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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