_THE JEWISH REGIMENT_
It was an old and a true allegation against John Bull that he had
no tact in dealing with other races than his own. He did not mean
to be unjust or unfair, but he trampled on the sensitiveness, which
he could not understand. In Ireland he called the Roman Catholic
faith "a lie and a heathenish superstition"; or, in a lighter mood,
made imbecile jokes about pigs and potatoes. In Scotland, thriftiness
and oatmeal were the themes of his pleasantry; in Wales, he found
the language, the literature, and the local nomenclature equally
comic, and reserved his loudest guffaw for the Eisteddfod. Abroad,
"Foreigners don't wash" was the all-embracing formula. Nasality,
Bloomerism, and Dollars epitomized his notion of American civilization;
and he cheerfully echoed the sentiments
"Of all who under Eastern skies
Call Aryan man a blasted nigger."
Now, of late years, John has altered his course. Some faint conception
of his previous foolishness has dawned on his mind; and, as he is
a thoroughly good fellow at heart, he has tried to make amends.
The present war has taught him a good deal that he did not know
before, and he renders a homage, all the more enthusiastic because
belated, to the principle of Nationality. His latest exploit in this
direction has been to suggest the creation of a Jewish Regiment.
The intention was excellent and the idea picturesque; but for the
practical business of life we need something more than good intentions
and picturesque ideas. "Wisdom," said Ecclesiastes, "is profitable
to direct;" and Wisdom would have suggested that it was advisable
to consult Jewish opinion before the formation of a Jewish Regiment
was proclaimed to the world. There is probably no race of people
about which John Bull has been so much mistaken as he has been
about the Jews. Lord Beaconsfield's description of Mr. Buggins,
with his comments on the Feast of Tabernacles in Houndsditch, is
scarcely yet anachronistic.[*] But slowly our manners and our
intelligence have improved in this as in other directions; and Lord
Derby (who represents John Bull in his more refined development)
thought that he would be paying his Jewish fellow-citizens a pretty
compliment if he invited them to form a Jewish Regiment.
[Footnote *: See _Tancred_, Book V., chapter vi.]
Historically, Lord Derby and those who applauded his scheme had a
great deal to say for themselves. The remote history of Judaism is
a history of war. The Old Testament is full of "the battle of the
warrior" and of "garments rolled in blood." Gideon, and Barak, and
Samson, and Jephthah, and David are names that sound like trumpets;
and the great Maccabean Princes of a later age played an equal
part with Romans and Lacedæmonians. All this is historically true;
but it never occurred to Lord Derby and his friends that the idea
which underlay their scheme is the opposite of that which animates
modern Judaism. Broadly speaking, the idea of modern Judaism is not
Nationality, but Religion. Mr. Lucien Wolf has lately reminded us
that, according to authoritative utterances, "The Jews are neither
a nation within a nation, nor cosmopolitan," but an integral part
of the nations among whom they live, claiming the same rights and
acknowledging the same duties as are claimed and acknowledged by
their fellow-citizens. It is worth noticing that Macaulay accepted
this position as disposing of the last obstacle to the civil and
political enfranchisement of the English Jews, and ridiculed the
notion that they would regard England, "not as their country, but
merely as their place of exile." Mr. Wolf thus formulates his faith:
"In the purely religious communities of Western Jewry we have the
spiritual heirs of the law-givers, prophets, and teachers who,
from the dawn of history, have conceived Israel, not primarily
as a political organism, but as a nation of priests, the chosen
servants of the Eternal."
Mr. Claude Montefiore, who is second to none as an interpreter
of modern Judaism, has lately been writing in a similar strain.
The Jew is a Jew in respect of his religion; but, for the ordinary
functions of patriotism, fighting included, he is a citizen of
the country in which he dwells. A Jewish friend of mine said the
other day to a Pacificist who tried to appeal to him on racial
grounds: "_I would shoot a Jewish Prussian as readily as a Christian
Prussian, if I found him fighting under the German flag_." Thus, to
enrol a regiment of Jews is about as wise as to enrol a regiment
of Roman Catholics or of Wesleyan Methodists. Jews, Romans, and
Wesleyans alike hold with laudable tenacity the religious faiths
which they respectively profess; but they are well content to fight
side by side with Anglicans, or Presbyterians, or Plymouth Brethren.
They need no special standard, no differentiating motto. They are
soldiers of the country to which they belong.
Here let me quote the exhilarating verses of a Jewish lady,[*] written
at the time of the Boer War (March, 1900):
"Long ago and far away, O Mother England,
We were warriors brave and bold,
But a hundred nations rose in arms against us,
And the shades of exile closed o'er those heroic
Days of old.
"Thou hast given us home and freedom, Mother England.
Thou hast let us live again
Free and fearless 'midst thy free and fearless children,
Sparing with them, as one people, grief and gladness,
Joy and pain.
"Now we Jews, we English Jews, O Mother England,
Ask another boon of thee!
Let us share with them the danger and the glory;
Where thy best and bravest lead, there let us follow
O'er the sea!
"For the Jew has heart and hand, our Mother England,
And they both are thine to-day--
Thine for life, and thine for death, yea, thine for ever!
Wilt thou take them as we give them, freely, gladly?
England, say!"
[Footnote *: Mrs. Henry Lucas (reprinted in her _Talmudic Legends,
Hymns and Paraphrases_. Chatto and Windus, 1908).]
I am well aware that in what I have written, though I have been
careful to reinforce myself with Jewish authority, I may be running
counter to that interesting movement which is called "Zionism."
It is not for a Gentile to take part in the dissensions of the
Jewish community; but I may be permitted to express my sympathy
with a noble idea, and to do so in words written by a brilliant
Israelite, Lord Beaconsfield: "I do not bow to the necessity of a
visible head in a defined locality; but, were I to seek for such,
it would not be at Rome. When Omnipotence deigned to be incarnate,
the ineffable Word did not select a Roman frame. The prophets were
not Romans; the Apostles were not Romans; she, who was blessed
above all women--I never heard that she was a Roman maiden. No;
I should look to a land more distant than Italy, to a city more
sacred even than Rome."[*]
[Footnote *: _Sybil_, Book II., chapter xii.]