power, there remain
attached to his great increase in numbers and intensity of feeling the
prime questions, "What is the _meaning_ of the thing? Why has it arisen?
Why is it spreading? What are the forces nourishing it?"
These are the main questions which those who regret the presence of such
a passion in the body politic, which those who are alarmed about it,
which those who, like the Jews themselves, must, if they are to avoid a
catastrophe, defend themselves against it, would do well to answer.
There has not been as yet sufficient time to answer those questions
fully or to appreciate this great reaction in its entirety, but we can
already judge it in part. The Anti-Semitic movement is essentially a
reaction against the abnormal growth in Jewish power, and the new
strength of Anti-Semitism is largely due to the Jews themselves.
When this angry enthusiasm re-arose in its modern form, first in
Germany, then spreading to France, next appearing, and now rapidly
growing, in England, it was novel and confined to small cliques. The
truths which it enunciated were then as unfamiliar as the false values
on which it also reposed. That universal policy of the Jews against
which it is part of my thesis to argue, a policy natural but none the
less erroneous, the policy of _secrecy_, the policy of _hiding_, at once
took advantage of what was absurd in the novelty of Anti-Semitism. The
Jew, in spite of his age-long experience of menace and active
hostility, in spite of his knowledge of what this sort of spirit had
effected in the past, did not come out into the open. He did not act
against the new attack with open indignation, still less with open
argument, as he should have done. He took advantage of its absurdity, at
its beginnings, in the eyes of the general public. He used all his
endeavours to make the word "Anti-Semitic" a label for something
hopelessly ridiculous, a subject for mere laughter, a matter which no
reasonable man should for a moment consider seriously.
For something between a dozen and twenty years this policy was
successful. The method though less and less firmly established as time
went on, has not yet quite failed. None the less that policy was very
ill-advised. It was used not only to ridicule the Anti-Semite, but what
was quite illegitimate, quite irrational (and bound in the long run to
be fatal), it was used to prevent all discussion of the Jewish question,
though that question was increasing every day in practical importance
and clamouring to be decided.
It was the instinctive policy with the mass of the Jewish nation, a
deliberate policy with most of its leaders, not only to use ridicule
against Anti-Semitism but to label as "Anti-Semitic" any discussion of
the Jewish problem at all, or, for that matter, any information even on
the Jewish problem. It was used to prevent, through ridicule, any
statement of any fact with regard to the Jewish race save a few
conventional compliments or a few conventional and harmless jests.
If a man alluded to the presence of a Jewish financial power in any
region--for instance, in India--he was an Anti-Semite. If he interested
himself in the peculiar character of Jewish philosophical discussions,
especially in matters concerning religion, he was an Anti-Semite. If the
emigrations of the Jewish masses from country to country, the vast
modern invasion of the United States, for instance (which has been
organized and controlled like an army on the march), interested him as
an historian, he could not speak of it under pain of being called an
Anti-Semite. If he exposed a financial swindler who happened to be a
Jew, he was an Anti-Semite. If he exposed a group of Parliamentarians
taking money from the Jews, he was an Anti-Semite. If he did no more
than call a Jew a Jew, he was an Anti-Semite. The laughter which the
name used to provoke was most foolishly used to support nothing nobler
or more definitive than this wretched policy of concealment. Anyone with
judgment could have told the Jews, had the Jews cared to consult such an
one, that their pusillanimous policy was bound to fail. It was but a
postponement of the evil day.
You cannot long confuse interest with hatred, the statement of plain and
important truths with mania, the discussion of fundamental questions
with silly enthusiasm, for the same reason that you cannot long confuse
truth with falsehood. Sooner or later people are bound to remark that
the defendant seems curiously anxious to avoid all investigation of his
case. The moment that is generally observed, the defence is on the way
to failure.
I say it was a fatal policy; but it was deliberately undertaken by the
Jews and they are now suffering from its results. As a consequence you
have all over Europe a mass of plain men who so far from being scared
off from discussing the Jewish problem by this false ridicule are more
determined than ever to thrash it out in the open and to get it settled
upon rational and final lines.
That would perhaps be no great harm in itself. It would merely mean that
a false policy had failed, and that proper frank and loyal discussion
would succeed all this hushing up and boycott. Unfortunately the false
policy had other and much worse consequences. It exasperated men who had
already begun to interest themselves in the political discussion and who
would not tolerate undeserved ridicule. It heaped up a world of
determined opposition to the Jews. It is not exactly that the
Anti-Semite has already won or even is as yet certainly on his way to
winning, but he now has his chance of winning. Whereas, some few years
ago, he had the tide against him, he is now, through the fault of the
Jews themselves, at its turn. He now finds himself on an extreme wing,
it is true, but _attached_ to a very large body which is already
strongly biassed against the Jews, dislikes their presence among us, and
is determined to act against them, not only where they still have great
power, but also where that power is visibly declining, and even where
they are in danger.
It must not be forgotten, as we survey this growing menace, that a
policy which reaches no finality is not on that account futile. It must
not be forgotten that in the minds of many men (one might say in the
minds of most men) during periods of excitement, a policy of repression,
though always failing to reach finality, may still be continuous: it may
become a habit and may endure indefinitely in the vast suffering of its
victims. The Jews have seen that happen in many a small nationality
other than their own. They have seen, no doubt, that continued
repression acting in an atmosphere of equally continuous rebellion has
usually in the long run failed, but they must admit that the maintenance
of such repression, with all its accompaniments of moral and physical
torture, confiscation, exile and all the rest, has often been a policy
long drawn out. It has been drawn out in some cases for centuries. It is
not true that, because a policy does not aim at a complete settlement,
therefore it cannot be undertaken and vigorously pursued. It can. Time
and again a hostile force has attempted to eliminate opposition, or even
contrast, and to eliminate it by every instrument, including massacre
itself. Sometimes, very rarely, it has succeeded. Usually it has, in the
long run, failed. But in the great majority of cases it has at any rate
continued long after its failure was apparent. That is the danger which
menaces from the phenomenon I have examined in this chapter. It would be
madness in the Jews to neglect that phenomenon. It is now so strong in
numbers, intensity of conviction, and passion that it menaces their
whole immediate future in our civilization. Its ultimate causes we have
explored. Its immediate cause, the cause of its sudden development and
present startling growth, we have seen to be the Jewish action in
Russia, and to this, which I have already touched upon in my third
chapter, where I sketched the sequence of events leading up to the
present situation, I will next turn, in order to make a more detailed
examination of it. For undoubtedly it is the sudden appearance of Jewish
_Bolshevism_ that has brought things to their present crisis.
BOLSHEVISM
CHAPTER VIII
BOLSHEVISM
The Bolshevist explosion, which will appear in history I think as the
point of departure from which shall date the new attitude of the Western
nations towards the Jews, is not only a field in which we can study the
evil effect of secrecy, but one in which we can analyse all the various
forces which tend to bring Israel into such ceaseless conflict with the
society around it.
It merits, therefore, a very special examination, both as an opportunity
for the study of our subject and as a turning-point of the first moment
in history.
Why did a Jewish organization thus attempt to transform society? Why did
it use the methods which we know it used? Why was that particular venue
chosen? What aim had the actors in view? What measure of success did
they hope to achieve? By what method do they propose to extend their
influence? When we can answer those questions we shall have gone far to
discovering the almost fatal causes of conflict between this peculiar
nation and those among whom they move.
The answers usually given to these questions by the avowed enemies of
the Jewish race are always inadequate and often false. When they
contain an element of truth (which they often do) that truth is quite
insufficient to account for the full phenomena. But the accretions of
falsehood and exaggeration render the whole thing inexplicable--indeed,
these explanations of the Russian revolution are very good specimens of
the way in which the European so misunderstands the Jew that he imputes
to him powers which neither he nor any other poor mortal can ever
exercise.
Thus we are asked to believe that this political upheaval was part of
one highly-organized plot centuries old, the agents of which were
millions of human beings all pledged to the destruction of our society
and acting in complete discipline under a few leaders superhumanly wise!
The thing is nonsense on the face of it. Men have no capacity for acting
in this fashion. They are far too limited, far too diverse.
Moreover, the motive is completely lacking. Why merely destroy and why,
if your object is merely to destroy, manifest such wide differences in
your aims? One may say justly that there is always a tendency to
reaction against alien surroundings, and in so far as that reaction is
intense and effective it is destructive of those surroundings. One may
point out that such reaction in the case of the Jews, as in the case of
all other alien bodies, is in the main unconscious and instinctive. All
that is true enough; but the conception of a vast age-long plot,
culminating in the contemporary Russian affair, will not hold water, any
more than will the corresponding hallucination which led men to believe
that the French revolution (a thing utterly different in kind from the
Russian) was the mere outward expression of a strictly disciplined
secret body. In the case of the French Revolution everything was put
down (by the forerunners of to-day's Anti-Semitic enthusiasts) to the
secret agency of The Order of Templars acting unweariedly through six
centuries, and finally bringing down the French monarchy. In the case,
of course, of the Bolshevist anarchy a still longer range is given to
the final result: for "Templars" read "Jews," and for "600" read "2,000"
years. It is all smoke.
More serious is the statement that this combination of Jews for the
destruction of the old Russian society was an act of racial revenge.
There is a great element of truth in that. There is no doubt that the
greater part of the Jews who took over power in the Russian cities four
years ago felt an appetite for revenge against the old Russian State
comparable to that felt by any oppressed people against their
oppressors. Probably it was more intense even than any other example
that could be quoted. We are all witnesses to the way in which the
Russian people, religion, and government, and particularly the person
and office of the Emperor--were attacked and decried by the Jews in
Western Europe, of the way in which the Jews ceaselessly conspired
against the Russian State, and of the brutal repression to which they
were subject. When you release a force of hatred so violent it may run
to any length. That sudden release, that sudden opportunity for
satisfying the thirst for vengeance, must explain a very large part of
what followed. But even that does not account for the whole. It would
account for mere massacre and mere chaos. It would not account for the
attempts--rather pitiful attempts--at construction and for the
obviously designed system of direction which has continued on the same
lines since the Jews first assumed power and is still fully manifest
after nearly five years of that power.
Still less is it sufficient to say that the Jew is everywhere the
organizer and leader of revolution and that we only see him at work in
Russia with greater vigour and thoroughness because the opportunity is
there greater.
The Jew is not everywhere a revolutionary. He is everywhere discontented
with a society alien to him: that is natural and inevitable. But he does
not exercise his power invariably, or even ordinarily, towards the
oversetting of an established social order by which, incidentally, he
often largely benefits.
You do not find the Jew in history perpetually leading the innumerable
revolts which citizens in the mass make against the privileged or the
superior conditions of the minority. He has sometimes benefited by these
movements in the past; more often suffered. We often find individual
Jews sympathizing with the revolutionary side, but we also find many
individual Jews sympathizing with the other. The Jew is not, in the
history of Europe, the prime agent of revolution: quite the contrary.
The great acts of violence, successful and unsuccessful, which have
marked our society from the agrarian troubles of pagan Rome to the
French Revolution, the land war in Ireland, the Chartist Movement in
London, or whatever modern movement you will, have appealed much more to
the fighting instincts and political traditions of _our_ race than they
have to the Jews. They are marked everywhere by an attitude towards
property and patriotism which are the very opposite of the Jews'
characteristics. The Revolutions of the past were for the better
distribution of property and for the betterment of the State. Often they
were openly undertaken because patriotism had been offended by defeat in
war and because the Nation was thought to be betrayed. Usually they were
jingo and always for distribution of wealth.
It is the unique mark of the Russian revolution and of its attempted
extension elsewhere that it repudiates patriotism and the division of
property. In that, it differs from all others; and it is markedly,
obviously, _Jewish_. But why had the Jews a chance of action in Russia
which they lacked elsewhere?
What were the special characters in the Russian opportunity which made
the Jew the creator of the whole movement?
There are, I take it, three main factors present in this case peculiarly
suitable to the Jewish effort.
In the first place, this revolution fell upon, and was directed towards,
a particular social phenomenon in which that profound instinct in the
European, the desire for settled property, had decayed. It fell upon the
state of affairs called _Industrial Capitalism_, the chief mark of which
is the destruction in the mass subjected to it (or, at any rate, the
atrophying) of that essential part of the European soul--ownership. The
Jew is, undoubtedly, unable to sympathize with us in that central core
of our civic instincts. He has never understood the European sense of
property and I doubt if he ever will.
But in Russia _Industrial Capitalism_ was quite new. The resentment
against it was keen. The victims were the sons of peasants, or had
themselves been born peasants, so that this proletarian mass in the
Russian towns, though less than a tenth of the whole nation, was
peculiarly open to propaganda against its masters. And an attack
successfully conducted, on that weakest point of modern Capitalism,
might easily succeed and _then_ spread to neighbouring industrialized
centres in Poland, Germany, and so westward.
Now the attack on this international phenomenon, an attack directed
against Industrial Capitalism, required an international force. It
needed men who had international experience and were ready with an
international formula.
There are two, and only two, organized international forces in Europe
to-day with a soul and identity in them. One is the Catholic Church, and
the other is Jewry. But the Catholic Church, for reasons which I will
discuss in a moment, cannot and never will directly attack industrial
capitalism. It will undoubtedly attack that system in flank and
indirectly destroy it in the long run wherever the Faith has a strong
hold upon masses of people. But it will not and cannot directly attack
it. The Jew, on the other hand, is free to attack it precisely because
our sense of property means nothing to him, is to him something strange,
and even, I think, comic. Further, the Jew was present, he was on the
spot. The Church was not.
Of the two international forces present, therefore, the Jews alone could
act.
Here I must digress and say why the other great international force, the
Catholic Church, has not been able--and will never be able--to attack
Industrial Capitalism as a whole and directly, though, as I have said,
it acts indirectly as a solvent of this evil and will destroy it
wherever society remains Catholic. The Catholic Church, not only in its
abstract doctrine, but acting as the expression of our European
civilization, is profoundly attached to the conception of private
property. It makes the family the unit of the State and it perceives
that the freedom of the family is most secure where the family owns. It
perceives, as do all Europeans, instinctively or explicitly, that
property is the correlative of freedom, or, at any rate, of that only
kind of freedom which we Europeans care to have: that it is the
safeguard of spiritual health (the mark of which is humour), of breadth
and diversity in action, of elasticity in the State, of permanence in
institutions. Property, as widely distributed as possible, but sacred as
a principle, is an inevitable social accompaniment of Catholicism.
Apart from this, it is also a definite feature of Catholic doctrine to
deny that private property is immoral. No Catholic can say that private
property is immoral without cutting himself off from the Communion of
the Church, any more than he can say that the authority in the State is
immoral. He cannot be a communist, in abstract morals any more than he
can be an anarchist.
Now Industrial Capitalism is a disease of property. It is the monstrous
state of affairs in which a very few men derive their vast advantage
from the corresponding fact that most men whom they exploit do not own.
But it remains true that the sheet-anchor of Capitalism is a sense of
ownership in the mass as well as in the privileged few. The only moral
force remaining to Industrial Capitalism, the only spiritual tie which
prevents its dissolution, is this admission by the European mind that
property is a right--even property in a diseased and exaggerated form.
The whole of the operations of Industrial Capitalism rely upon the
sanctity of property and the sanctity of contract which develops from
the sanctity of property. And whenever society loses this sense,
industrial capitalism will fall into chaos. The Church cannot deny that
one moral principle. Its action will always be towards the dissolution
of the great accumulations promoted by capitalism. It always will work
indirectly for the establishment of well-divided property, an ideal
defined by the voice of its great modern Pope, Leo XIII, who explicitly
states it in his _Rerum Novarum_. But the Church can never take the
short cut of destroying Industrial Capitalism root and branch and at
once, by erecting against it the doctrine of Communism or (as many
people call diluted Communism) "Socialism." It never can do so in
theory, and still less will it ever do so in practice. A Catholic
society will always tend to be a society of owners: with all the
elements of co-operation, with the Guild, with masses of corporate
property attached to the State or connected with the city, with the
college, with the corporation. For without such corporate property in a
State, property is never well founded.
The Jew has neither that political instinct in his national tradition
nor a religious doctrine supporting and expressing such an instinct. The
same thing in him which makes him a speculator and a nomad blinds him
to, and makes him actually contemptuous of, the European sense of
property. When therefore we have reached, through Industrial Capitalism,
or any other social disease, a state of affairs in which the practical
denial of property is possible because the mass of men have lost the
desire for it, and when the repudiation of property offers an immediate
solution for intolerable evils, then the Jew can appear at once as a
leader.
One must find in such a movement an international leader because the
disease is international, and still more because the proposed cure of
that disease, through Communism, _must_ be international if it is to
succeed. A Communist society may stand apart from the general society of
owners in other countries, but if it is to succeed in competition with
them it must convert them to its own creed.
The Jew took international action for granted. He took the narrow and
false economic view of property--that it was a mere institution to be
modified indefinitely, and, if necessary, abolished. He had an obvious
opportunity for leadership accorded to him when international action
against property was demanded. Again, our national sense, patriotism,
which is incomprehensible to the Jew save on the false analogy of his
own peculiar nomadic and tribal patriotism, is a check upon Communism,
and, indeed, against revolution of any kind. The process of thought in
the patriotic citizen--largely unconscious but none the less
efficacious--is somewhat as follows:
"I cannot function save as a citizen of my nation, and, what is more,
that nation made me what I am. It is my creator in a sense and so has
authority over me. I must even give up my life in its defence if
necessary, because but for its existence I and those like me could not
be. My happiness, my freedom of individual action, my self-expression
are all bound up with the existence of the civic unit of which I am a
part. If something which appears to me good in the abstract, or which
apparently will procure for me a material good, involves danger to that
civic unit, I must forego the good, regarding the continued existence
and strength of my people as a greater good to which the lesser should
be sacrificed."
That, I say roughly, is the expression of the patriotic instinct in the
European man. That is what he has felt for many and many a great State
in the past and for every polity to which he has ever belonged; that is
what he feels to-day for his country.
The Jew has the same feeling, of course, for his Israel, but since that
nation is not a collection of human beings, inhabiting one place and
living by traditions rooted in its soil, since it has not a strong,
visible, external form, his patriotism is necessarily of a different
complexion. It has different connotations and our patriotism seems
negligible to him.
The implied fallacies current in the modern industrial revolutionary
formulæ, in such phrases as "What does it matter to the working man
whether he is exploited by a German or an English master?" or, again,
"Why should the individual Tom Smith be sacrificed for an abstraction
called England?" or again, "Nationalism is the great obstacle to the
full development of humanity"--all that sort of thing, which we feel by
instinct and can, if it is necessary, prove by reason to be nonsense in
our case, sounds, in Jewish ears, as very good sense indeed. For in his
case these things involve no fallacies at all; they apply to _him_
vividly and exactly. Why should the Jew be sacrificed for England? In
what way is England, or France, or Ireland, or any other nation
necessary to _him_? Again, is it not obvious in his eyes that these
terms, "France, Ireland, England, Russia," are but abstractions? The
_real_ thing in his eyes when he thinks of us, is the individual and his
certain needs, especially his physical and material needs; because upon
these there can be no doubt; upon these all are agreed; these are
visible and tangible. "England," "France," "Poland" are whimsies.
It is true that if you were to put his special case to the Jew with
similar force and say, "No Jew should run any risk for Israel," "no Jew
should suffer any inconvenience by trying to help a fellow Jew in
distress," "the idea of Israel is a vague abstraction--all that counts
is the individual Jew and especially his physical requirements"; if you
said that sort of thing you would be offending the most profound
instincts of Jewish patriotism and you would, in fact, clash with the
overt and covert action of the Jews throughout the world. But the Jew
would answer that, as his was an international polity, the argument
applying to our national polity did not apply to him; that his feelings,
though analogous to ours, were of a different kind, and that, at any
rate, he cannot sacrifice a fine idea of his like Communism for our
provincial and local habit, called by us Europeans "the love of our
country."
There is more than this in the business. Even those truths which we know
to be truths have little effect upon us, unless they enter into the
practice of our lives. There are, no doubt, a number of Jews who would
admit at once the truth of any nationalist statement made by a European.
When a Frenchman, or an Englishman, or a Russian says to him, "My first
duty is to my people; I must keep them strong as well as in being and I
must sacrifice my interests to theirs when it is necessary," there are
many Jews who would answer: "You are quite right. The theory is sound.
Man can only function as a part of a particular society," and so forth;
but it is one thing to recognize a truth and another thing to experience
it in one's bones, as it were, and these truths, even where he is
admitting them, are truths indifferent to the Jew.
Therefore when, as in the particular case of Russia, a national feeling
stood in the way of an abstract ideal, it seemed the most natural thing
in the world to the Jew that the national obstacle should go to the wall
in order that _his_ ideal of Communism might triumph.
There lay behind this great change in the Russian towns, and the capture
of what remains of Russian government by the Jewish Committees, a force
most positive. It was the sense of social justice, the indignation
against indefensible evils.
That sense of social justice, that indignation against indefensible
modern evils, we all feel. There may be men among the wealthier classes
of Western Europe who are so ignorant of the past, or so stupid, that
they do honestly believe Industrial Capitalism to be an inevitable and
even perhaps a good thing. But such men must be very rare. Not only must
they be rare, but they cannot have any wide social experience. A man has
only got to live the life of the poor in the great industrial cities
for a day to see the enormity of the wrong that has to be righted. There
are, of course, not a few but many thousands of individuals who try to
find arguments for Industrial Capitalism, either because they benefit
themselves through the system and are the richer by it, or because they
are the hired servants of those who so benefit--and of this kind are the
writers in the capitalist press. But all these, who are hired advocates,
or advocates with a direct proprietary interest in the continuance of
the modern disease, may be neglected; for they are not in good faith.
They are not really arguing that the thing is good in itself, they are
only trying to find arguments as lawyers do for something which they
have to defend and which in their hearts they admit is evil; or to the
evil of which they are indifferent so long as it gives them a
disproportionate share of material enjoyment.
We must add to these the sincere man who will admit the domination of
Industrial Capitalism because he honestly believes that, bad as it is,
it is _now_ become inevitable and that to tamper with it would bring the
whole State into anarchy. "Such as it is," he would say, "the structure
of our society now depends upon it. We may palliate its evils, we may
try very gradually to transform its worst features. But in its essence
it must remain as it is, or our last state will be worse than our
first."
Of this kind are those who argue that any social experiment antagonistic
to Industrial Capitalism, if pushed sufficiently far, would result in
famine and chaos and even physical evils far worse than the physical
evils which the mass of men have to suffer in the great towns which
capitalism has produced.
Apart from these categories, the masses of men, I say, to-day are
convinced that Industrial Capitalism is an evil, an evil of the grossest
sort; an evil of a sort unknown to the greater part of human history and
unknown to-day in the greater part of the human race; an evil which
those peasant societies, or societies of well-divided property
throughout Europe, are happy to have escaped; and an evil from which we,
who are caught in it, are trying to escape as best we may.
In that modifying phrase "as best we may" lies the crux, for the great
mass of Europeans feel that any attack on Industrial Capitalism which
denies the nation its supreme place, or which impedes the superior task
of keeping the nation strong and wealthy, is barred; they also feel
instinctively that any attack which denies the general right of private
property and the value of that institution to the healthy conduct of our
affairs is also barred. The great mass of our race, when faced by the
problem of Industrial Capitalism, feel that it has to be solved in some
way that will neither destroy property nor the nation through which the
individual alone can function.
But this, which is true of the great mass of our race, is not true of
the Jews. Therefore they were able, in the case of the Russian
Revolution, to go straight for their object, and that object was (apart
from the obvious object of revenge, of love of power, and the rest) the
destruction of an economic inequality.
These Jews who have destroyed what we knew as Russia were undoubtedly
possessed of a political ideal: the ideal of Communism. No doubt many
individuals among them (all ultimately) would prefer the good of Israel
to the good of any Russian. No doubt the wreaking of vengeance upon
former oppressors was strong, as also the appetite for destroying a
general and a national sentiment alien to them and even repulsive to
them; but there remains, as a positive motive behind the whole affair,
the ideal of Communism. The Jews alone of the forces present were
capable of heartily entertaining that ideal, and were free of all
obstacles against the achievement of it--the obstacle of patriotism, the
obstacle of religion, the obstacle of the sense of property.
These considerations, I take it, are what explains the Jewish character
of the upheaval in the East, with its destruction of the Russian nation,
its enormous experiments in social economy, its inevitable
impoverishment of the State as a whole, its enthusiastic support by the
minority which accepts its doctrine.
Those very few men and women who have been witnesses of the Jewish
experiment in Russia (excluding those engaged in propaganda upon one
side or the other) give us a picture which is much what we should have
expected of the situation.
It seems that the great mass of the nation has affirmed the instinct of
private property with the greatest vigour, and that some nine-tenths of
the Russians have settled down upon the land to which they always
claimed ownership and in which their sense of ownership is more fierce
than ever. In the towns the unnatural system--unnatural because it
opposes all our instincts as Europeans--works more and more slackly as
the original system of terror weakens. For it is clear that Communism
needs a despot, and the active rule of a despot is necessarily short: it
is a system incapable of transition and therefore of duration.
The perfectly explicable but deplorable exercise of vengeance by the
Jews has been directed against what we euphemistically term the
governing directing classes, who have been massacred wholesale and whose
remnants are subjected to perpetual persecution.
The productivity of the industrial masses has naturally sunk to a very
low level, because under Communism it can only work through something
like military discipline, and work done under those conditions is on a
much lower productive level than free work.
But the real interest in the Jewish revolution in Russia, to which is
now permanently affixed the name of Bolshevist (which is nothing more
than the Russian for "whole-hogger"), lies in these two points: first,
the continued propaganda of Communism throughout the world (which
propaganda in organization and direction is in the hands of Jewish
agents); secondly, and much more important, the effect of the Jewish
revolution in producing hostility to the Jews throughout the world.
I say this second fact is much more important because it is the more
real and the more enduring. You will never make a Communist of the
highly-civilized, tenacious, intelligent and humorous Occidental
European. You will no more make a Communist of him than you will make
him walk on all fours or permanently abjure the use of good liquor. You
may get middle-class faddists to accept Communism as a mere creed, and
of course you can easily get exasperated men, ground down by
capitalism, to accept _any_ theory, _any_ system, which promises them
relief. But you will not get Communism working in men who boast the old
European blood, in the descendants of those who created our past and its
monuments. They will certainly preserve their traditions and their
character. Though the peril must be combated, and is being successfully
combated everywhere, it is not a peril of great magnitude to the West.
The other effect of the Jewish revolution in Russia--the peril into
which it has put the Jews themselves--_is_ permanent and _is_ of the
first magnitude. I know no way to meet it except to explain why that
revolution was almost necessarily a Jewish revolution, to emphasize the
sincerity of the Jews who have led it, to exculpate them as far as
possible, and, at any rate, to shield their unfortunate compatriots
abroad from the consequences of what was certainly a very bad piece of
tactics so far as the future of this people was concerned.
We ought, I think, not to nourish a new and special hostility against
the Jew on account of what he has done in Russia, but, on the contrary,
to excuse him, especially because he is a Jew. We ought, as it seems to
me, to say: "He had reasons for action and excuse for action which men
of our race would not have had, and though we must prevent that action
from spreading, we must not allow what seemed quite natural under the
circumstances to the Jew to warp our attempted solution of the Jewish
problem. We ought to work for its solution as impartially and as soberly
as though the provocation of Bolshevism had never been given."
That sounds an extreme thing to say, and I fear it will be ridiculed by
most of those who (as they tell us) have had their eyes opened by the
Bolshevist explosion and who are now confirmed enemies of the Jewish
people. But though it sound fantastic, I am convinced that it is a right
attitude. To lose one's judgment on a permanent problem through panic or
heat, to forget the elements of such a problem merely because it has
been presented to us suddenly in an acute form, is the negation of
reason. As well might a man who is dealing with the problem of fermented
liquor, and trying to get people to use it rationally, let his judgment
be overcome by a case of delirium tremens and rush thereupon into some
scheme of prohibition. The very test which distinguishes good
statesmanship from bad is the power to keep one's head under
provocations like these; to maintain a middle course and to aim at
whatever solution our reason tells us to be just under _normal_
circumstances. We who saw the gravity of the Jewish problem long before
the recognition of it was general, and who studied it under calmer
conditions for many years, have a right to be heard now: now that the
tide is making against these people and that the fear of anarchy
threatens to turn men's heads.
We were long blamed for attacking the Jews, we are already blamed for
defending them. It is a proof that our attitude is well grounded and
unaffected by fashion.
The Bolshevist revolution will not last. Its Jewish character was
inevitable. It had a side to it of Jewish enthusiasm for a sort of
incorporeal justice, and, in any case, it ought not to be allowed to
deflect us from a conclusion which the much larger lines of history and
all general considerations of reason impose.
Our conclusion, as I have said, is a recognition and protection of the
Jewish nation as something quite different from ourselves and yet
necessarily inhabiting our society. Such a full recognition leaves us
fore-armed against the tendency in the Jew (which we cannot avoid) to
forget our national feelings and to misconceive our sense of ownership.
It would render impossible the conspiracies and the vengeance which have
destroyed Russia, and I believe that had the former Russian Government
treated the Jews as I say they should be treated, it would be in power
to-day.
THE POSITION IN THE WORLD AS A WHOLE
CHAPTER IX
THE POSITION IN THE WORLD AS A WHOLE
The danger of the Jewish nation in the world to-day may be summed up in
this phrase:--
"The Jews are obtaining control and we will not be controlled by them."
That is the simplest formula, and the one which would be immediately
subscribed to by the whole mass of those outside the Jewish community
who are alive to the question at all. Being the simplest form of the
truth, it needs, when applied to a highly complex situation, detailed
modification.
This modification proceeds from three sources:--
First, the extent of the Jewish control and the extent of the resentment
against that control vary very largely from one community to another.
Secondly, the civic tradition of each community in its treatment of the
Jewish question also differs from that of every other, though these
various traditions fall into certain fairly well-defined groups.
Thirdly, the position is modified according to the presence, in varying
degrees of strength in different communities, of certain international
forces even more powerful than the Jews themselves. The four principal
of the international forces are:--
(1) The Catholic Church;
(2) Islam;
(3) The forces of international Capitalism; and
(4) The international reaction against it of the industrial proletariat.
We must in the first line of this inquiry make an important premise. The
fact from which we proceed, namely, the uneasy feeling that the Jews are
getting control and the determination not to tolerate that control, will
be denied by the Jews themselves. It is denied sincerely--I have entered
upon too many discussions with them and heard too many of their
protestations to doubt that; and if the denial were valid, not only the
particular survey I propose in this chapter, but the whole of the
argument of this book, would fail. For if there is a Jewish question
to-day, and if it is present in the acute form in which we all know it
to be present, it is not due merely to the contrast and friction between
the Jews and their hosts, but especially to this feeling of domination.
But the Jewish belief in this matter is not valid, sincerely as it is
held. To the great majority of Jews it will, of course, seem
common-sense. What has the unfortunate poor Jew in the slums of our
great cities to do with controlling the modern world? How in his eyes
can the phrase have any meaning at all? If you pass from him to the
comparatively small Jewish middle class, you would hear a denial almost
equally vigorous. The Jewish scientist will tell you that he is
concerned with his researches and laughs at the idea of interfering with
his neighbours; the Jewish historian that he is concerned with his
documents, that nothing is further from his thoughts than interfering
with people outside his trade; the little Jewish shopkeeper will tell
you that he is in active competition with his non-Jewish neighbours and
by no means always successful in that competition; the Jewish lawyer
will tell you that he is concerned with the system of law in which he
happens to be immersed--the Napoleonic Code, the English Common Law or
what not--and that any idea of his personally wanting to control the
vast non-Jewish majority among whom he lives is moonshine: and so it is.
The great Jewish banker, though he is fully aware of his power, would
tell you that in his daily business he comes up against forces to which
he is subject, and has competitors who are at the best neutral, and more
commonly hostile, to Israel; and even the man who is to-day more
powerful--if that be possible--than the Jewish banker, I mean the Jewish
monopolist, and especially the Jewish monopolist in metal, though he
would be extremely annoyed to have the extent of his control exposed,
will feel that it is due to his superior abilities and in no way
designed for mastery.
All these individual replies are true; but if you make of them a
composite and general reply, if you put it as a reply of all Israel to
all the world outside, crying, "I have no desire for supremacy; I never
act in such a fashion that my domination can be felt or shall increase;
the motive is not present, even subconsciously, among my people"--then
that general reply would be false.
In point of fact the Jew has _collectively_ a power to-day, in the white
world, altogether excessive. It is not only an excessive power, it is
inevitably a _corporate_ power and, therefore, a semi-organized power.
It is not only excessive and in the main organized, it was, until the
recent reaction began, a rapidly increasing power--and most people
believe it to be still increasing. To that the whole world outside the
Jewish community will testify.
The criterion by which we may judge whether any form of power is
irritant to those whom it affects is not the testimony of those who
exercise the power, but the testimony of those over whom it is
exercised. There never was a tyranny in the world, not even one of those
personal tyrannies (which have been so much more highly organized and so
much more direct than this power of the Jews), there never has been a
despotism in history, which would not tell you that it was accidental,
or necessary, or, in any case, innocent of any motive of oppression. And
history universally replies: "To judge _that_, you must ask those who
felt the pressure; not those who exercised it."
Now those who feel the pressure in the matter we are now examining are
unanimous. They differ in the degree of their resentment from those to
whom the thing is so intolerable that they are already in active revolt
against it, to those who feel it merely as a distant though an
approaching discomfort. But everybody feels it in some degree. It is a
universal sensation running throughout the nerves of the modern world
and it is growing too fast in degree and extent to be ignored.
I have already quoted the effect upon those hundreds of educated men
taken into the temporary Civil service during the late war, when they
found, holding the locked gate of one monopoly after another, the
international Jew. His control of finance needs no discussion. If the
individual banker or financier is not aware of it, the most of those
who are affected are acutely aware of it. Men exaggerate in giving it a
sort of conscious personality, but they certainly do not exaggerate when
they point to its effects. The Jew must remember, what it may be
difficult for him to accept and what is certainly true, that not only is
his domination very bitterly resented but that his presence in any
position of control whatsoever is odious to the race among which he
moves. Everybody feels that about any form of alien control, much more
do they feel it about that form which they instinctively know to be most
alien of all. Every one has noticed this control exercised in the form
of keeping silence upon what it was to the disadvantage of Israel to
have known; in the form of the advertising of what it was to the
advantage of Israel to have advertised; in the form of the giving and
withholding of credit; in the form of attack in the Press against
nations with whom Israel had a quarrel and the defence in the Press of
those (they have now almost disappeared) upon whom Israel, in the
immediate past, relied for defence. And everybody has discovered--what
is not unjust, indeed, what is inevitable, but what is none the less a
source of exasperation--the solidarity of the Jewish race where the
interests of any member of it were concerned.[1]
But if the thing were felt everywhere as acutely and as consciously as
it is felt in special groups to-day--as it is felt, for instance, in one
particular section of English opinion already represented in the Press,
is felt in a wider section of French opinion, and in a still wider
section of Polish opinion--then the matter would be simple. We could
then say that an issue of the clearest kind had arisen, and forbid a
small alien minority to decide the destinies of those among whom it
lives and of whom it is not. The answer would be obvious, and the only
difficulty would be how the Jewish control might be lessened without
grievous injustice to innocent individuals.
But the thing is not so felt. It is modified, as I have said, by the
varying degrees of intensity in which it is recognized and by the other
international forces which come into play.
If we consider the varying political traditions and the varying
international forces, if we examine the world's national groups, we
shall find something like this: In the vast body of Russia a position
most paradoxical. For years the Jew was everywhere openly attacked and
hated in those parts of the Russian Empire where he was allowed to live
in large numbers. These were nowhere within Russia proper but upon the
western outskirts of that empire, within what was once the old Polish
kingdom and largely within what is now the restored Republic of Poland.
But the Russian traditional antagonism to the Jew changed in a few weeks
of chaos to something not opposite but novel and different. The Russian
allowed a prodigious revolution to be made by the Jews, he accepted the
loot of that revolution which the Jew secured to him; he has submitted
wholly in the towns, partly in the country, to a tyranny exercised by
Jews ever since that complete reversal of his national history, now four
years old.
The external political power of what was once the Russian Empire has
disappeared. The Jews have killed it. But the great mass of Russian
humanity remains strongly affected by this curious change. Where popular
instinct works untrammelled the old and violent passionate antagonism
between the Russian and the Jew survives. You see it in the hotch potch
of the Ukraine, the inhabitants of which, in spite of all theories, are
of Russian race and tradition, and the central town of which is the
sacred region of Russia as a member of Christendom. There, for all the
Jewish Committees with large towns under their complete control, there
have been repeated revolts. But in the greater part of European Russia
at least, and in much of what was once the Asiatic Empire, the Jews hold
what is left of the Executive government.
So far as we can judge from the very imperfect accounts which reach us
(for nowhere is the weapon of secrecy more ruthlessly used), the mass of
the Russians, that is, the peasantry, are in two minds. To the action of
the Jewish despotism in the town they are indifferent, but to his early
attempts against themselves they were bitterly opposed. They have
suffered at his hands and they thought him a tyrant. But the Jew seems
to have dropped this interference and the Russian soil to have settled
down as a peasant proprietary. On the other hand, it was a revolution
guided by those same Jewish Committees which secured the peasant in the
possession of his land. The Russian peasant has always regarded the land
as his own. He had, I understand, regarded that odd, pedantic measure,
"The Liberation of the Serfs," as only another name for the robbing him
of his land; and when the organization of Russian society dissolved in
the strain of war, he poured over the great estates and took back what
he thought was his own.
For the strange Jewish conception of Communism, a million miles removed
from our European racial instincts and our high civilized traditions,
the Russian peasant could have nothing but a bewildered contempt. None
the less he was conscious that the Jewish revolution had permitted him,
if not to take the land (he did that himself), at least to hold it; and
the revolution is indistinguishable from the Jewish control of the
towns.
Within the towns, again (our information is most imperfect and I can
only piece together what eye-witnesses have told me), although the Jew
is, of course, individually hated, yet his control does stand for
certain things which the mass of the people still support. He organized
the resentment of the poor against the rich. He erected before their
eyes the pleasing spectacle of a social revenge. He carried out, fairly
consistently, his Communist programme, one aspect at least of which is
practical enough; for the man that works with his hands finds that he is
as well, or better, fed out of the meagre common stock, than those who
were once his masters.
In general I think it true to say that the Jewish control over
Christians, if, in a way, stronger in what was once the Russian Empire
than anywhere else, is also there least resented. I do not say it would
not be resented if it were to excite action again against the peasants,
but we cannot forget that the peasants were eager to fight for the new
Russian regime because they identified it with their new property in
land. The situation is absurd enough. Men in hundreds of thousands
willing to fight for Communist masters because by so doing they believe
they can secure themselves in an absolute form of property! But that is
what the "red" army was.
In that belt of nations, vague in boundary, which used to constitute the
Marches of the East and which now stand between what was once the
Russian Empire and the Germanies, the position would seem to be this.
There are in these countries everywhere a very large proportion of Jews.
The largest by far are in Lithuania and Galicia, where, of whole towns,
from a third to a half and sometimes up to two-thirds, of the population
are Jewish. Very large also is the proportion within the admitted
frontiers of modern Poland; very large in Roumania, and considerable in
Hungary.
In all these countries the Jewish problem is something quite different
from what it is farther West. The Jews are in these countries admittedly
a separate nation. Even as I write I hear the complaint, sounding
strange in our Western ears, proffered by the Polish Jews who have been
appealing to the West against what they claim to be the oppressive
practice of writing them down as Poles! In Roumania for two generations
it has been the fixed principle of the State, now latent, now overt, but
always acted upon in social practice, that the Jew is not a Roumanian at
all and cannot be one. Of course he cannot be one really, any more than
he can be an Englishman, or a Frenchman, or an Irishman. (Fancy a Jew an
Irishman!) But I mean, not even one by fiction or by convention. In
Poland the greater part of these people have a different language and
all of them have a different social custom and a different life from the
world around them. In Hungary, where the numerical pressure of the Jew
is less, there is, of course, a most lively memory of the attempted
revolution under Cohen in 1918, the massacres of Hungarians, the setting
up of an ephemeral Bolshevism and the necessity of its suppression. In
Bohemia the pressure is far less and in the Balkan States south of the
Danube and the Drave. It is only present as a pressure of numbers in the
group of States which lie between the Baltic and the Black Sea South and
North and between the Russian people and the German people East and
West.
When we come to Occidental Europe, in which must be included, though it
is hardly a true part of it, Germany beyond the Elbe; when we come to
the Scandinavian countries, to France, Britain, Italy, Spain,
Switzerland and the Low Countries, the problem changes. The numerical
proportion of Jews sinks enormously. Fairly large in one or two Dutch
towns, it is almost insignificant in Scandinavia, and though we have had
into the great English towns and to some extent into the northern French
towns (particularly Paris) a considerable recent influx of Jews, yet the
total number of these people in the West remains far, far smaller than
the great masses of the East of Europe. The same is still more true of
Italy, and, in spite of the absorption of a great deal of Jewish blood
in the past, of Spain.
But while the numerical proportion of Jews in these western countries is
much smaller, and while therefore the peril of Jewish domination is
very different in _form_ from what it is farther East, it is clearly
marked. It is exercised primarily through finance; next through the
sceptical Universities, the anonymous Press and the corrupt Parliaments,
and, lastly, in a more general form, by the presence of institutions
which greatly favour the rise of the Jew in competition with his hosts;
each favours international knowledge; each favours anonymity; each still
favours the old Liberal nonsense which called itself "toleration" and
was really an indifference to that most fundamental of all social
motives--religion--save, of course, where an exception is made to permit
attack upon the Catholic Church.
Under influence of this sort, both sincere and hypocritical, both
generous and mean, the Jew acquired in all the larger communities, and
especially in France, Italy, Germany and England, a power out of all
proportion to his numbers, and I may add, without, I hope, offending any
Jewish reader, out of proportion to his abilities; certainly out of
proportion to any right of his to interfere in our affairs. It was a Jew
who produced the divorce laws in France, the Jew who nourished
anti-clericalism everywhere in that country and also in Italy; the Jew
who called in the forces of Occidental nations to protect his
compatriots in the East, and the Jew whose spirit has so largely
permeated the Universities and the Press.
Ireland is an exception. In Ireland the Jew (outside the little
industrial corner in the north-east) is nobody. And here it must be
remarked that the migrations of the Jew which give him numbers here for
a time and afterwards numbers elsewhere, in places where previously he
had not been known; which give him influence here for a time, and sees
it followed by the decline of that influence, do not seem to obey any
law which we can trace, and are certainly not the product of any
conscious action. It is one of the strangest phenomena in history, this
odd, spasmodic flood movement of the Jewish race. Is it concerned with
commerce? That is one element undoubtedly; that is what explains the
exploitation of England by Jews after the Conquest, of Spain in the
later Middle Ages, of the Valley of the Rhine; but then, why not other
commercial centres as an attraction? Venice was not one, though the Jew
was well tolerated there; nor was Paris after the early Middle Ages, and
while some of the Dutch towns formed such centres of attraction the
Belgian towns did not.
Was it asylum? That would account, of course, for the great influx of
Jews into mediaeval Poland, but then why not into eighteenth century
England? Why not until very late in the nineteenth century? England,
which gave the Jews a more complete civic position than he could find
anywhere else in the world, was not invaded by them. Why these very
recent influxes into the United States, which has for now a century and
a half been perfectly open by its Constitution, and was by all its civic
tradition an ideal asylum for the Jews? Until quite recent times the Jew
was hardly known there, and to this day he is not known outside a few
great cities.
No. There would seem to be no law, or at least no discoverable law, for
this mysterious movement, the ebb and flow of Israel--but that is a
digression. To return to the national situations.
If we leave the Old World and turn to the United States, we find a
novel condition of affairs still in process of development and very
puzzling to the foreign observer. I do not pretend to analyse it
completely in a few lines, nor even accurately, for I am dependent upon
the observation of others, and the United States are so utterly
different from us that we have difficulty in following their
contemporary history; but something of this sort would seem to be
passing there.
* * * * *
In the United States the Jews were present, till the last few years, in
numbers even smaller in proportion to the population than their numbers
in France, England and Italy, far smaller than their numbers in what was
formerly the German Empire. In the agricultural part of America, which
is still, I believe, one half of the population, the Jew was almost
unknown. You find him here and there, as a lawyer or a storekeeper, but
that world was not familiar with him any more than our English
country-sides are familiar with him to-day. With the growth of the great
industrial towns, of course, the Jew came, but he was still no "feature
in the landscape." There was a certain social prejudice against him
among the wealthier classes in the East, and--this is very
important--_the truth was always told about him_. There was in America
no convention--the Jew was always recognized as a Jew and there was
never any of the nonsense we had over here of pretending that he was
something else.
Of that phenomenon of which the history of Europe is full, which is so
marked in the eastern counties to-day and which is beginning to rise in
the West, there is nothing traceable in the early and middle nineteenth
century, nor even till the close of it, in the United States.
Then came the change. It is a change which has taken place in the
lifetime of men much younger than myself. It is a change, I am told,
most marked since I last visited the United States more than twenty
years ago. A regular and organized Jewish emigration began to pour in,
especially from the Baltic. It flooded New York, where it now forms
probably a third of the population; it created Ghettoes in most of the
large Northern industrial towns, and all the phenomena we associate in
Europe with these movements began to show themselves. There was the
growth of the financial monopoly and of monopolies in particular trades.
There was the clamour for toleration in the form of "neutralizing"
religious teaching in schools; there was the appearance of the Jewish
revolutionary and of the Jewish critic in every tradition of Christian
life. The Jews went also--as they usually do--to the heart of things,
and the Executive was attacked. The last and apparently the most
unpopular of the presidents, Mr. Wilson, seems to have been wholly in
their hands. Anonymity in the Press came, of course. A very marked
example of it is a journal called _The New Republic_, which, though it
has but a small proportion of Jewish writers upon it, and though its
capital is (I believe) not Jewish, is yet to all intents and purposes
the organ of the Jewish intellectuals, always joins in the boycott of
any news unfavourable to European Jews, always joins in the clamour for
anything favourable to them, and in general adheres to the Jewish side,
like the _Humanité_ in Paris, or, let us say, _The New Statesman_ in
England.
But the novel presence in the United States of this phenomenon with
which in the west of Europe we have now been familiar for a long time,
provides a more direct and a very different kind of reaction from what
it has among us. This reaction against Jewish powers was not (to use a
Stock Exchange metaphor) "sticky." There was no hesitation; there were
no uneasy patches of silence. The Jewish question was discussed from the
moment it was first felt and to-day it is discussed beyond all others.
Of political topics I have found it the first in the conversation of the
Americans who have visited Europe since the War and with whom I have
discussed the affairs of their country. It ranges, as that reaction
always does, from the wildest Anti-Semitism to strong and open defence
of the Jewish position, not only by Jews but by the very small minority
of their admirers outside the Jewish community, especially among the
wealthy. The characteristic of the whole thing in the United States is
that it is only just beginning. It is capable of becoming one of those
sudden growths of which the past history of the Republic has made us
familiar, and indeed it is too early yet to judge, even on the largest
lines, what forms it may not take. It is enough to say that there is
behind the reaction against the Jew in that country a growing intensity
of feeling with which we, as yet, in Western Europe, for all the advance
we have made in the matter, are unfamiliar. If a test be required,
contrast the silence about the Jews in '96, during Bryan's great attack
upon the gold standard, with the work of Mr. Ford and all that he stands
for to-day!
The rest of the world is either of Islam or heathen. In the heathen
world, so far, the Jew has little place. He has a strong grip on India,
of course, but only through the British Raj, not through the native
population; and in China, except as a quasi-European merchant, he has no
power at all; neither has he over the strong and organized nationality
of Japan.
Such are the degrees, very roughly, of the problem; such the differences
of its quality in the various national groups to-day. Of these the two
most interesting states of the problem by far, because they are changing
with the greatest rapidity, are found in France, in England and in the
United States.
I have said that the second modifying condition was the difference of
civic traditions of the various nations. Here again you have a
differentiation from East to West. But within it a differentiation,
ultimately due to religion, from North to South. In Russia there was
never any tradition of keeping silence upon the Jew, or of respecting
the Jew at all. He was, until the recent revolution, the national enemy,
and there was the end of it. Similarly in Poland, Roumania and the
vaguer populations of their borders, and even in the old Hungary, the
Jew was talked of openly as belonging to a separate nationality and, on
the whole, a hostile one.
But as one got west another spirit emerged, another tradition. It was
"the thing" to treat the Jew as a citizen. This fashion was weaker in
the Germanies than in the Low Countries, France, or England; it was
everywhere present west of the Elbe.
It was a tradition flowing from two sources: the commercial and
protestant England of the seventeenth century, the sceptical France of
the eighteenth. The Jew (according to this spirit) merited special
protection and special respect. He must be protected and respected even
in his passion for secrecy; so that at last the mere mention of his
existence in the cultivated and directing classes of the west became
something of an oddity.
From this spirit proceeded the Liberal fiction or convention which I
dealt with in the second chapter of this book. It was clinched, it was
given permanent form, by the enthusiasm and severe doctrine of the
French Republicans, which arose at a moment when Israel was regarded as
a religion and its national quality was forgotten. Since all religion
was thought to be dying, since, further, an enthusiasm had arisen
against almost any religion which exercised civic power (notably the
Catholic Church), this Jewish religion, formerly regarded as inimical to
the State, or at any rate separate from it, was naturally accorded a
special privilege. That strange system arose, the death of which we are
now watching after its brief life of somewhat more than a century,
whereby the Jew was permitted to wear the mask of nationalities other
than his own, and to function everywhere as though he were a citizen,
not of Israel, but of the nation in which he chanced to find himself.
Against this attitude arose at last the powerful plea of nationalism. In
England, as we shall see in the next chapter, this plea was less strong
than elsewhere, because the interests of international Jewish finance
and of British commerce were for so long nearly identical. In Italy,
where the Jew was naturally closely connected with the nationalist
movement on account of its antagonism to the Papacy, national feeling
clashed little with the anomaly of the Jew. But in France, especially
after the defeat of 1870, the contrast became stronger and stronger,
just as it is strengthening to-day in Germany after the defeat of 1918.
It was that clash between the "city" of Israel and the other "cities" in
which we Europeans function, to which allusion has been made on a former
page. It would be very convenient, no doubt, to the "City" of Israel if
all other "cities" disappeared and left an open field for Jewish
operations. But they do not propose to disappear; and though our
devotion to them may seem inexplicable to the Jew, he must accept it as
a permanent force; for the patriotism of the European will not weaken.
In the United States this Liberal tradition or convention, this
conception that the Jew must be treated as a full citizen, was far
stronger even than it was in the West of Europe. It was in the very soul
of the Constitution, and, what is more important, in the very soul of
the people. For such a spirit was nourished not only in doctrine but in
practice by the appearance, in vast quantities, of immigrants from many
different countries, all of whom were absorbed in and merged by the
American spirit. If ever there was a field in which the false conception
that a Jew could be a Jew and at the same time the full citizen of
another nation, that field was the United States of America. Yet it is
there that the problem is now reaching its most acute form; and the
reason is that side by side with this strong civic tradition there goes
a complete freedom of speech and a very active public opinion. The
reality became too much for theory and the Jew was recognized as
something apart. He will never fall into the background again.
There remain to be considered the international forces which modify this
general truth that the quarrel with the Jew is a quarrel with his
increasing control over our affairs.
Those international forces are Religion--Islam and the Catholic
Church--the force of Modern Capitalism, and the Reaction against that
force of the Industrial Proletariat, the Reaction summed up in the term
Socialism. All four are international.
The position of the Jew in Islam can be simply defined. In Islam he is
treated with less method and therefore with less continued oppression
than in Christendom, but always and permanently as something base and
inferior, save in a few rare moments when he has the favour of
particular rulers or is necessary to some special society, or is admired
in a moment of intellectual brilliance.
Normally the Jew in Islam is an outcast. I know very well that the game
is played of pretending that Islam is in some way kinder to him than we
are. It is but a game: the playing of one party against another--of
Islam against Christendom--by Israel, which is of neither. In Islam his
superior position in Christendom is equally famed. History is too strong
for such pretences. All the history of Islam, all the social spirit of
Islam, to which there are countless witnesses to-day, give the same
verdict about the general treatment of the Jew in that society.
So it was in independent Islam. But Islam, politically controlled
to-day by the Western Christian powers, is another matter. Under that
unstable state of affairs (no one can say how long it will last; the
conflict between Islam and Christendom seems eternal and the rise and
fall of that tide is indefinitely successive) the problem takes on quite
another shape. France and England appear in Islam as the artificial
supporters of the Jew.
Until quite lately it was the French who bore the worst odium of this in
the eyes of the Mohammedans. Under the French the Jews in North Africa
were often given a special, a superior position, which was an insult to
every Mohammedan and which is still an insult to him. It is the weakest
point of the French regime. In Algeria the Ghetto Jew may vote. The Arab
may not. Even in Morocco, where things have been done more wisely than
in Algiers, the difficulty is felt. How are you to treat a Jew
differently in Morocco from the way in which he is treated in France? He
is common to the two countries. If you treat him as if he were French,
and therefore a member of the governing power, what of the pride of
those lords of the Atlas and of Fez?
In the vastly larger field of Mohammedan control exercised by Britain,
which, directly and indirectly, is ten times that of France, there was
until lately less of this friction; but the tables have been turned, and
to-day it is Britain which stands to the Mohammedan as the thruster-in
of the Jew. It began with the support of Jewish finance in Egypt; it
went on with the extended control over Indian commerce by Jews; it
continued in the control of Indian currency by Jews. It has ended in the
grotesque appointment to the Indian Viceroyalty and the extraordinary
experiment of Palestine.
To-day, at the moment in which I write, there is no doubt on the matter
whatsoever: From Rabat on the Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal, the Western
Powers are regarded as the agents of a Jewish intrusion which is
intolerable to Islam. And whereas the chief blame lay, until quite a few
years ago, upon the French, to-day it lies upon the British Government.
* * * * *
The rôle of the Catholic Church in the debate between the Jews and
Christendom is the most discussed, the worst understood, of any point
connected with the general problem. But it is capable of simple
definition. Wherever the Catholic Church is powerful, and in proportion
as it is powerful, the traditional principles of the civilization of
which it is the soul and guardian will always be upheld. One of these
principles is the sharp distinction between the Jew and ourselves. The
Rationalist would say that this distinction was racial, and that it only
found religious expression on account of its racial reality. His
opponent would say that the origin of the quarrel was mainly religious;
that it was a difference in religious tradition which formed the
contrast between the Jew and Christendom. The former can cite as
evidence the violent original contrast between the Roman Empire and the
Jew, the latter the truth that religion, philosophy, is the formative
force in every human society.
But whichever theory you adopt, the fact is there. The Catholic Church
is the conservator of an age-long European tradition, and that tradition
will never compromise with the fiction that a Jew can be other than a
Jew. Wherever the Catholic Church has power, and in proportion to its
power, the Jewish problem will be recognized to the full.
On the other hand, there never has been and never will be, or can be,
admission by Catholic morals of warfare against the Jew. Those morals
are plain. That doctrine has been defined over and over again and acted
upon throughout history. If indirect hostilities are opened against the
majority by a minority in its midst, they may be repressed and punished.
Still more important, insincere and pretended conversion, used as a
cloak, may be repressed and punished. But though a community has the
right to determine its own life, and (if it think it possible) even to
eliminate (with justice, not with cruelty, violence or injustice in any
form) an alien, a hostile minority; yet that minority has its own right
to live, if not there, then elsewhere. It has its right--once it is
rooted and traditional--to its own convictions, to its own tradition. If
you allow it to live among you, you must allow it to live its own life
save where that life threatens yours. The Catholic Church will always
maintain reality, including the reality of that sharp distinction
between the Jew and his hosts.
The opponent of the Catholic Church will tend, other things being equal,
to support the Jew, because, under that distinction, the Jew may find
himself ill at ease. The whole Protestant tradition of the North was for
more than 300 years favourable to the Jew, partly indeed on account of
its reliance upon the Jewish Scriptures, its absorption in the inspired
Jewish folk-lore, but more because the alliance with the Jew was an
alliance against the Catholic Church. Strong traces of that spirit
still remain. What has warred against it has been the sheer necessity
in every country, Catholic or Protestant, Liberal or anti-Liberal, to
preserve society against what each began to feel as a disruptive and an
alien domination.
There remain the two novel forces--Modern Capitalism, and, protesting
against it, its victim, the Modern Industrial Proletariat.
A few years ago anyone would have said that the opposition to the Jew
was an opposition to capitalism alone; the Jew was the representative of
capitalism, and Jewish finance was the particular aspect of Jewish power
in which that power was universally hated. But we have seen all that
change. To-day the strongest force against the Jew is on the other side.
It is mainly aroused, not by the fear of capitalist forces, but by the
fear of revolutionary forces.
I make bold to say that when the feeling against the Jew comes to the
point of action, the Jew will necessarily, and in self-defence, fall
back upon the leadership of the proletariat against industrial
capitalism. He will--he must, from mere instinct, quite apart from
calculation--use the line of cleavage which divides a society hostile to
him. He will rely on the line of cleavage driven by the vast modern
quarrel between the few possessors in the modern industrial world and
their victims, the exploited millions.
So put, the opportunity of the Jew, if he be driven to extremities to
raise an army in his defence, seems a great opportunity enough. It would
seem easy for him to deflect all animosity against himself into
animosity against the rich--safeguarding, of course (as he has done in
Russia), the Jewish rich. But we must remember three formidable
conditions which weaken that opportunity.
The first condition is this: The industrial millions are still quite a
small minority and will probably in the future be an even smaller
minority of the civilized white world. The war dealt them a heavy blow.
The fact that the industrial proletariat is a town population, and
therefore less and less productive, is another cause of weakness; their
decline in health another. The fact that industrial capitalism depends
upon the machine being kept going, and that its serfs are less and less
willing to keep the machine going, is another.
Secondly, the area (and that is important) occupied by industrial
capitalism is but a very small area of the surface of the civilized
world.
Thirdly, the revolt of the Industrial Proletariat, if the Jews provoke
it, will be short-lived. Either it will be defeated, or after destroying
its masters it will, under Jewish leadership, destroy its own powers of
production, as in Russia.
When the fury is exhausted, in a very short time the Jewish problem will
reappear.
The proletarian battle may rage intensely, but it will be far from
universal, and will not be sufficient, I think, to distract mankind from
that other cross-problem of Jew and non-Jew, to which his attention is
being more and more steadily directed.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Except, of course, an outlawed member. The case of Dr. Levy turned
out of this country by his compatriots in the Government for having
written unfavourably of the Moscow Jews will be fresh in every one's
memory.
THE POSITION OF THE JEWS IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER X
THE PRESENT RELATION BETWEEN THE ENGLISH STATE AND THE JEWS
The various nations of Europe have every one of them, in the course of
their long histories, passed through successive phases towards the Jew
which I have called the tragic cycle. Each has in turn welcomed,
tolerated, persecuted, attempted to exile--often actually
exiled--welcomed again, and so forth. The two chief examples of extremes
in action, are, as I have also pointed out in an earlier part of this
book, Spain and England. Spaniards, and in particular the Spaniards of
the Kingdom of Castile, went through every phase of this cycle in its
fullest form. England passed through even greater extremes, for England
was the only country which absolutely got rid of the Jews for hundreds
of years, and England is the only country which has, even for a brief
period, entered into something like an alliance with them.
Though it is the present position of the British State--that is, the
position of official British politics towards the Jew--with which we are
concerned, it may be of service to introduce the matter by a word upon
past relations.
The Jewish element in this island, whatever it may have been during the
Roman occupation, was of small account during the Dark Ages. Things
changed at their close in the eleventh century. The Jew is the camp
follower of each new economic movement among us and that is why one
finds him in the wake of the Norman Conquest. Throughout the economic
development which it began appears the secondary rôle of the Jew. Every
one knows the mediaeval rule of Jewish Status. It was established here
as everywhere else in Christendom. The Jew was the King's; that is,
under the special protection of the State. If he were the subject of
popular attack, that attack was an attack on the King's peculiar, and
liable to speedy repression. The individual attacker was punished with
special severity because the danger of mass-movement is always great
where the populace is free to act in masses as it was throughout the
middle ages, and the necessity for preventing individual attacks from
spreading was correspondingly great. Now and then the popular feeling
got out of hand and the monarch had to deal with numbers which he could
not control; but as a rule the Jew, especially the rich Jew, enjoyed a
privileged position, both in Northern France and throughout England. The
Jew of the early Middle Ages in England was normally a well-to-do man
and often an exceedingly rich man. Then, as now, a small number of Jews
were much the richest men of their time.
He had most of the finances in his hands, and this immense privilege
(which he has lost), that he alone was allowed to practise usury. Here
we must pause a moment to define usury.
Usury then (as now) signified the receiving of interest upon
unproductive loans. It is a practice which all moralists and all
philosophers have condemned and which the Church in particular condemns.
If you lend money to a man for a productive purpose: if, for instance,
he is to buy a ship and trade with the money you advance, or to buy a
farm and grow produce, then, of course, you are perfectly free to
stipulate for a portion of the profit. But if you lend the money for a
purpose not directly productive, as, for instance, to a man in grave
necessity, or in lieu of charity, or to build such a building as a
church, which will not produce a rent, or if in any other fashion you
lend money to one who (to your knowledge) will not spend it in some
reproductive agency, then it is immoral to demand interest.
Now an exception was made in mediaeval Christendom in favour of the Jew.
He was allowed to lend money at interest, even in the most grievous
cases of necessity, and for services as unproductive as religion or war.
The only stipulation was that the moneys saved from this lucrative
practice returned to the Crown (in theory) upon the death of the
licensee. In practice no doubt a very large part remained with the
accumulator, who during his lifetime was enjoying the income he had
acquired by usury, who could give it to his heirs while still living,
and could use opportunities for secret investment, or pass it to the
custody of others throughout international Jewry. But liquid sums left
by him, the product of his usury, returned to the Crown upon his death.
This was a great advantage to the Crown, not only in protecting the Jew
from the native hostility of his alien hosts (and particularly of the
populace), but in giving him that great privilege--a monopoly.
The rate of interest was enormous. It varied from nearly 50 per cent to
over 80 per cent. When Jews lent money on security the King was party to
the safe custody of the security, and their privilege extended so far
that they were exempt from the common law, and a case between an
Englishman and his Jewish creditor could only be tried by a mixed jury
in which the Jew's own compatriots were present in equal numbers with
the English.
All during the Angevin period Jewish financial domination continued, up
to the end of the twelfth century and even into the beginning of the
thirteenth. But with the first half of the thirteenth century, for some
reason of which I have never seen a sufficient historical analysis and
of which, perhaps, the full causes have been lost, the Jewish power
began to decline very rapidly, so far as England was concerned.
And here it may be noted that the misfortunes of the Jews in any country
never begin until their financial position is shaken. As long as they
are the financial masters of the Government they are protected; but woe
to them when they begin to lose their financial power! Then there is no
longer any reason for supporting them either on the part of the
governing classes in general or of the Executive in particular. Popular
passion is let loose and disaster follows.
At any rate, the thirteenth century saw in England a rapid decline of
Jewish financial power and at the same time a rapid rise of official
animosity towards them. They got poorer and poorer as the century
proceeded. Their activities were at the same time more and more
restricted. They had lent money largely upon land and yet, in the public
interest, were at last forbidden to foreclose upon it. The final step
came when their special licence to practise usury was withdrawn by
Edward I in the earlier part of his reign; and at last, in 1290, after
increasing severities, they were all expelled the country under penalty
of death.
The unhappy people, already reduced by two generations of falling
fortune, were hurried out of the country, carrying, by permission, their
money and movables. They were protected, indeed, at the ports by the
royal officers, who even paid the passage of the indigent among them;
but they were plundered at sea and some even murdered. The murderers
were punished, but the memory of the persecution remained in the Jews'
mind and England became a natural object of their hate. The Jewish
community expelled by the English was surprisingly small, not 17,000,
and suggests the historical truth that in the Middle Ages, and indeed
until quite modern times, the Jewish community in Northern France and
England was a community of people in the main well-to-do. It so remained
until quite modern times.
There followed three and a half centuries and more during which England
was the one example in Europe of a State that would not tolerate the
Jews upon any terms whatsoever. There certainly remained throughout this
time, or at any rate visited the island, not a few of what the Jews
themselves called "Crypto-Jews," that is, Jews who outwardly deny their
nationality and practise our religion for the purpose of private gain.
These, when they could defeat the law successfully, remained within the
British seas. But their effect was slight; and the English people during
the whole of their great military advance in France, during the whole
period when their language and culture was forming, during the whole
great national episode of the Tudors and of the Reformation, formed the
one great exception out of all Europe in that the Jew remained unknown
to them and was rigorously excluded from their Commonwealth.
They returned, as everybody knows, under Cromwell. Their numbers, and
still more their wealth, increased at the end of the seventeenth century
and concomitantly with this, partly as an effect of it (but here we must
not exaggerate), a number of novel financial features appeared in the
English State each of which shows the increased power of the Jews. The
institution of the Bank, of the National Debt, of speculation in
Exchange and in the fluctuation of stock.
But the real causes of that alliance between the English and the Jews
which is seen in the late seventeenth century, which quickened
throughout the eighteenth and became so very marked in the nineteenth
century, was the cosmopolitan position of England as the leading
commercial State. This it was which led to something like identity
between the interests of Israel and the interests of Britain, an
identity which has lasted so long that now, when divergence is beginning
to appear, it still seems odd and novel to the older generation that
there should be any Jewish action which is not favourable to England.
They cannot understand what the new indifference to Jewish interests,
let alone the new hostility to them, can mean.
There were, of course, many other causes contributory to the peculiar
position which the Jew came to enjoy in modern England, a position which
he has not yet lost in external circumstance, though it is so badly
shaken morally. There was the fact that England was the Protestant power
of the West.
This religious motive played a great part. Between the Catholic Church
and the Synagogue there had been hostility from the first century. In so
far as it was possible to take sides in that quarrel it was natural for
the Protestant power to take sides against the Catholic tradition and
therefore in favour of the Jews. Again, the English were not only
Protestant, their middle classes were steeped in the reading of the Old
Testament. The Jews seemed to them the heroes of an epic and the shrines
of a religion. You will find strong relics of this attitude in
Provincial England to this day. One should add a certain national
distaste for violence, which feeling was exasperated by hearing of the
Jewish persecution abroad. One should also further add the pride which
modern Englishmen take in the feeling that their country is an asylum
for the oppressed.
Meanwhile there was not, until quite lately, any considerable body of
poor Jews in the country to excite the animosity of the populace. That
was an important negative factor in bringing the Jew within the
boundaries of the English State. But with all these factors fully
considered, it remains true that the main cause of the accidental Jewish
position in England was the cosmopolitan character of English commerce
and the essentially commercial character of the English State. As
English export and English shipping began to cover the globe, the
English financial system covered it as well. London became after
Waterloo the money market and the clearing house of the world. The
interests of the Jew as a financial dealer and the interests of this
great commercial polity approximated more and more. One may say that by
the last third of the nineteenth century they had become virtually
identical.
Every new economic enterprise of the British State appealed to the
Jewish genius for commerce and especially for negotiation in its most
abstract form--finance. Conversely, every Jewish enterprise, every new
conception of the Jew in his cosmopolitan activities (until these became
revolutionary) appealed to the English merchant and banker.
The two things dovetailed one into the other and fitted exactly, and all
subsidiary activities fitted in as well. The Jewish news agencies of the
nineteenth century favoured England in all her policy, political as well
as commercial; they opposed those of her rivals and especially those of
her enemies. The Jewish knowledge of the East was at the service of
England. His international penetration of the European governments was
also at her service--so was his secret information. With the
consolidation of the Indian Empire after the Mutiny the Jews were again
an ally from their traditional hatred of the Russian people, which
hatred has led them in our time to wreak so awful a vengeance upon their
former oppressors. The Jew might almost be called a British agent upon
the Continent of Europe, and still more in the Near and Far East, where
the economic power of England extended even more rapidly than her
political power.
And the Jew pointed to the English State as that one in which all that
his nation required of the _goyim_ was to be found. He here enjoyed a
situation the like of which he could not hope to enjoy in any other
country of the world. All antagonism to him had died down. He was
admitted to every institution in the State, a prominent member of his
nation became chief officer of the English Executive, and, an influence
more subtle and penetrating, marriages began to take place, wholesale,
between what had once been the aristocratic territorial families of this
country and the Jewish commercial fortunes.
After two generations of this, with the opening of the twentieth century
those of the great territorial English families in which there was no
Jewish blood were the exception. In nearly all of them was the strain
more or less marked, in some of them so strong that though the name was
still an English name and the traditions those of a purely English
lineage of the long past, the physique and character had become wholly
Jewish and the members of the family were taken for Jews whenever they
travelled in countries where the gentry had not yet suffered or enjoyed
this admixture.
Specially Jewish institutions, such as Freemasonry (which the Jews had
inaugurated as a sort of bridge between themselves and their hosts in
the seventeenth century), were particularly strong in Britain, and there
arose a political tradition, active, and ultimately to prove of great
importance, whereby the British State was tacitly accepted by foreign
governments as the official protector of the Jews in other countries. It
was Britain which was expected to interfere, within the measure of her
power, whenever a persecution of the Jews took place in the East of
Christendom: to support the Jewish financial energies throughout the
world, and to receive in return the benefit of that connection.
We shall have a most imperfect picture of the causes which gradually
made the Jews regard this country as their centre of action if we omit
one essential point.
England was secure.
During the whole period which saw the rise of the Jews to eminence in
this island and their ultimate alliance with its political and
commercial system, English society enjoyed a profound peace. Save for
the petty incidents of the '15 and '45 (the first of no effect south of
the border, the second ephemeral and confined to the North), no
hostilities took place upon English soil between the rebellion of
Monmouth under James II and the bombarding of London by the Germans from
the air during the late war. There has been (save for some quite
insignificant local riots) complete security for property and especially
for large property. There have been since the middle of the eighteenth
century no confiscations, and of commercial fortunes none since the
middle of the seventeenth: no invasion, no civil war, and therefore no
loot: no personal danger from violence.
Such conditions formed an environment ideal for the permanent
establishment and rooting of Jewish power, and for the organization of a
Jewish base.
The political situation reflected itself, as it always does, in
literature. The Jew began to appear in English fiction as an exalted
character, quite specially removed to his advantage from the mass of
mankind. He is already a hero in Sir Walter Scott, but the full
development was much later. You could still have a Jewish villain as
late as _Oliver Twist_, but with writers as different as Charles Reade
and George Eliot we reach a time where the Jew is impeccable. The worst
any writer dares do at the end of the process is to be silent. The best
is to flatter the Jewish type out of all knowledge. This singular
interlude was in part due to the divorce between literature and popular
feeling in the middle and latter part of the nineteenth century; at
least, it was permitted by that divorce. But the active cause of it was
the reflection of the Jew's political position upon the mind of the
educated class as expressed in its literary art.
At the same time a parallel movement appeared on the historical side of
literature. A convention arose that in the clash between the Jews and
the English of the Middle Ages the Jews were invariably right and the
English invariably wrong. Where the struggle was between the Jew and the
non-Jew abroad, the historian exceeded all bounds. The European hostile
to the Jew was a senseless monster, and the Jew hostile to the European
was a holy victim.
The whole story of Europe and of this country, in so far as it was
affected by this very considerable factor, was distorted through
suppression, and false emphasis and quite exceptional lying.
The general reader of history neither knew what part the Jewish
question had played nor the claims that could be advanced for his own
race in the conflict. And as historians live by copying one another, the
legend was established in every school and college.
At the end of the process the Jews, in proportion to their numbers, held
a power in this country beyond anything that has been seen in any other
of the world. Poland at the end of the Middle Ages, when that country
was most nearly comparable to Britain for the harbouring and support of
the Jewish people, is the only parallel, and that a remote one.
Every English Government had (and has) its quota of Jews. They had
entered the diplomatic service and the House of Lords; they swarmed in
the House of Commons, in the Universities, in all the Government offices
save the Foreign Office (and even there representatives of the Jewish
nation have recently entered); they were exceedingly powerful in the
Press: they were all-powerful in the City. No custom unsympathetic to
their race, from the duel to popular clamour, survived. They could boast
that England was not only the country where no distinction whatever was
made in practice, let alone in law, between the Jew and the native, but
that England was the only country where the Jew was always well
received, where his natural defects counted least and where his natural
abilities had most scope.
Such a state of affairs could not last. It was not natural. It was not
consonant with hidden but deep popular tradition or with popular
appetites; it corresponded only to the mood of one European community in
its wealthier classes. A divergence between the cosmopolitan financial
interests of the Jew and the particular national interests of Britain
was bound to come. War on a large scale, though it did not imperil the
country itself, was a warning of change. It appeared with the South
African campaign before the end of the century. The position of the Jew
was altered. Some dissatisfaction with his power began to stir. It was
already muttering and beginning to show itself with the rise of
commercial and maritime competition in the new German Empire which, in
its turn, had become led, upon all its commercial side, by Jews. There
was bound, I say, to be a reaction and a permanent one. While it was yet
taking place, in the heat of the Great War, before it had reached the
official world, that one of the English politicians who was best fitted
to speak for the Jews, who was most intimate with them through manifold
ties of friendship and hospitality, Mr. Arthur Balfour, was chosen to
make the famous pronouncement in favour of Zionism. It came within a
month of the great crisis of the war. Its object was to divide the
general influence of the Jews throughout the world, which had hitherto
been upon the whole opposed to the cause of the Allies, because, like
every other neutral, the Jews were more and more convinced, as the
campaigns dragged on, that the Central Empires were certain of victory.
Though this was the motive, the effect was to tie the British state yet
closer to the fortunes of Israel, for here was England pledged to
support, to defend, to act as a special protector over, the peculiar
interests of the Jews, just where those interests would most challenge
the whole of Christendom and of Islam, just where it would be most
acutely difficult to confirm Jewish claims.
The declaration in favour of Zionism, the solemn pledge of the forces of
the British State to an exceptional support of the Jew in a matter
wholly to his benefit and not in any way to that of England, coming
though it did after the climax of Jewish power had been reached and
passed, was the last stage of that long process of alliance between the
British commercial policy and its ruling classes on the one hand and the
Jews upon the other.
Already, as I have said, that alliance was morally shaken. The great
influx of poor Jews had shaken it. The mere effect of time, the
inevitable revolt of the human conscience against an unnatural pretence
and an obvious fiction, was bound to come, and was overdue. But although
the alliance was already shaken, the English State remained officially
closely interlocked with Jewry, and its last action, the demand for the
establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, was, as has so often
happened in the story of human development, at once the term and the
turning-point of a process which had reached its conclusion; for it will
be remarked throughout history that any force is most expressive, its
manifestation of power most crude and most emphatic, in the perilous
interval _after_ its real strength has begun to decline and _before_ its
first open defeat.
But the problems presented by this experiment in Palestine merit a
separate examination. To this I will now turn.
ZIONISM
CHAPTER XI
ZIONISM
The question of Zionism has been discussed from every possible aspect
save one, and that one is the only factor which relates to the thesis of
this book.
It has been argued, as a purely Jewish matter; there has been debate
upon its justice or injustice among the Jews themselves, as to its
advantage or disadvantage to their race; debate among the various
non-Jewish forces concerned as to the advantage or disadvantage it would
be to them; debate upon the rights and wrongs of the native population
among which the Jews might find a home; debate as to whether that home
should be in Palestine or elsewhere--and so on.
All these discussions avoid the ultimate issue. Some of them, of course,
are of evident importance within the Jewish community, but so far as the
essential problem we are discussing in this book is concerned, they do
not apply. The one question which is at issue from the point of view of
our thesis is this:--
_Whether the Zionist experiment will tend to increase or to relax the
strain created by the presence of the Jew in the midst of a non-Jewish
world._
That, and that only, is our concern, and from that point of view we may
examine the theory of Zionism which has now emerged into an attempted
practice.
First let us consider its necessary general implications: the
implications which Zionism involves, no matter where or how the
experiment were tried.
The Zionist theory is that Israel would benefit if of its many millions
(some twelve millions, counting those of the partly Jewish fringe, who
are sufficiently Jewish to make one with the race) a core--say a
tenth--were to have a fixed territorial "city," a country of their own,
a habitation. This country, wherever it might be chosen, should be, as
far as possible, a purely Jewish State: "as Jewish," one of its
exponents has said, "as England is English."
Now, suppose the place chosen were (to-day we may say "had been") an
empty or almost undeveloped country, and supposing the Jews had found
that their own people could bear the expense of reaching that place with
sufficient capital, and of colonizing it in large numbers. Supposing a
small State of a million to a million and a half inhabitants to be thus
formed, to be wholly Jewish in character, and independent in the fullest
sense. The question immediately arises: _Would the Jews throughout the
world be:--_
(a) _permitted to regard themselves as citizens of that State?_
(b) _regarded in any case as citizens of that State, whether they willed
or no, and registered as such, with or without the consent of the
registered person?_
If not, what would be the status of the Jew outside this territorial
unit, which he had chosen to be much more than a symbol of his national
unity--its actual seat and establishment?
That is the question which, so far as I have watched the discussion,
everybody hesitates to face; yet that is the question which will have to
be faced sooner or later as the main political crux of the whole affair.
Observe that there is no question of establishing a State wherein the
whole or even the great mass of the Jewish people shall reside. No one
would repudiate such an idea more vigorously than the chief pioneers of
Zionism. The great mass of Jews would, of course, ridicule it as
impracticable and refuse it as extremely undesirable. They live and they
desire to live following their present interests in the nations among
whom they are dispersed. They live and they desire to live the
semi-nomadic life, the international life, which has become theirs by
every tradition, and which one might now almost call instinctive in
them. Also the greater part of them desire to pursue those careers which
go with such a life, especially the careers of negotiation and of
intermediary work. They not only feel the advantage of such a position,
they also feel a need and appetite for such a condition.
Whatever form Zionism might have taken before it appeared in its present
experimental form, whatever was said of the theory in the past, _this
point_ was always capital:
The Jews as a nation would remain as they were, moving among all the
peoples. The new Zion was to be no more than a fixed rallying point, an
established but small territorial nationhood, which should do no more
than proclaim their unity. It follows, therefore, necessarily, that the
great mass of Jews, outside the territorial settlement, would have,
after such a settlement had been formed, to obtain a definition of
their political character. What is that definition to be?
I think myself the Jews would answer: "It is to be precisely what it is
to-day, or, rather, what it has been in the Occidental nations during
the past generation." That is, the Jew is to be regarded as the full
national in the nation in which he happens to be for the time. Nothing
shall debar him from any position whatever in that nation. He shall be
regarded in exactly the same light as all the other citizens, and,
conversely, he shall obtain no privilege. In countries where there is
conscription, for instance, he shall be a conscript like anybody else;
where a nation in which he happens to find himself goes to war, he shall
be compelled to risk his life for it like any other citizen. If he
happens a year or two before the war to have settled in the enemy's
country, then he shall be equally compelled to fight for the enemy
against his former country. He shall in every respect be regarded, by a
legal fiction, as identical with the community in which he happens to be
settled for the moment, _but at the same time he is to have some special
relation with the Jewish State_.
He and he alone is to be (certainly in practice and, of right, in legal
decisions) eligible for admission to that city, for office in it. His
opinion is to count in the conduct of that State, wherever he may
personally be placed in the world. He is to regard himself--indeed that
is inevitable from the definition of the new State--as personally allied
to it, if not a member of it. He cannot dissociate himself from its
fortunes nor be indifferent to its success or failure. He must in effect
be _loyal_ to it. He owes it allegiance of a moral kind. He will
necessarily be in much the same position as are men of Irish descent in
the Colonies, in England, and in the United States, to the surviving and
now increasing remnant of their race which has clung to its native land.
But in the particular case of the Jew this allegiance will not diminish
with time. It will remain ever vivacious. The race, as its individual
components pass from one country to another, will make one body,
generation after generation, with the fixed polity settled in the New
Zion. That certainly is the ideal, as I hear it expressed on every side
in conversation and in writing by the Jews who support it.
Well, if the ideal is left in that condition (and it is admitted to be
in practice in that condition), it will result in a grievous prejudice
to the Jewish people, and will be a source of more permanent evil to
them than any other policy they could have undertaken. It will emphasize
that very point of dual allegiance which it must be their object to
soften if the Jewish problem is to be solved.
The existence of a Zionist State will bring into relief the separate
character of the Jew. The Jewish nation will no longer be able to depend
for one of its defences upon the indifference or the ignorance still
widely present among its hosts. Whereas before the experiment was
attempted, many of those hosts could forget the difference between him
and them, many had no experience of it and many remarked it without its
affecting their attitude towards the Jew; after the experiment has been
put in practice there must necessarily be a change.
To give a concrete instance, no one could in his anger say to a Jew,
"You disturb our repose; you are an alien element in our community; you
must leave it." For if he meant that, he was at the same time condemning
his victim to universal exile. But once an established national State
exists, once you have in the world a considerable number--say a million
and a half Jews--who are not the nationals of any other nation, but are
the citizens of a Jewish nation with a known locality, an organized
State, _then_ the suggestion of exile changes its meaning. The opponent
of the Jew is now able to say: "Go back to your own country," and you
may be very certain that he _will_ say that unless some other solution
than the legal fiction of full citizenship in one country and of moral
allegiance to another is dropped.
The presence of the new Zion will do for the Jewish people what a frame
does for a picture. It will not be universal to them; it will not cover
the whole field of Jewish activity. It will be but a fraction of the
whole. But it will inevitably emphasize the separation, the individual
and alien character of the whole. It will concentrate attention upon all
those things which the nineteenth century--in what I have called "the
Liberal solution"--carefully put in the background and tried to forget.
It will militate against an honest solution which would recognize the
completely distinct character of the Jew and yet refuse to subject them
to any indignity or suffering on that account.
There is more than this. The various nations, taken as a whole--the
Roumanians as a whole, the Poles as a whole, the French, the Italians,
the English as a whole--take up very different attitudes at any one time
toward Israel, and in each the attitude varies from generation to
generation; there is always, at any one time of history, including our
own time, a certain number of national units which are openly hostile to
the Jew, regretting his presence among them, restricting his activities
and determined, above all, to separate him, by a sharp legal definition
if possible, at any rate by universal social practice, from the rest of
the community.
Now these hostile peoples cannot possibly be prevented from using the
weapon put into their hands by the existence of a new Zion, with the
implications I have just defined. It is difficult enough even now for
the countries where Jewish finance controls the politicians (and these
are still the most powerful countries) to restrain the anti-Jewish
feelings in the lesser nations. It is only done by elaborate rules which
are imperfectly obeyed and which are felt in these smaller nations to be
imposed by alien interference with their domestic rights. The protection
by the French, English and American Governments of what are called by a
euphemism "national minorities"--which means, of course, everywhere the
Jews--is a perilous affair, and one which can only be carried out most
imperfectly even as it is. But the one foundation for that task, the one
argument which its promoters appeal to, is the fact that the "national
minority"--that is, the Jews present in a hostile community--can plead
universal exile.
If you turn them out in order to suppress them, they can only leave for
another country. They have none of their own to go to. Or again, if your
treatment of the Jews is harsher than that of your neighbour, you are
virtually directing a Jewish emigration over your neighbour's borders,
and to that your neighbour has a right to object. But once an
independent Jewish seat is established, this argument falls to the
ground. It is no reply _then_ to tell these nations that the new Jewish
State cannot contain the whole Jewish race. It will answer that it is
not concerned with the whole Jewish race but only with its own section
of that race.
Further, it will of course always be to the interest of those who desire
to be rid of the Jewish element in their midst to argue that the Jewish
State could be more peopled and that there is plenty of room for more
citizens. Again, those hostile to the Jews in their midst can say: "Very
well. Since there is no room for the whole mass of our Jews in your new
State, we will not deal with the whole mass; allow us to suggest that
such and such individuals shall leave our State, where they are not
wanted, and shall go to their own." And they would pick out the Jews
whose exile would most weaken the Jewish community in their midst.
In the present state of affairs, with the Cabinets of Rome, Washington,
London and Paris still heavily influenced by Jewish finance, they have,
for the moment, a military force behind them sufficient to impose their
orders in some measure upon the reluctant nations of Eastern Europe and
in some measure to create an artificial protection for the Jews there.
Even if this protection were to last another generation (which is
unlikely), the presence of Zionism, interpreted in the sense I have just
quoted, would be enough to undermine its work. On any change in the
situation, in case of any conflict between these Western powers, or of
any change by one or more of them in its attitude towards the Jews,
Zionism, thus interpreted, would be the ruin of the Jews in the Centre
and East of Europe. The danger is of such great practical importance
that it ought to be the very first matter for discussion. It is only our
acquired habit of falsehood and secrecy upon the Jewish problem which
has thrust it in the background. In the nature of things it must come to
the front, and it would be far better to have the lines of some solution
laid down before it becomes insistent.
What are those lines to be?
Their general character is clear enough.
Whether it be of advantage or no to have a purely Jewish State (I mean
whether it be of advantage to Israel or no) may be safely left to the
Jews themselves to discuss. But one thing is certain: if they decide in
favour of its continuance, then they must decide also in favour of some
form of recognition for the purely Jewish nationality of the Jews
_outside_ that State.
Thus only will the situation become open and therefore innocuous. If
they try under the new conditions to maintain the old fiction that a Jew
is at the same time a Jew and yet not a Jew, that he can be at the same
time a Jew and an Englishman, or a Jew and a Russian, or a Jew and an
Italian, they will be trying to maintain it under conditions quite other
than those of the past, and under conditions where the falsehood will
break down in practice.
Suppose you were to make such recognition partly voluntary, and leave it
to the Jew wherever he might be to claim or not to claim his nationality
as a Jew; to be regarded, if he so willed, as a national of the Jewish
nation in Zion, or as a national of the people among whom he happened
to be living for the moment. You may say that under this purely
voluntary system (which would, I suppose, be more just) very few would
choose for Zion. The great majority would like to go on under the old
fiction. That is certainly true of the West; but would it be true of the
East? Would it be true of either East or West in a moment of
persecution? I think it would not. Even if it be true of the East
to-day, it certainly would not be true of any body of Jews suffering
there, in the future, any degree of molestation.
But apart from that: Supposing but a small minority availed themselves
of this voluntary form of recognition, supposing only a small minority
to claim Jewish nationality as defined in the terms of the Zionist
State, there would still be the contrast between those who had thus
publicly proclaimed themselves nationals of Zion and those who hung
back. In other words, short of a general admitted maintenance of the old
fiction (of which Zionism more than any other force must accelerate the
breakdown), you must have, through Zionism, an accelerated tendency to
treating Jews throughout the world as being, whether without the New
Zionist State or within it, a separate people. And they are a separate
people, they cannot be other. My whole plea is that this truth should be
recognized and acted upon; for if it is shirked or denied it will take
its revenge. Reality always takes its revenge upon unreal pretence.
There remains in connection with Zionism another consideration which is
also of importance, though of a very different kind. Is the new Jewish
State to rely upon its own military strength and its own police--though
perhaps guaranteed (for what that may be worth) by international
agreement--or is it to be a protected State occupied, defended and
policed by the strength and fighting qualities of some other kind of
men, not Jews--Englishmen, Frenchmen or what not?
As we know, the particular solution attempted, the particular Zionism of
which the experiment is now being made in Palestine, plumps for the
_second_ solution. The protection of Jews from natives is to be
undertaken by a garrison of Englishmen. It plumps for this solution
under conditions as adverse as they well can be. The present experiment
is, as we noted at the end of the last chapter, not an independent
Jewish State, national, guaranteed, standing in its own strength; but a
_protected_ State; and that State protected by one nation: Great
Britain. The new Zion does not depend for its internal peace, for its
establishment against highly hostile forces, for the ex-propriation of
the local landowners, for the keeping of the peace between local
elements highly hostile to itself, upon Jewish soldiers and Jewish
courage. It depends upon British soldiers, British organization and
British sacrifice. Those who have promoted the Zionist experiment have
deliberately chosen the very worst moment for such a folly.
Granted that whoever was to be the Protector he must be a friendly
Protector, no worse solution could have been devised. A little nation is
always morally guaranteed in its independence, if only by the balance of
the greater nations. The violation of the neutrality of Belgium offers
nothing of a rule; on the contrary, it was an odious exception. And an
exception it would have been just as much if the neutrality had not
been officially guaranteed under Prussia's own hand. The smaller
nations, of which the modern world is full, will have, we may be very
certain, a long lease of life. The larger nations envy but applaud their
security and happiness. They will not be allowed to disappear. The same,
I think, would be true of the Jewish national seat, could it be
established, inhabited wholly or mainly by men of the Jewish race,
religion and culture; presenting to the world the same aspect as does,
for instance, Denmark to-day. But to depend for its establishment upon
the superior power, upon the military and financial sacrifice, of
another and totally different people, is a challenge and a provocation.
It is the building of the pyramid upwards from its apex. It is an
experiment in the most unstable of unstable equilibriums.
The matter is, of course, being discussed everywhere from the point of
view of Great Britain, and nowhere more eagerly than among those who
have to do the policing and the armed protection. But we are not here
concerned with the ill effects such a situation must have on Great
Britain--effects so ill that the experiment as a merely British
Protectorate is bound to break down--we are rather concerned with the
effect it may have upon the Jews themselves. No great nation will
sacrifice its foreign policy, will admit a point of acute weakness,
simply to please the Jews. Sooner or later such a nation is bound to
say: "_We_ cannot sacrifice our interests to yours. Look after
yourselves." And that is where the peril to the Jews of this system, a
protectorate, comes in.
If there were any reason to suppose a natural alliance between the
British Army and the Jews; if we could imagine British officers and men
taking a natural pleasure in ousting the Arab and making way for the
Jew, it would be another matter. If there were something in the nature
of things which made that alliance permanent and stable, if the Jews
were a fully accepted part of the British Commonwealth as are, for
instance, the Scots or the Welsh, some permanent arrangement might be
possible. But they are nothing of the sort. The position is wholly
unnatural. It cannot last. And if it cannot last with the British
connection, how should it last with any other? How shall the transition
be made from a British Protectorate to another protectorate? Or how,
seeing what violent hatreds have already been roused by the mere
beginnings of the experiment, shall the conflict which makes the
protectorate necessary be avoided?
So far the dislike of the position, which is very far-reaching, and
already very deep in England, is a passive dislike. No English soldier
has yet been killed; there has been but little necessity, as yet, to
repress the Arab and create hostility, though even what little necessity
there has been was odious to the troops concerned. But things cannot
remain in that state. The conflict is inevitable. When the conflict
comes the feeling which has hitherto been passive will become active.
People will not tolerate the loss of sons and brothers in a quarrel
which is none of theirs, which cannot possibly strengthen the British
State; which, if anything, must weaken it; which is felt to be
precarious and ephemeral, and which will be undertaken against those
with whom British sympathy naturally lies, and in favour of those with
whom the average soldier and citizen--unlike the professional
politician--has no ties and no sympathy.
The matter can be very plainly put thus:
If a Zionist experiment is necessary, or advisable, then let it be made
in such a fashion that it can be dependent upon Jewish police and a
Jewish army alone. Let it not rely upon a foreign protectorate, which
will not last long, which is a weakness to the directing power, and
which creates a false position.
If it be answered that the Jews are not capable of producing such an
army or such a police, that they would inevitably be defeated and
oppressed by the hostile and more warlike majority among whom they would
find themselves, then let them make the experiment elsewhere. But it is
certain that the present form of the new Protectorate is the most
perilous form which could have been chosen for it, so far as the Jews
themselves are concerned. I appeal confidently to the near future to
confirm this judgment.
From one most poignant aspect of the matter which we all have in mind I
deliberately abstain--I mean the effect of the experiment upon Christian
and Mohammedan feelings throughout the world of an attempt to establish
Jewish control over the Holy Places. I abstain because of the emotions
aroused by it, which are violent and universal, and are of the sort I
have deliberately determined, as my Preface has informed the reader, to
keep out of this essay. Things indeed are not yet at the point of open
quarrel in this most perilous of all the results of Zionism. We must
trust for a solution before it is too late, but that solution will not
be reached if we select for discussion matters upon which there can be
no agreement, and on which there is now aroused the most passionate
feeling.
Still, though I abstain from discussing that point, I would beg the
Jewish readers of this my book to bear it in mind. If they believe the
religious emotions to be dead in the modern world, or even to be
lessening, they may find themselves terribly disillusioned.
I also refrain from making comment here--I have made it strongly enough
elsewhere--upon the strange selection made by the Jews for their first
ruler of the Arabs and Christians in Palestine. I will do no more than
to say that a desire to shield the less worthy specimens of one's race
is natural and even praiseworthy. One may even take a certain glory in
that one is able to protect them from outsiders. But to give them too
great a prominence is a mistake, and it is indeed deplorable that of the
whole world of Jews--from crowds of Jews eminent in administration, and
political science, known for their upright dealing and blameless
careers--Mr. Balfour's Jewish advisers (whoever they were) should have
pitched on the author of the Marconi contract and the spokesman of the
famous declaration in the House of Commons that no politician had
touched Marconi shares.
* * * * *
OUR DUTY
CHAPTER XII
OUR DUTY
The solution which I propose, which I believe could be made stable, and
which I further believe is the only stable one, demands a greater, a
more necessary effort upon our side than upon that of our guests.
It is the average man who must do his duty in the matter, and it is upon
him that the responsibility will fall, if we take up once again that
wretched sequence of ill-ease, persecution, reaction, which has marked
so many centuries.
We are the vast majority, we are the organism within which this small
minority moves. We are, or could be if we chose, the makers of our own
laws, and we are certainly the makers of our own political moods.
I know it is the custom to throw all the responsibility upon the other
side, to be perpetually devising instruments for their guidance which
soon become instruments for their oppression, and in general to imagine
a problem wherein the part of the European is purely negative and all
the work has to be done by the Jewish stranger.
That attitude is not only false but grossly undignified. When men accuse
some one weaker than themselves of interference with, and even of
acquiring power over, them they condemn themselves. It is in the main
our fault if an equilibrium has so rarely been reached in all these
sixty generations of debate. For however alien, however irritant the
foreign body be, it is we who have in our hands the solvent of that
irritant and of relieving the strain which it causes.
Here let me recall at the risk of repetition (for repetition is
necessary to lucidity in such arguments) the logical process with which
I opened this essay. I say that the vast majority, the fixed race
through which in fluid and nomadic form Israel goes moving from century
to century, is not free to discharge its responsibility by any one of
those attempted solutions which I have condemned. No man, I trust, will
have the cynicism to say that mere persecution, let alone its horrible
extreme, is or should be a solution. No man can predict the same of
exile either. No man can discharge our responsibility by pretending that
any solution arrived at must be for our good alone and may disregard
that of those who live among us.
It is a statement one hears frequently enough that the masters of house
have alone to decide what shall be done under their roof: that the
interloper, the alien element, has no standing and no right to complain
of whatever measures may be taken for the protection of the household.
The thing so put sounds plausible. It is essentially false. It is
comparable to the argument applied to private property--that because
private property is a right, and that because a man "may do what he
likes with his own," therefore he may use it to the manifest hurt of
others. Moreover, the analogy is false; for when a man is talking of
"the master of the house" having the right in his household to decide
its own way of living and of treating its guests, he is considering a
very small unit in a great community; his household in the whole nation:
a little body which, if it discharge or in any other way deal with
something alien to itself, will inflict no great injury upon that
foreign body, since there is all the world for it to turn to outside.
But in the relations between the Jew and Christendom, or the Jew and
Islam, the parallel fails. It is precisely because there is no "outside"
to which the exile can turn that a duty is imposed on us.
It is true indeed that when a small and alien minority assumes to
dictate the policy of the rest, to regard its own advantages alone and
subordinate to those advantages the life of all, the claim is grotesque
and must be disallowed. But we should remember upon the other side that
it is only by exaggerating its claim that a minority can live at all. It
is only by fierce insistence upon its right to survive that its survival
is guaranteed. We can arrive at justice in this matter by the process of
putting ourselves in the shoes of those in relation to whom we propose
to act.
Put yourself in the shoes of the Jew and ask how this doctrine of "doing
what one likes with one's own" and being "the master of one's own
household" would look to you.
A public example which very rightly made a stir a few months before this
book was published, may serve as text. A learned and distinguished Jew,
Dr. Oscar Levy, a man who was an asset to any community, was turned out
of the country under circumstances which many of my readers will recall.
He pleaded with perfect justice that as a Jew such an exile left him
homeless; that the original country of which he was nominally a citizen
(under the broken-down fiction that Jews can be Germans, or Austrians,
or what not, and cease to be themselves) would not have him; that his
interests, his livelihood had attached him to this country; he had never
hidden his true nationality nor changed his name, nor used any of those
subterfuges which, even when excusable, are dangerous and contemptible
in so many of his compatriots. There was no conceivable reason why such
rigour should be used against this man, save indeed that he was a Jew.
Put yourself in his shoes and see how the thing looks. There is no
nation to which you could have returned: there is no society to receive
you as a member of it. You are not permitted to remain in the atmosphere
with which you have grown familiar, in the surroundings which have
become those of your later life, and your consonance with which it is
too late for you to change. Could there be a grosser cruelty or a
grosser injustice? It is the very core of the whole problem that
_somewhere_ the Jew must be harboured, and therefore to some one of us
the question must be put, "Will you harbour him, and if so upon what
terms?" If each man answer, "No, I will not," then all collectively
become oppressors. It is no answer to say, "These men are not of us, and
therefore they may conspire against us," or "Their interests are
divergent from ours and therefore may and do clash with ours." All that
is granted. That is merely stating the problem, not solving it. What do
we say in daily life of men who merely state their grievances, harp upon
them, and make no effort to put them right? What do we think of men who
perpetually complain of something naturally weaker than themselves, make
no effort to understand its necessities and attempt only to rid
themselves of the nuisance without considering reciprocal duty and
mutual relations? The same should we think of those who so act towards
the Jewish community in our midst which, for all its domination and
exaggerated modern power, is ultimately at our mercy, far weaker than we
are in numbers and situation. Without further elaboration of what should
be an obvious political and moral principle, let us consider our part in
the task.
It consists, I conceive, in two very different determinations: two very
different but allied lines of conduct to which we must pledge ourselves.
The first, until recently the most difficult, is the determination to
speak of the Jewish people as openly, as continuously, with as much
interest, with as close an examination as we speak of any other foreign
body with which we are brought in contact.
The second, which will perhaps be the more difficult duty to practise in
the future, will be to avoid, in the individual public recognition of
those with whom we must live, all futile anger and all mere reaction. I
mean by mere reaction, blind reaction. The instinctive thrusting back
against a thing which presses on us, the uncalculated and animal return
blow, the consequences of which, either to ourselves or to others, are
not weighed when it is delivered; the futile complaint, the futile rage,
the futile cruelty.
Unless those two duties are undertaken together, unless the
determination to practise both be of equal weight, the solution I
propose will fail. To discuss the problem presented by the presence of
the Jewish people, to talk of them as one would of any other, openly and
frankly, to interest oneself in their history and in their present
doings: all this is only to aggravate the trouble if we use that open
dealing for the purpose of doing them a hurt, or if, in the course of
it, we allow ourselves (merely from irritation or contrast, from the
sense which all must have of opposition to things alien) to react
against them without consideration of the immediate and ultimate
consequences not only to themselves but to us.
Conversely, the determination to regard their interests and to avoid
every possible occasion of conflict, to hold a just measure with them,
is quite useless if we falsify the whole relation by secrecy and false
convention.
The moment that comes in, there comes in with it a secret
dissatisfaction with oneself and with the whole situation. The position
is falsified, the seed of animosity greatly stimulated, the danger of
mutual contempt made inevitable.
Now let us look at these two branches of what we have to do in the
matter, and see what difficulties lie in the way.
In the way of frankly recognizing, examining, taking an open interest in
the Jewish minority in our midst there lie three very powerful
obstacles. First the inherited convention of polite society; secondly,
and much the most powerful, fear; and thirdly, the very reputable desire
to avoid offence.
The first of these, the fear of convention, has many roots--the
necessity for harmony in a leisured life, that is, the desire to avoid
friction even at the expense of truth, the mere momentum of a quiet
habit, the fear of misunderstanding which may come from one side casting
ridicule upon the other, which may offend the person whom we have
misunderstood, or make us ridiculous in his eyes and those of our
audience.
There is also, of course, as a cause, more powerful than any other, the
force which lies behind all convention, the force which makes a man take
off his hat in a church, which forbids his walking without boots in the
street on the driest day, that is, the pressure of general practice. But
the thing to realize is that in this form--I mean as distinct from any
feeling of fear or of charity--the thing is a convention and a
convention only. Difficult as it is to break with conventions, unless
_this_ convention is broken once and for all, the Jewish problem remains
with us unsolved and growing in acuteness and peril.
You can meet an Irishman and discuss with him the conditions of his
nation. You can ask an Italian when he was last in Italy, or
congratulate a Frenchman upon his acquisition of your tongue or tell him
that it is difficult for him to understand your own customs: but a
convention arose under the Liberal fiction--to which I have devoted so
much space in the earlier part of this book--that to do any of these
very natural things in the case of a Jew is monstrous. Your audience is
shocked if you ask some learned Jew at a public table a question upon
his national literature or history. It is a solecism to refer to his
nationality at all, save perhaps now and then in terms of foolish
praise--in nine times out of ten praise not to the point and not
desired by its recipient. And even praise must be approached most
gingerly. You may not ask a Jew in London, however keen your desire for
information, whether he had cousins in Lithuania or Galicia who have
told him of the conditions of those distressed countries. You may not
ask him when his family came to England, nor, if he be a recent arrival,
what he thinks of the country. The whole thing is _taboo_.
More than this: you must, you are expected (or were until quite recently
expected) to emphasize in a most extravagant manner the complete
identity of your Jewish guest with the people among whom he lives. I do
not take offence if some chance acquaintance, noting my French name,
talks to me about France, and is interested in my experience as a
conscript long ago in that country. Mr. Redmond did not feel himself
insulted when those he met in London discussed Irish matters with him,
from the most acute difficulty in politics, to the most general allusion
to the Abbey Theatre. The editor of an Italian review visiting England
is not shocked if you ask him when he left Florence, nor are those
around you horrified at the ill-breeding of your question. But in the
matter of the Jew there stands this convention cutting you off from any
such straightforward and simple way of dealing with a fellow-being. That
convention, I say, must be broken down if we are to get any results at
all and to establish a permanent peace.
The thing was not, of course, entirely irrational in origin. No custom
is. It was to be excused upon several grounds.
First, there was the fact that many people were known to cherish so
strong an hostility to Jews that to emphasize the Jewish character of
anyone present might awaken that hostility.
Then there was the peculiar rapid transition both of Jewish movements
and of Jewish fortunes. In the case I have suggested, of asking a London
Jew whether he had relatives in Galicia or Lithuania, you might be
stumbling upon relations much poorer than himself in the East End of
London; or, again, you might seem to be emphasizing the nomadic
character of the race and thereby also emphasizing the contrast between
it and our own.
But much the strongest excuse for the convention was the well-founded
idea that its exercise pleased the Jews themselves. Men avoided direct
mention of Jewish nationality because it was felt that such direct
mention was almost an insult. It was a thing which the Jew in whose
presence you found yourself desired to have kept in the background; and
though we might not understand why he desired it, yet we respected his
desire as we do that of anyone with whom we wish to preserve harmonious
relations. Most men, for instance, are indifferent upon, say, the matter
of smoking. Most men are quite at their ease when they are asked whether
they smoke or not, and if they do, whether they prefer this or that
brand of tobacco. But now and then one comes across a man who, from some
accident of training (as, for instance, a man whose mother brought him
up to think smoking a mortal sin), does not like to have it alluded to.
I myself know the case of a man of the highest culture and of
considerable social position to whom you may not say anything about pigs
either in connection with farming or in connection with food; for his
sympathies are Mohammedan. In these exceptional cases, when we know of
our guest's particular desire, we yield to it for the sake of harmony
and of right living. So is it in this matter of the former convention
against alluding to Jewish nationality or Jewish interests in any form.
Whether the Jews were wise or not to cherish that convention, as they
undoubtedly did, does not concern this part of my argument. I am talking
of our duty and not of theirs. But I say that unless the convention is
softened and at last dissolved, nothing can be done. Both parties should
know that it only does harm. It renders stilted and absurd all our
relations; it fosters that suspicion of secrecy which I have insisted
upon as the chief irritant in those relations, and it creates a feeling
of exception, of oddity, which is the very worst service that could be
rendered to the Jews themselves.
Some little time ago the convention went so far that even a mention, a
neutral--nay, a laudatory mention, of anything Jewish in a general
company led to an immediate awkwardness. Men looked over their
shoulders, women gave downward glances right and left. A sort of hunt
began, to see whether anyone present could possibly in any remote
connection be offended by the monstrous deed. If a man said, "What a
poet Heine was and how thoroughly Jewish is his irony!" and said it in a
room full of people, the adjective "Jewish" acted like a pistol
shot--could anything be more absurd! Yet so it was.
But the point I make is not against the absurdity of this convention but
against its peril. It is an obstacle to all right handling of what is
becoming daily a more and more insistent and acute difficulty.
It is obvious that the getting rid of such a convention is not to be
effected by violent methods, nor immediately. But our duty is to
accelerate its decline and, within reason, to enlarge every opportunity
for treating the Jewish nationality precisely as one treats any other. I
mean precisely as one treats any other in conversation or in writing. We
all know the insane type which loves to break convention merely because
it is a convention, and we shall certainly have to be on our guard
against this sort of person in the near future, as this particular
convention begins to break down. But without encouraging such
eccentricities there is ample room for an increasing ease in the
recognition of what after all we know to be reality, a reality which
requires open discussion for the good of us all. The danger is lest even
this merely conventional obstacle should by too long a resistance dam up
forces which tend to break it down and therefore lest, when it is pulled
down, we should admit the other extreme of licence, with its opportunity
for insult and damage. That is what has happened in the case of other
much more reasonable Victorian conventions, and we must not have it
happen in the case of the convention which for so long forbade us to
admit that a Jew was a Jew or to take any open interest, when he was
present, in the things which he himself thinks the most interesting of
all.
And if anyone shall answer that convention is necessary, lest on its
decline open hostility should follow, I can only say that this is to
despair of any equitable solution at all. But my whole thesis in this
book is that such a solution need not yet be despaired of.
There is one more thing to be said in this matter of the old _taboo_.
However long it may linger in the small educated class, it has gone for
ever among the populace, and it is the popular instinct we shall have
mainly to deal with in the difficult times ahead of us.
The populace in this country talks upon Jewish matters with a frankness
which would astonish the drawing-rooms, and has so talked upon them for
a generation past--ever since the great novel influx of poor Jews began
to pour into our towns. It not only talks thus openly to and of Jews
upon its own level, but it is thoroughly alive to the presence and power
of Jews in government. Those who think that a continuance of the
convention can put off the necessity for a solution would be
disillusioned if they would spend a few days east of Aldgate, and mix
with their fellow-citizens there.
Allied to this obstacle of convention is the very real obstacle of
charity.
Now we are here dealing not with a positive charity but with a negative
one and with a form of charity uncommonly like slackness.
The man who honestly thinks that any allusion to Jewish races in
contemporary art, history or letters in the presence of a Jew is
offensive and therefore to be avoided, from goodness of heart, _and who
also practises the same virtue where any other foreigner is concerned_
is rare indeed. There are such men, for men of exceptional goodness
coupled with exceptional stupidity are to be found. But the excuse of
charity as it is generally put forward is not wholly ingenuous. Where it
is ingenuous our reply to-day must be that even at the risk of
occasional ill-ease, the danger of offence must be risked; for unless we
risk it there is increasing peril of a much greater offence against
justice. For whatever reason open discussion is burked, even for the
reason of charity, we only put off the evil day, and charity so used may
be compared to the charity which refuses to take action in any other
critical problem of increasing gravity. The charity which hesitates to
control the supplies of a spendthrift, or to wage a defensive war in a
just cause, or to defend an oppressed man at the risk of quarrelling
with his oppressor, is a charity misdirected.
But, as I have said, with much the greater part of men who plead this
motive the plea is, if they would only examine their own consciences,
found to be false. And the test of its falsity will be apparent when the
convention slackens. When it is no longer conventional to avoid all
mention of Jews, how many will remain silent merely from the love of
their fellow-men? One might go further and say that when the convention
has gone, any need for this kind of charity will go with it. There is an
exception, of course, in the case of the man whose dislike of Jews is so
violent that he fears himself if he gives any rein to his tongue. That
mania is exceptional; but where it is found certainly its victim will do
well to keep silence. If a man cannot mention the Hebrew alphabet
without a sneer, or the economics of Ricardo without betraying his ill
feeling for Ricardo's lineage, then certainly he had better hold his
tongue when Jews are there. So, too, a Frenchman who raves against the
English had far better not discuss the British Constitution or the
genius of Newton in any society where an Englishman may be present.
There remains the chief obstacle--that of fear.
There is no doubt that the strongest force still restraining an
expression of hostility to the Jew is fear.
In a sense, of course, there is a "fear" of breaking convention--but
that is fear only in metaphor. I mean not this, but the very real dread
of consequences: the feeling that an expression of hostility to Jewish
power may bring definite evils on the individual guilty of it, and a
panic lest those evils should fall upon him. How strong this feeling is,
anyone can testify who has explored, as I have, this most insistent of
modern political ills; and doubtless the greater part of my non-Jewish
readers will recall examples to the point.
It is a fear of two consequences, social and economic, and even of both
combined. Men dread lest hostility to the Jew Domination should bring
them into the grip of some unknown but suspected world-wide power--some
would call it a conspiracy--which can destroy the individual who shall
be so rash as to challenge it. Some perhaps have gone to the length--the
insane length--of reading the word "destroy" in its literal sense and of
fearing for their lives. Such an illusion is laughable. But very many
more are affected by the reasonable conception that they will have
against them, if they provoke it, an intelligent, combined action which
they cannot meet because there is no organization upon their side:
because it is international; because there is behind it a great
intensity of feeling; because through finance it controls the political
machines of all the nations, because it is all-powerful in the
Press--and so forth.
They dread, I say, the social consequences. They also (and that with
more definition and more sense) dread the economic consequences. They
recognize (they also exaggerate) the grip of the Jew over finance. They
conceive that if they speak they will be dragged down, their enterprises
ruined, their credit dissolved. And that is the most powerful instrument
which can be brought to bear. When supernatural motives disappear the
strongest motive remaining after appetite is avarice; and avarice is
more universal than appetite and more continuous. Nor is it only avarice
which is at work here, but also the respectable desire for security.
There are to-day innumerable men who would express publicly on Jews what
they continually express in private, but who conceal their feelings for
fear that their salaries may be lost or their modest enterprises
wrecked, their investments lowered, and their position ruined. Above
them are a lesser number, equally convinced that their large fortunes
would be in peril were they so to act.
The characteristic of all this feeling is two-fold. In the first place,
as would seem to be the case with convention, though in a much greater
degree, it dams up and enormously increases the latent force of anger
against Jewish power both real and imaginary. It is like the piling up
of a head of water when a river valley is obstructed, or like the
introducing of resistance into an electric current. The suppression of
resentment, though that suppression is the act of the men who themselves
feel the resentment and not directly of their opponents, is a fierce
irritant and accounts for the high pressure at which attack escapes when
once it is loosened.
I speak only of hostility and of attack, for it is in these least
rational examples that the strength of the thing is to be found. But it
applies also to mere discussion. There is hardly anyone to-day who does
not desire to discuss as an urgent political problem the present
position, the present power, the present disabilities, the present
claims of Israel. But for one that will openly discuss these things
there are ten who, in varying degrees, forbid themselves so plain a
freedom of speech in dread of what consequences might follow. It has,
like all panic, a ridiculous element. It is informed by the most absurd
illusions; it suffers from grotesque imaginings and phantasms. In some
this dread of the Jewish power has very plainly passed the line which
divides the stable from the unstable mind and even the sane from the
insane. But it is none the less a formidable element in our problem.
This obstacle, much more than that of convention, bears a character of
rigidity. It works for a certain time, then it breaks down and releases
a flood.
That is why the first expressions of hostility in our time were so
exaggerated and ill-proportioned. That is why so many of them were
plainly mad. This very character of exaggeration, this very wildness in
proportion, rendered those against whom the attack was delivered more
contemptuous of it than they should have been.
The forerunners of the present movement--I mean, of the movement hostile
to Israel--were not calculated to excite the respect of their opponent
or even to carry with them the men on their own side. They lacked that
"common" sense which is the first quality of leadership. For the power
of leadership implies a soul in common with those who are led. The
enthusiast can lead permanently, but the extravagant man never for long.
I say that these first attacks were on that account despised: they were
unduly despised by those whom they menaced.
There lay in reserve behind all the exaggeration and wildness a great
bulk of very different opinion; the opinion of men normal in their
appreciation of values and of proportion, not given to "seeing things,"
fully in touch with reality; men who know that they have hitherto only
been silent through the action of fear, who despise themselves on that
account and who are the more ready to act. For the sense of fear not
only degrades but angers: at least in our race. The European who admits
to himself that he has restrained an instinct not from religion, nor
from a general sense of right, but from cowardice, is always angry with
himself and awaits the moment when he can take his own revenge upon his
own past and clear himself of reproach in his own eyes.
Herein lies the peril to Israel of such a state of affairs. But with
that I am not here concerned. I am only concerned with its effect upon
ourselves. So long as we degrade ourselves, so long as we humiliate
ourselves by our own cowardice, so long as we shirk all reasonable
discussion, let alone all expression of hostility because we dread the
consequences at the hands of our opponents, so long there are present in
rising intensity two evil things: first, the postponement of the right
solution; secondly, the turning of a reasoned policy into mere hatred
with all the consequences that flow from such evil emotion.
The longer we maintain whatever remains of that barrier to free speech
(happily it is already crumbling) the longer do we produce the two fatal
results of postponing justice and of creating enmity. The destruction of
that barrier, the ridding of ourselves of fear in the matter, is, as is
always the case in the exercising of this unmanly thing, a matter for
individual effort. As the proverb goes, "Some one must bell the cat,"
which is another way of saying that if each man waits upon his
neighbour, things will only grow worse and worse.
It is for each in his place, before it is too late, to approach the
Jewish problem and to discuss it openly; to preface that discussion by a
frank interest and a general expression upon all those things in the
minority which directly concern its relations with the majority; to deal
with the Jewish nation exactly as one would with any other.
It used to be a dictum in those who pleaded a lifetime ago for the open
criticism of Scripture, that "the Bible should be approached like any
other book."[2] The result is not of good augury to my present argument
and I rather dread the parallel; but since the phrase is well known I
will use it as a model. It is time, I say, to be rid of treating the
Jewish nation as something closed, mysterious and secret. Let us treat
it "like any other nation." It is no wonder if men, moved by nothing but
a blind hatred, feel some hesitation upon the consequence of that
hatred. But I am convinced that if we on our side get rid of this absurd
modern fear, take the Jew in his right proportions, rid our mind of
exaggeration in his regard--especially of the conception of some inhuman
ability capable of conducting a plot of diabolical ingenuity and
magnitude--we shall be met from the other side.
The Jews are not the only force which is international nor the only
international force the dread of which has disturbed men's judgments.
They are not the only international force which has some degree of
organization and cohesion. If you desire to vent your active dislike of
the Scotch or of the Irish you must be prepared for a certain amount of
Scotch or Irish hostility. You will come across something of an
organization and suffer accordingly; but if you cherish the conception
of a vast subterranean force, Scotch or Irish, watching you with a
malignant power and capable of your destruction, you are, I think, out
of the real world.
If you desire to vent your active dislike of the Catholic Church you
will find ubiquitous opposition. But if you conclude from this that you
are at grips with a monster then you are out of touch with reality.
So it is, surely, with this dread of the Jewish power, which has sullied
so many men's minds, postponed the right discussion of the problem and
nourished ill-ease everywhere. If we simply act as though that dread
were despicable like any other dread, and turned to perfectly open
discussion of the whole affair, even to an open expression of hostility
where hostility is deserved, we shall be the better for it. In any case
it is our duty to ourselves as well as to the State to get rid of fear
in the business, for until we are rid of it no advance towards a
solution can be made.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] I beg leave to introduce an anecdote. An undergraduate once said to
Dr. Jowett, the Master of Balliol, "I take up the Gospels and treat them
as an ordinary book." The Master answered: "Did you not find them a very
extraordinary book?" So it will prove, I think, with the fascination of
Israel.
THEIR DUTY
CHAPTER XIII
THEIR DUTY
Where positive causes have been found for an evil it is obvious that the
cure of that evil consists in the removal of the causes, in so far as
they can be removed.
In the particular case of the friction between the Jewish community and
their hosts the causes of that friction are the foolish and dangerous
habit of secrecy and the irritating expression of superiority. The
causes the Jew can remove if he will. The matter is in his own hands: we
can do nothing: he can do everything.
But beyond this negative duty which is incumbent upon the Jews if they
would achieve a peaceful issue of the perils which menace their future,
there is a positive action also incumbent upon them. They must foster,
they must even propose, institutions which will the better mark them off
from a society not their own and restore to them the dignity of a
nation. I shall in the last chapter of this book contend that the policy
leading to a solution must repose not upon direct laws of our own
imagining, not upon reactions which will almost certainly prove
oppressive, and almost certainly be evaded, but upon a general spirit
recognizing the separate nationality of the Jews. But though this is
true of every Christian Western State in which they find themselves, it
is not true of their own nation. They on their side may well come
forward with propositions which they have the capacity for making,
because they will know how to frame them (as we cannot) after a fashion
consistent with their own dignity and their own tradition. There is a
beginning of such things already present in the Jewish schools, the
Jewish guardians and the considerable separate organization which the
Jews have openly set up for their community in this country. These
beginnings have but to be extended.
Those who are openly hostile to Jews will say that any proposals coming
from their side will conceal a trap. "This people" (they say) "will
always suggest things which will seem innocent enough and apparently do
no more than define their position plainly for the future; but we shall
find ourselves caught in an obligation and the Jews more our masters
than ever. They will," say these objectors, "remain as they are to-day,
and while they claim every privilege as a separate community, they will
also insist upon the full citizenship which is incompatible with this
attitude. We shall find that, whatever institutions we ask them to
frame, those institutions will work not only in their favour but also
heavily against us."
I doubt it. The special Jewish institutions already at work have no such
effect. On the contrary, they already relieve the strain. One of those
institutions, for instance, is the Jewish press: the newspapers
specially devoted to Jewish interests and acting as spokesmen for Jewish
ideas. They are not always as polite as they might be. I have had myself
at times to lodge a complaint against the way in which they have
treated sincere efforts for the settlement of our difficulties and an
honest attempt at finding a way out. They have left a handle to their
enemies sometimes by too insistent or, as those enemies would call it,
too arrogant a claim, and they do write now and then as though we, the
vast majority, had no rights and the only thing worth considering was
the advancement of their own people.
But, after all, it would be absurd to expect anything else. A small
minority vigorously fighting its own hand must exaggerate its claim; an
organism defending itself against very heavy pressure from without
cannot but appear aggressive, and I shall always maintain that the
presence of an openly Jewish institution speaking for Jewish interests,
no matter how insistently, is an excellent thing. It presents a healthy
contrast with the converse attempt to present Jewish arguments under the
cover of neutrality, and to spread Jewish ideas anonymously through what
are very far from being neutral agents.
If I be asked what institutions I have in mind I can only repeat that it
is for the Jews themselves to make the first proposal, but I suggest an
extension of the system, which is already present in embryo, whereby
disputes between Jews shall be arbitrated before a Jewish tribunal. Not
only its extension but its confirmation at the request of the Jews
themselves, might be a good thing. It would also not be a bad thing
if--some time hence when things were ripe for the change--disputes
between Jews and non-Jews could be tried in Courts where the special
character of such disputes, the distinctive difference between them and
disputes between the fellow-citizens of the country in which they live,
should come before tribunals of a mixed character. To attempt this
to-day would, of course, be a very new departure in procedure, indeed a
revolutionary one; and there is no prospect of it for a long while; but
with the growing number among us, and the growing influence, of Jews it
will, I think, when it does come at last, be of advantage to both
parties. It would be fatal if it were imposed upon them. It would not be
accepted. It would not work. But if it were suggested by the Jewish
community spontaneously, and started and developed by them, it would
succeed. And it would add a great deal to the relief already experienced
for the functioning of the other institutions I have mentioned.
There is little more to be said under this head. Apart from the duty of
open dealing and this specific policy of fostering separate institutions
we have no claim to press.
All the main part of the mutual Duty is on _our_ side. Therefore have I
given it the space it seems to deserve and confined to no more than
these few lines correlative suggestions for those who, after all, are
not responsible to us for their actions and may properly resent the
airing of _our_ views on the domestic details of their alien
organization.
VARIOUS THEORIES
CHAPTER XIV
VARIOUS THEORIES
Before approaching my conclusion it may be well to review certain
subsidiary theories which I have not hitherto touched in my discussion,
because they stand apart from its argument.
There is a whole group of historical and other theories upon the
position of the Jews which either imply that there is no problem, or if
there is one that it cannot be solved, or even that if there is a
problem it is of a sort that does not need solution, because that
solution would be of no practical value.
There come in the first place those theories upon the international
position of the Jews which are frankly non-rational, and which vary from
those which may be defended with some show of reason from the history of
the past, to those which are wholly imaginary. None of these, even
though some one of them should be true, can find much place here because
none lends itself to discussion.
Thus there is the conception of a curse; the conception that Israel
must, until its conversion, suffer a perpetual pilgrimage and perpetual
hostility. It is a statement bound up with that other popular prophecy
that in the last days Israel will be reconciled with the Universal
Church. Those who have these ideas at the back of their minds (they are
more numerous than modern thought would like to admit), at heart despair
of any solution, and would not attempt to urge it with any hope of
success. They say, "The thing is fated and must continue." But even
they, I think, must admit that just as philosophy admits a paradox of
determination and free will, so political effort must admit a paradox of
foreseen failures and our duty, in spite of them, to aim at a political
good.
Whether it be indeed true or not, that reconciliation is impossible and
that in the long run the quarrel must drag itself out, it is certainly
profoundly immoral to look on at the spectacle with no attempt to
ameliorate its evils.
There is again the theory (which I mention in passing and leave to its
adherents) that the British and the Jews are in some way mysteriously
allied by Providence, so that any solution which does not give the
fullest satisfaction to Israel (no matter at what cost to poor Japhet)
is treason. These people mystically regard Britain as the handmaid of
Jewry, and there is a section of them who further regard their
fellow-countrymen as the ten lost tribes. I have in my library some
specimens of their literature.
There is an opposite and, to me, detestable theory (but I must mention
it because it exists), that the antagonism hitherto found perpetually,
whether latent or active, between this people and the world about them
is the use of the one as a necessary and divine oppressor of the other.
To those who hold such a theory I can only reply that two can play at
that game, and it certainly absolves those whom they would oppress from
any obligation whatever of seeking a solution on their side. If a man
thinks he can do harm to Israel wantonly, without suffering the
reproaches of his own conscience, he is in error; and I confess that
were I free (as I am not in a book of discussion and argument) to
indulge in mere affirmation I should be inclined to say that those who
set out with this remarkable object in view will catch a Tartar.
There is the opposite theory that a special and Divine protection is
still exercised, not only for the preservation of the Jews but for
judgment upon their enemies. _That_ theory, I think, lies at the back of
many a Jewish action in history and of much Jewish policy to-day.
Non-rational, religious in origin, it is, I fancy, to very many of the
race which has suffered so much, a consolation and a support.
Now all these non-rational theories (I use the word without any bad
connotation: the non-rational--what is often inaccurately called the
mystical--attitude towards any problem may well be more practical than
the rational approach to it) I leave on one side as improper to rational
discussion.
I have heard it maintained, again, by both parties to this debate, that
the presence of an alien force, migratory, intense, full of tradition,
experience and cohesion, was essential to the height and the activity of
our own civilization.
These are not content to discover individual instances of Jewish
excellence in the mass around them, or to extend the renown of
individual Jewish genius. They are rather concerned with the general
proposition that _some_ such flux is necessary to the full action of a
high and diverse culture. They tell us that but for the Jew the
civilization of Europe would have grown torpid, would have settled into
a fixed groove, incapable of change and of creative progress. The Jew,
by this theory, is regarded as a sort of activating principle, who,
whether as an irritant at the worst, or an inspiration at the best,
keeps all our European life agog, and is necessary to its continuous
business. These also incline to see the Jew at the origin of every great
movement in European thought. They see him indirectly producing the vast
transformation of the Roman Empire from a pagan, not indeed to a Jew but
to a Christian, that is (in their eyes) to an Oriental mood. They see
the Jew at the root of the great revolutionary philosophy which springs
from the eleventh century and reaches its culmination in the great
scholastics of the thirteenth. They insist upon the name of Averroës
(Ibn Roshd), the philosopher of the twelfth century, the Kadi of
Cordova: the exponent of Aristotle, the expositor--whom the Jews
preserved: upon the great Moses ben Maimon, our Maimonides. These also
put Nicolas de Lyra at the root of the Reformation: "_Si Lyra non
lyrasset Luther non saltasset._" But I may remind them that the Jewish
character of this man is at least doubtful, that he was of the religious
Orders of Christendom.
These also will certainly and with some reason ascribe to Jewish
influence the great economic revolution of the seventeenth century,
which has been followed by so vast an extension of wealth and of
population, though hardly of human happiness.
Now for all this there is certainly something to be said as an aspect of
historical truth. How far it may be extended to cover, as its exponents
would make it cover, the whole historical field, may be debated, but I
would ask my readers to consider what change we should have seen in the
development of Europe if by some magical instrument Jewish influence
had been upon some one date removed. It is a theory fascinating, in a
way applicable, and arresting. It is, at any rate, not nonsense.
It is particularly true that something in the continuous exercise of
analysis by the Jewish intelligence perpetually moves European
intelligence to action--The great disputations of the Early Middle Ages
were, largely, either directly disputations with Jews or disputations
provoked by the intellectual attitude of the Jew; and the Jew, in the
famous name of Spinoza, stands at the origin of that merely natural,
that Lucretian interpretation of the world which continued through
Descartes to its great expansion in the present day. You find that
element in economics as you do in philosophy, in political science as
you do in economics; and, talking of economics, it must not be forgotten
that the greatest name at the foundation of modern economic science is
the name of a Jew, Ricardo, while the most prominent name in the
development of its most prominent direct application is also a Jewish
name--the name of Karl Marx.
It is not without significance that any one of these names recalls, side
by side with its Jewish origin, an aloofness from the general community
of the Jews. That community, I think it is fair to say, abandoned
Spinoza; Ricardo and, I believe, Karl Marx were alien to the national
religion, and the latter married out of his people and exercised his
enormous influence extraneously to the blood from which his family
sprang. For though it is true that the _direction_, the _staff_ of
Communism is Jewish, yet its convinced adherents are in the mass of our
blood.
And in that connection I am reminded of another theory or fact
attaching to the history of Israel, which is that the intellectual
independence of the Jew has been as marked throughout the ages as his
solidarity. There are many, I know, of that nation who regard such
exceptions as vagaries and almost condemn them as traitors; yet they are
no small asset to the reputation of their people and their names,
however much they may be repudiated by their compatriots, shed lustre
upon the whole body from which they sprang. These include (let it be
remembered) not only the "sceptical" philosophers, not only the
materialists, but also those extraordinary exceptions who have lent the
vigour, the tenacity and the lustre of the Jewish intellect to the
service of the Catholic Church. I make bold to say that in no one of the
Faith has there been more devotion than in those who, like Ratisbonne
(and he was but one among many), have put such qualities at the service
of what they have discovered to be alone divine. A cynic might add St.
Paul, but, for that matter, the whole origin of the Church was
intermixed with the intense individual efforts of such men.
In this connection also every wise man will admit that there is no
greater error than to exaggerate the consciousness of Jewish action
whether the error proceed from those who admire or who detest it. To
hear their modern opponents talk one might imagine that the Jewish
people formed a small club of which every member knew every other while
each worked in the unison of a disciplined body. That aberration I have
dealt with more than once upon former pages. The truth is that no nation
on earth presents so many surprising exceptions to its general action
as does this nation, and that no nation on earth, when it moves in one
general direction, as it often does, is actuated by a common motive less
conscious. We who stand outside the Jewish body may mark its cohesion,
and will mark it, I hope, to its honour; but its own members complain
rather of its lack of cohesion. I have heard them complain--I know not
how often--of the way in which the wealthier Jews left their society for
that of an alien body, sneered at the general body of Israel, and
remained indifferent to the common cry of the race. It is this
unconsciousness in action, this frequent replacement of motive by
instinct which accounts for what all observers have noticed, especially
in times of persecution. I mean the bewilderment of the oppressed at the
action of their oppressors.
I remember once listening to a most eloquent speech delivered in the
course of a debate in which, with that long recollection which is
characteristic of his people, an Israelite passionately declaimed the
gratitude of that people to St. Bernard who saved their remnant upon the
Rhine from the popular fury. I remember also how another in a debate
(for I have attended many such up and down the country and have heard
from as many aspects as possible what the Jewish attitude towards us is)
stated simply, in reply to my description of the Jewish financial
position in this country after the Conquest: "Your cathedral and your
abbeys and even your castles were built with _our_ money." The phrase
was significant of the way in which what the English community of the
time regarded as a tolerated abuse, those fortunes which _they_ never
thought of as Jewish at all, but as moneys temporarily unjustly wrung
from the people at large, were regarded in contemporary Jewry as private
property legitimately acquired, held in full possession.
I could wish in this connection that some learned Jew would produce a
History of Europe from the point of view of his people: a short
textbook, I mean, intended for our consumption; to show us ourselves
from a standpoint very different from our own. It may be that such a
book exists. I am certain it would be more useful than those indirect
attacks (for they are attacks) upon the Christian tradition which
pretend to a spirit of impartiality but are none the less hostile to
that tradition in every line. I would much rather read the story of
Europe as it was seen by a practising Jewish scholar than a so-called
impartial and agnostic account which grotesquely represents the Church
as something external to the body of Europe and even inimical to it.
In this connection also we should have (what now we lack), and that is a
conspectus of the Jewish action over Christendom and Islam combined. We
are aware of the tolerance, or rather favour, displayed to their Jewish
subjects by the Mohammedans of Spain. It was neither universal nor
continuous. What we do not sufficiently hear, what we have to piece
together from chance allusions, is the connection between the Moorish
Jews, before and during the Reconquista, and their fellows to the north.
Before I leave these cursory and sporadic notes on what I have called
the "theories" upon our problem, I should mention one which would
unhappily seem to have acquired widespread support to-day and which is
surely the least satisfactory of all--even less satisfactory than the
now dying fiction which pretended that the Jewish nation was not present
in our midst, but consisted only of a mass of individuals already
absorbed by their alien surroundings. I mean the theory that it is
possible to continue in a sort of simmering atmosphere of partial
repression, with the Jew treated as something alien and hostile, yet his
presence unceasingly tolerated. That would seem to be the imperfect
conclusion implied, if not stated, in a hundred modern pamphlets and
discussions, the authors of which repudiate the name of Anti-Semite
though they sympathize apparently with action even less logical than the
politics of the Anti-Semite. There is no such equilibrium possible, even
if its establishment were as moral as it is in fact immoral. If a frank
solution be not found, nothing firm can be established. All we shall be
establishing will be a violent and successive fluctuation. It is
impossible to maintain an attitude permanently hostile to one's
neighbour, yet count on that hostility remaining permanently repressed.
You fall inevitably along the slope of such a tendency into those
excesses which it should be our whole object to condemn, to foresee and
to prevent.
You cannot continue, as so many modern men seem, from their
conversation, to wish, with political equality on the one side and a
living spirit of enmity upon the other. You cannot get peace by giving a
mere legal definition to the status of a minority, which is also
necessarily your neighbour, and refusing a social action consonant with
the legal definition. If you try to do that you are trying to do two
things, one of which will destroy the other. No one can doubt which
will be victorious in a conflict between a living sentient motive and a
mere definition in public law.
One attitude towards the question which I have heard fairly often in the
mouths of Jews and seen in their writings is something like this: "Our
affairs have nothing to do with people outside our nation. This
discussion of what you call 'the Jewish problem' is an impertinence upon
your part. There is a Jewish problem indeed, but it is a domestic
problem, and we request you (with some asperity) to mind your own
business."
If this attitude were sound, the search for what I have called a
solution, though it might satisfy the intelligence, would be a breach of
civic morals. In the same way it would be a breach of civic morals for
me to work out a solution for the quarrel between Mr. Jones and his
mother-in-law, neither of whom I have ever met and with whom I have no
relations, and then to press this solution upon the contending parties.
But the flaw in this attitude is that the problem is essentially one
involving two parties, the Jews and the non-Jews. The problem we are
attempting to solve is a problem expressed in terms of both. Some would
even say that there is hardly a domestic question within the Jewish
nation which does not have its reaction upon society outside it, and
which it is not the business of that society outside to inquire into.
That would be pressing things rather far. But the main problem is
intimately concerned with both parties and as much with the one as with
the other. It is true, indeed, that the consequences of a false
solution, or of shirking the solution altogether, would be more acute
for the Jew than for us; but we should both suffer, and even on our
side the suffering would be grievous.
Even if there were no question of suffering in the ordinary sense of the
term, there would still be the question of justice. The Jews who resent
a statement of the problem and an attempt at solving it are not doing
their own people any good and are at the same time denying us the right
of putting our own affairs in order, which denial is, of course,
intolerable: for the position of the Jews in our great States and in
Islamic society is something which those States and that society have to
determine. They cannot leave it in the air. To some conclusion they
_must_ come, and soon, and on the nature of that conclusion depends
their peace.
Two theories, proceeding from very different states of mind, the
opposite each of the other, but each exclusive of any solution, spring
from the root idea that there is something inexorably malignant in the
relations between the Jew and his surroundings. In the one form this
takes the shape of affirming that the unfortunate Jew is invariably
ill-treated by his wicked hosts and always will be so ill-treated. In
the other it takes the form of saying that the wicked Jew will always be
conspiring and trying to hurt his good, kind hosts and always will be so
conspiring. In either case it is no good trying to find a solution, for
it is affirmed that the quarrel is in the nature of things. People will
say to one, "Why attempt to change something which cannot be changed?
Why talk of your material as something other than what it is? Cats will
always quarrel with dogs, and if you want to avoid a quarrel the only
thing to do is to keep the dogs and cats of your household apart."
It is precisely because I do not believe either form of this idea to be
true that I have sought for a solution. I do not believe either form of
doctrine to be true because the evidence is against it. That evidence is
to my hand and can be examined by my own unaided powers, as it can be
examined by any other person in our modern society. I cannot recollect
one single case in all the hundreds of Jews I have come across--not one
in the score whom I can count as intimates--who showed any sign of this
malignant hatred. I have heard many outbursts of exasperation which,
when we think of the past, are natural enough; but of some persistent
and evil desire to hurt those among whom they live, some instinctive
desire unconnected with past suffering, and acting as a sort of
instinct, I have seen no trace. If such were to be discovered in some
exceptional Jew out of a large acquaintance I should conclude that it
might be true of a small minority, but common sense and common
experience are sufficient to show that it does not affect the mass.
Of the causes of friction, even of acute friction, which I have
enumerated in former pages, there is the habit of secrecy, there is the
mutual contempt, arising in each from a sense of superiority over the
other; there is the quarrel between what is national and what is
international, between what is of us and what is alien. There are, in a
word, plenty of elements suggesting accidental antagonism, but of
intrinsic antagonism there is no evidence--there is no evidence, I mean,
that the Jews would still desire to destroy a society in which they
found themselves at their ease.
And, if we examine ourselves, we shall be equally convinced that there
is no corresponding desire upon our side to do a wrong to the Jew. We
also are exasperated by the memory of insult in moments of quarrel, of
international action opposing our national interests and of friction
between what is native and what is alien; but that is a very different
thing from permanent and necessary antagonism. I know very well what is
called "modern thought" gives to the unconscious part of man a large
place and reduces, as much as it can, the field of reason. I cannot
agree with it. It seems to me that man is essentially rational; and his
political relations can be arranged consonantly with his conscious
morals and his conscious logic.
At any rate, if they cannot, there is an end of all statesmanship and of
all useful political action even in details.
Next, there are the two converse attitudes towards the question which
certainly are affecting, the one an increasing audience upon our side
and the other perhaps an interested though but secret audience upon the
other; I mean those two converse theories whereby, on the one side,
there is the Messianic idea of the Jew ultimately controlling the world,
on the other an extreme dread of that idea and a belief that it is being
actively pursued to the destruction of our institutions and religion.
I can understand that, with the traditions of his race behind him and
with the tone of their sacred writings in his ears, a Jew should lean in
some degree to such a conception, or at any rate that some Jews should
lean towards it. Certainly in face of the ridiculously exaggerated power
of the Jews in recent times (it is now declining, for secrecy was of its
essence and it has now been brought into the arena of open discussion)
it was natural that men should fall into the exaggeration of panic. They
saw the Jew, a tiny fraction of most communities, not more than a
twentieth of any community, exercising a power quite out of proportion
to his numbers or, indeed, to his ability; and they saw that power
directed towards ends which were Jewish ends and therefore hostile or
indifferent to the rest of mankind. But my reason for rejecting not only
exaggerations of this idea but its fundamental implication is that it
seems to me practically impossible. It connotes abilities upon the
Jewish side, a continuous will upon the Jewish side, both of which are
obviously absent. And you have only to look at history to see that long
before things come to anything like a struggle for supremacy it is the
Jew who suffers most from the suspicion of holding such a design, not
we. Indeed, that is one of the important elements in the dangerous
situation which has been created to-day.
That large and greatly increasing body of men who so fear Jewish
domination, and are vigorously reacting against the Jews under the
influence of that fear, are much more likely to end with injustice to
the Jew than with subservience to him. It is from this atmosphere that
the great misfortunes of the past have arisen. It is of the essence of
any solution that this mood should be exorcised upon the one side as
upon the other.
There is another theory which I have read of in more than one learned
Jewish treatise and which has been repeated (after Jewish authors
themselves had launched it) by many non-Jewish societies and historians,
to the effect that the very survival of the Jews, their very existence
as a separate community, was due to conditions common in the past, now
disappeared, and that therefore the present difficulties can safely be
left to time.
This is, of course, to make the general assertion that the Jewish race
can be absorbed, and that absorption is the solution. That conclusion I
summarily rejected in the earlier pages of this book on the historical
ground that it has had the most favourable circumstances for success and
yet has always failed. But in the particular case stated it has an
argument of its own and one needing very special examination: it is
this:--
Those who defend this theory tell us that however favourable the
opportunities for absorption were in the past they are nothing to the
opportunities of the present and the future, and that therefore the
argument from history fails. In the past (they tell us) the Jews were
exclusive and even made of their exclusiveness a religion. They on their
side mixed as little as possible with the world around them and we on
our side maintained that exclusion by an equal insistence upon the
difference between ourselves and them. We had in those days, it is
maintained, a religion based upon the Incarnation and therefore
abhorrent to the Jew; that religion is dead or dying, and with it the
tendency to exclusion from outside has disappeared; while on the Jewish
side there is also a great weakening of the old religious bond, less of
the old Messianic dogma, and on both sides the enormous melting-pot[3]
that makes for absorption with an intensity and rapidity quite unknown
in the past. It was one thing to absorb the Jew when it took a month to
go as an ordinary traveller from London to Rome, it is another thing
when it takes three days. It was one thing to absorb the Jew when in the
greater part of cases there was a bar to the mixing of the races, based
upon the nerves of religion, it is quite another thing to absorb the Jew
when those most powerful of emotional forces have disappeared--and so
forth.
Now the reasons which bring me to reject this theory are two-fold.
In the first place, I think it exaggerates the contrast between the past
and the present. In the second place, I know that in the actual world
before me and precisely under those conditions where the fusion, the
action of the "melting-pot," ought to be most complete, the most violent
reaction against absorption is to be observed.
As to the contrast between the past and the present, I think it is based
upon an imperfect apprehension of what our past has been. It comes of
that "telescoping up" of history to which I alluded in another
connection in my second chapter.
The long story of our race between the Roman occupation of Judæa and the
modern local and ephemeral industrial phase of the great modern towns is
not divided into two chapters, the strange past and the comprehensible
present. It is much of a muchness. The constant developments which
astonish us to-day in physical science, for instance, are not more
remarkable than the vast new developments in architecture and philosophy
which marked the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The disturbance of
thought which may be called "modern scepticism" is not anything like so
important a spiritual change as that tremendous revolution which we call
the conversion of the Roman Empire. The area of scepticism is not larger
to-day than it has been in many special periods of the past. The feeling
of strong religious emotion which forbids this or that action is still
present among us, sometimes attached to its older objects, sometimes (as
in the craze for prohibition) to some novel object. The indifference
which you will find to the particular religious barrier between Jew and
non-Jew is not peculiar to our times. It has come and gone in the past;
after a wave of such indifference you have had a wave of the most acute
reaction, and I think you are observing a wave of such reaction to-day.
Nor do I see how the rapidity of mere physical communications affects
the matter, nor even how the volume of emigration affects the matter.
You can get a million Jews from Lithuania to New York--a distance of
5,000 miles--in less time than you could get a million Jews from the
Valley of the Rhine into Poland some centuries ago; but the million Jews
seem to remain Jews just the same under modern conditions as they did in
the past. Indeed, the toleration of Jews, the friendly reception of
them, and therefore the opportunities for their absorption were
indefinitely greater in mediaeval Poland than they are in modern
America. It seems to me that the whole of this part of the argument is
based upon that prevalent view of history which comes from reading our
little modern text-books: and our little modern text-books are very
rubbishy. It is a view which comes from that absurd emphasis upon
whatever is contemporary. The modern advance of physical science is
regarded as having totally changed the world inwardly as well as
outwardly. We have only to look at the modern world and to compare it
with any _two_ distant, special periods we know, to discover that the
difference between any pair of these three is equally striking. In many
ways the modern world is much more like the world of the Antonines than
it is like the world of Innocent the Great. In many ways the world of
Innocent the Great is much more like the Roman Empire than the modern
world. In many ways the world of Innocent the Great and our world have
more in common than either has with the pagan Roman Empire. The general
lesson is, therefore, that our time, with all its remarkable
specialities, is but one specimen out of a great number equally
individual, and certainly there is nothing in it either of religious
scepticism breaking down old religious barriers or of rapidity of
communication, or of any other fundamental factor, which specially
suggests the absorption of the Jew.
For instance, the Jews mixed much more readily, on a much more equal
footing and with far less friction among the Mohammedans at particular
periods during the Islamic occupation of Spain than they do even in
England to-day. Yet they were not absorbed there, any more than they
were absorbed in Poland. They were not absorbed into that older,
tolerant, very denationalized pagan Roman world where they so often had
full civic rights and where they even manipulated, as they manipulate
to-day, the finances of the community.
As for the decay of exclusiveness on their part, I see no sign of it.
For this exclusiveness proceeds not so much from a particular
observance which may relax at one period and tighten up at another, as
from an invariable national tradition which fluctuates in intensity but
never sinks so low as to jeopardize the continuance of the people.
If we turn from argument to observation, the falsity of the theory
stares us in the face. We have but to take one point, where the metaphor
of the "melting-pot" most applies (and to which it was originally
applied), the city of New York. What has been the effect of this great
influx of Jews into New York, this turning of New York into a city a
third Jewish under our eyes and in so short a space of time? As we all
know, the effect has been the uprising, in that once indifferent
atmosphere, of such a feeling against the Jews as would appal us did we
see it in the Old World. It is red hot. It is an intense reaction
expressing itself with greater and greater violence every day; and the
spirit of that reaction cannot be better expressed than in a phrase
which we owe, I think, to Mr. Ford and his famous propaganda against the
Jews, through his paper the "Dearborn Independent." "It is all very well
to talk of the melting-pot," says he, "but so far from the Jews melting
in that pot, _it looks as though they wanted to melt the pot itself_."
There you have, in New York, if anywhere, an opportunity for the theory
of absorption to prove itself. You have present in the field a score of
different races, including great masses of a race so utterly different
from ours as the negro. You have a certain small proportion of Chinamen
and you have of European stocks an indefinite variety--most of them in
large numbers. You have not only in local establishments or even only
in civic theory, but in actual practice--in enthusiastic practice--a
complete equality and a positive pride in the reception of no matter
what elements of immigration, in the certitude that all can rapidly be
moulded into the American form. Most of these elements were absorbed,
and absorbed rapidly; where they were not absorbed there was at least
peace between them. Then arrives the Jew and a totally new situation at
once appears. A situation of challenge, of provocation, of admitted
exclusion, of violent debate and even of clamour: but no sign of
absorption. In presence of all the elements that should make for
absorption, difference and hatred between Jew and non-Jew is growing in
New York with the vitality of a tropical plant.
There is yet another theory which, if it were not widely held and if it
had not been advanced by so many Jews themselves, I should leave aside
as something comic, something unfit for serious discussion. But it has
been advanced and it must be met. It is no less than the theory that
there are no such people as the Jews, that the whole thing is illusion.
This monstrous affirmation is based, I need hardly say, upon what is
called a "scientific" examination of the affair: for that word
"scientific" has come to be associated with every kind of unreason. Men,
especially Jewish men, have been found to affirm most solemnly that they
had measured skulls, taken sections of hair, catalogued the colours of
eyes, established facial angles, analysed blood, and applied I know not
how many other tricks, with the result that no Jewish type could be
discovered! People who can reason thus do not seem to appreciate the
fundamental quarrel between nominalism and realism, or to have heard of
the old philosophic joke on the definition of "a thing."
We know a horse to be a horse, an apple to be an apple, a Chinaman to be
a Chinaman, or a Jew to be a Jew by some process on which philosophers
can debate, but upon the virtue of which no sane man doubts and upon the
right action of which we base all our lives. The chemist may tell me
that the chemical analysis of a lump of coal gives the same result as
the chemical analysis of a diamond, to which any man capable of using
his reason at all will reply that upon a very large number of other
lines of analysis, colour, touch, combustibility, hardness and softness,
economic value, prevalence (and so on indefinitely), the two are _not_
the same. No analysis is complete, and if we had made no conscious
analysis at all, we could still perceive at once that a lump of coal is
not a diamond.
It is just the same with these pseudo-scientific attempts to disprove
obvious truth. They pullulate and they are all equally ridiculous
because they deduce from insufficient data. The existence and
differentiation of the Jewish people as a race ethnically and as a
nation politically is as much a fact as the existence of coal or
diamonds. They are a nation politically because they act as a nation,
because their individual members feel and exercise a corporate function.
We know them to be a separate race because we can see that they are.
When you meet a Jew, whether you are his enemy or his friend, you meet a
Jew. He has a certain expression, a certain manner, certain physical
characteristics which you may not be able to analyse at the moment you
see him, but which give you the impression and the certitude that you
are dealing with a particular thing, to wit, the Jewish race. It is
true, of course, that the type, like all general types, fades off at the
edges, and there will always be cases where you may be in doubt of
whether you are dealing with a Jew or with a non-Jew, but there is a
marked central type round which the Jewish racial type is built up. That
is as certain as that there is a Mongolian type, or a negroid type, and
so forth.
I do not take the objection very seriously. I only note it because it
_has_ been made, and may crop up in the course of any discussion on this
grave political issue.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] I borrow the metaphor from Mr. Zangwill, who applied it to New York
particularly. I apply it to the whole modern industrial world.
HABIT OR LAW?
CHAPTER XV
HABIT OR LAW?
If it be true that the friction between the Jew and the civilization in
which he lives is aggravated by his habit of secrecy and by our
disingenuousness, by his expression of a sense of superiority which
galls us, and on our side by a lack of charity and of intelligence in
dealing with him, it would follow that no solution can be more than
approximate: that whatever arrangement be come to the contrast will
remain, and with it a certain latent friction, which always accompanies
contrast.
But there is between a simmering of that kind and the active boiling of
the question to-day (with the threat of its boiling _over_) all the
difference in the world. But even though the solution be imperfect, it
might be reasonably stable: we might at least have peace, though not
friendship. It further follows from the elements of the problem that the
solution lies along the lines of either party modifying whatever in its
action is an irritant to the other; whatever, that is, can be modified
by the will, and is not mixed up with something ineradicable.
The Jew cannot help feeling superior, but he can help the expression of
that superiority--at any rate he can modify such expression. He can
certainly, though it be at a great expense of tradition and habit, get
rid of that pestilent pseudo-defence of secrecy which poisons all the
relations between him and ourselves. We on our side can drop what is the
converse of that secrecy, the disingenuousness, the lack of candour,
into which we are fallen in our relations with the Jew. That cannot but
mean a great breach with our tradition and with habit also, but the
advantage is worth the sacrifice. We can (it must be the work of each
individual, it cannot be a corporate work) approach the Jew with more
respect and yet with more frequency. We can, I think, advance by many
degrees from the lack of charity we now show, even if we despair of
living in real intimacy with a people so different in their deepest
qualities from ourselves.
Personally, I am not sure that such closer intimacy might not be
established; I have never found any difficulty in reaching and retaining
intimate acquaintance with the Jews of my own circle--but I may have
been fortunate. I know that with most of my fellows it is not so, and
perhaps the Jew will always remain to the mass of those about him
something strange and unapproachable, and I fear, repulsive. But there
is no reason, why we should mix with that hesitation in our relations an
element of indifference, still less of contempt, still less, again, of
cruelty.
I repeat the formula for a solution: it is recognition and respect.
Recognition is here no more than the telling of the truth: there is a
Jewish nation. Jews are citizens of that nation; and recognition means
not only the telling of this truth on special occasions but the use of
it as a regular habit in our relations on both sides.
This statement is, upon any just analysis of the Jewish question, so
obvious and so simple, that it needs neither insistence upon it nor
development. Its plain statement is sufficient. But there attaches to a
solution so determined a much more active and complicated question, upon
the uncertainty of which not only this reform but many another has made
shipwreck. The question must be answered rightly, because, if we answer
it wrongly, the whole scheme fails.
The question is this: Should the social habit, the general method in
writing and speaking and in all relations, precede in this case the
institutional action, legal changes, constitutional definitions? Or
should the legal changes, the new institutions, the constitutional
definitions come first?
To decide rightly is of great moment, for this reason, that a wrong
decision may destroy all the effect of goodwill.
In my judgment the wrong decision would be that which would give
precedence to legal change, to new definitions, to new institutions, and
attempt out of them to build a new spirit. I take it that this reversal
of the true order would make all stable peace impossible.
It must be admitted, of course, that changes suggested by the Jews
themselves, the development of their own institutions, a voluntary
segregation of their community in other fields than those in which they
have already effected that segregation, stand in another category. These
new and definitely Jewish institutions we should always welcome. But the
attempt at framing public regulations, which are to defend the community
as a whole against an alien minority, when that minority must live with
one permanently and as a regular feature of the life of the community,
invariably tends to oppression, if such regulations are made the first
steps in a settlement instead of being left, as they should be, to the
last. Any separatist legislation should arise naturally out of a long
practice and full recognition of the Jews as a separate people and of
the accompaniment of that recognition with respect. If the advance is
made on our side, the Jew may refuse any such bargain. He may dig his
heels in and insist, as many another privileged class has insisted
before him, that he will continue to enjoy all that he has ever enjoyed,
that he will continue his demand for a dual allegiance, that he will
insist on the very fullest recognition as a Jew, and at the same time on
what is fatal to such recognition, the fullest recognition as a member
of our own community.
If he does _that_ (and there are those who tell us he will certainly do
so, and will refuse all reform), then the community will be compelled to
legislate in spite of him. It will be perilous for him and for us; it
may even be the beginning of grievous trouble for both, but it will be
inevitable. It will appear in a mass of legislation all over Europe,
which will affect this country with the rest.
The present situation cannot last indefinitely. It is already uncertain
even here, in England; it has reached further stages on the road to ruin
elsewhere. But if the Jew sees the peril in time, and appreciates the
nature of that change, the beginnings of which we have all seen and
which is proceeding at so great a pace, then relations can be
established out of which (later) formal rules, acceptable to both
parties, should proceed. And in that case it would be, I repeat, the
gravest of errors to initiate new positive laws and a new status before
a foundation had been prepared by the re-establishment of honest
relations; and that can only be done by a frank admission of reality, by
the open and continual admission everywhere that Israel is a nation
apart, is not, and cannot be, of us, and shall not be confounded with
ourselves.
There is great temptation to delay, because the acuteness of the problem
is not felt here as yet, among the well-to-do, and still more because it
differs in different communities. The peril seems still far distant from
us, though it may be at the very door of our neighbours. Routine, the
inheritance of the immediate past, the false security produced by the
conventions of that past, may well tempt those who dislike the effort of
a change to shirk that change. But I would ask any intelligent and
thoughtful Jew who still thinks he can rely upon the false position of
the nineteenth century whether the same forces are there to support him
to-day as were present then?
Take a particular example. In Poland and in Roumania the old fiction has
been temporarily imposed by force. The Jew, who in both these countries
is felt to be more alien than any other foreign European could be, is
imposed upon the Government and society of each country by the Western
Governments as a full citizen. The strain here is immensely aggravated
because it arose not from the nature of society but from the action of
outsiders; the English, the French, the American Governments (but
particularly the American and the English) have erected in Eastern
Europe this unstable, unjust and artificial state of affairs. It cannot
last, for it is unreal.
The communities in question may make no laws which recognize the Jew;
alternatively, the door is open for oppression: and the moment the hated
foreign interference weakens, oppression will come.
Well, when under the pressure of a real social difficulty and a crucial
one, the unreal settlement is torn up, by the passing of new laws
recognizing the Jew (but harshly, and under no agreement with him) or by
actual hostility, does the Jew in his heart of hearts think that he
would have the same support from the West now as he would have had
thirty years ago? He knows very well he would not.
Thirty years ago you would have got from all the traditional Liberalism
of France, from the great bulk of its governing class and the whole of
its academic organization, from what was then the solid and still
respected body of old Republicans, an immediate answer to the Jewish
appeal. In England that answer would have been unanimous and
enthusiastic. You would have had torrents of leading articles, great
public meetings, Cabinet Ministers speechifying all over the place in
the sacred cause of toleration. Every one knows that to-day the appeal
of the Eastern Jews, though it might still be supported officially,
would be received by the public with indifference. Ten years hence it
may be received with derision.
Or take another example. Let us suppose--it is highly probable--that the
Zionist experiment breaks down, that Englishmen refuse to have their
soldiers' lives risked in a quarrel which is not their own and refuse to
support out of their inordinate taxation a top-heavy colony which gives
them no advantage and concerns them not at all. On the breakdown of that
experiment, should it come soon, would there still be the support for
its re-establishment that you would have had even ten years ago? There
certainly would not. Ten years hence it is probable enough that you
would get, not indifference to such re-establishment, but the most
active hostility. All over the world the stream has turned in the same
direction.
Unfortunately the effect of that change has been to excite hatred rather
than a desire for a settlement and to move men towards blind action
rather than towards a reasoned examination of the difficulty. That is
why the thing seems to me urgent, although there are still large areas
of Western society in which its urgency is masked and half forgotten.
When I say "_urgent_" I mean that this my essay, which is to-day still
to the point, and the solution recommended in which is still feasible,
may very well, within the lifetime of its writer, become old-fashioned
out of all recognition. The peaceful settlement here proposed with
deliberate vagueness and softness of outline may seem in a few years as
out of date, as unreal through the intervening change, as do to-day the
old tags about the purity of parliamentary life and the seriousness of
party politics.
My solution may appear at the end of this generation as mildly
inapplicable to the acute situation _then_ arisen between the Jews and
ourselves as appear to-day the old debates on the very tentative demand
for Home Rule in the '80's. Let us act as soon as possible and settle
the thing while there is yet time. For in the swirl and rapids of the
modern world, which grow not less as towards a calm, but more intense as
towards a cataract, every great debate takes on with every year a
stronger form, a nearer approach to conflict; and none more than the
immemorial debate, still unconcluded, between Islam and Christendom and
the Beni-Israel.
But for my part, I say, "Peace be to Israel."
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_.
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