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 isthe obvious truth that where you are dealing with twohumanfactors, 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 ofcourage, 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 essentialto 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 ourdisingenuousnessin 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 hemeets 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 andin 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 didthe 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, theystay 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 Jewishwar. 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 hisownpeople" (hisownbeing 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, fortheirdealings withusare always intelligent. They know what they are driving at in those relations, though they oftenmisunderstand 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 dislikedJews 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,thereforehe 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 adifferent 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 ofunintelligence, 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 thesame 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 ofqualityinvolved: 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 itisacute and that the solutionisnecessary. 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
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 Jewsin 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 motiveis 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 whowants 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 proclaimedthe 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 atleast 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 neveroriginatedin 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 uponinsignificant 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 itdoes, it will give it voice, we may be certain, in the most extreme, the most passionate, the most irrational form; and whenthat 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 meanits 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 simplybecause 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 adossierfor 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.
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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 Europeandiplomacy; 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 hostileto 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 policyof 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 hecando 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 nodesire for a settlement agreeable to them, but solely for a settlement agreeable tohimself, 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 themeaningof 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 ofsecrecy, the policy ofhiding, at once took advantage of what was absurd in the novelty of Anti-Semitism. The Jew, in spiteof 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 frombeing 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, butattachedto 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 haveseen 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 JewishBolshevismthat has brought things to their present crisis.
BOLSHEVISM