THE SPECIAL CAUSES OF FRICTION
There are two special forces upon the Jewish side which nourish and
exasperate the inevitable friction between the Jewish race and its
hosts. It will be well to deal with these before passing to the
corresponding forces upon our side. For to find a remedy it is necessary
to diagnose the disease.
The two main Jewish forces which exasperate and maintain the sense of
friction between the Jews and their hosts are first of all the Jewish
reliance upon secrecy, and, secondly, the Jewish expression of
superiority.
1. THE JEWISH RELIANCE UPON SECRECY
It has unfortunately now become a habit for so many generations, that it
has almost passed into an instinct throughout the Jewish body, to rely
upon the weapon of secrecy. Secret societies, a language kept as far as
possible secret, the use of false names in order to hide secret
movements, secret relations between various parts of the Jewish body:
all these and other forms of secrecy have become the national method. It
is a method to be deplored, not because its indignity and falsehood
degrade the Jew--that is not our affair--but rather on account of the
ill-effects this policy produces on our mutual relations. It feeds and
intensifies the antagonism already excited by racial contrast.
But before we go further it is essential to be just; for no one
understands anything if he attacks it unjustly.
The Jewish habit of secrecy--the assumption of false names and the
pretence of non-Jewish origin in individuals, the concealment of
relationships and the rest of it--have presumably sprung from the
experience of the race. Let a man put himself in the place of the Jew
and he will see how sound the presumption is. A race scattered,
persecuted, often despised, always suspected and nearly always hated by
those among whom it moves, is constrained by something like physical
force to the use of secret methods.
Take the particular trick of false names. It seems to us particularly
odious. We think when we show our contempt for those who use this
subterfuge that we are giving them no more than they deserve. It is a
meanness which we associate with criminals and vagabonds; a piece of
crawling and sneaking. We suspect its practisers of desiring to hide
something which would bring them into disgrace if it were known, or of
desiring to over-reach their fellows in commerce by a form of falsehood.
But the Jew has other and better motives. As one of their community said
to me with great force, when I discussed the matter with him many years
ago at a City dinner, "When we work under our own names you abuse us as
Jews. When we work under _your_ names you abuse us as forgers." The Jew
has often felt himself so handicapped if he declared himself, that he
was half forced, or at any rate grievously tempted, to a piece of
baseness which was never a temptation for us. Surely all this carefully
arranged code of assumed patronymics (Stanley for Solomon, Curzon for
Cohen, Sinclair for Slezinger, Montague for Moses, Benson for Benjamin,
etc., etc.) had its root in that.
The Jew can plead something further in extenuation of this practice.
Family names did not grow up naturally with them, as with us, in the
course of the Middle Ages. The Jew retained, as we long retained in the
middle and lower ranks of European society, the simple habit of
possessing one personal name and differentiating a man from his fellows
by introducing the name of his father. Thus a Jew in the sixteenth
century was Moses ben Solomon, just as the Cromwells' ancestor of the
same generation was Williams ap Williams. He had not what we call a
surname or family name. In the same way until varying dates, early in
France and England and other Western countries, much later in Wales,
Brittany, Poland and the Slav countries of the East, a man was known
only by his personal name, distinguished, if that were necessary, by
mentioning also the name of his father, or, in some cases, of his tribe.
Properly speaking the Jews have no surnames, and they may say with
justice: "Since we were compelled to take surnames arbitrarily (which
was the case in the Germanies and sometimes elsewhere as well), you
cannot blame us if we attach no particular sanctity to the custom." If a
Jew of plain Jewish name was compelled by alien force to take the fancy
name of Flowerfield, he is surely free to change that fancy name, for
which he is not responsible, to any other he chooses. There was a good
reason for the Government to force a name upon him. Only thus could he
be registered and his actions traced. But forced it was, and therefore,
on him, not morally binding.
All this is true, but there remains an element not to be accounted for
on any such pleas. There are in the experience of all of us, an
experience repeated indefinitely, men who have no excuse whatsoever for
a false name save that advantage of deceit. Men whose race is
universally known will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and
after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original
and true name be used in its place. This is particularly the case with
the great financial families. Some, indeed, have the pride to maintain
the original patronymic and refuse to change it in any of their
descendants. But the great mass of them concealed their relations one
with another by adopting all manner of fantastic titles, and there can
be no object in such a proceeding save the object of deception. I admit
it is a form of protection, and especially do I admit that in its origin
it may have mainly derived from a necessity for self-protection. But I
maintain that to-day the practice does nothing but harm to the Jew.
There are other races which have suffered persecution, many of them, up
and down the world, and we do not find in them a universal habit of this
kind.
Again, who can say that the bearing of a Jewish name to-day, or at any
rate in the immediate past, is or was a handicap in commerce where
Occidental nations were concerned? And as for the Eastern nations, the
Jews there are so sharply differentiated that a false name can be of no
service merely to hide the racial character of its bearer. There must be
another motive present.
The same arguments apply for and against other forms of secrecy. A man
may plead that if secrecy in relationship were not maintained the
dislike of Jews would lead to false accusations. The Jew is highly
individual, especially in intellectual affairs. He takes his own line.
He expresses his opinions with singular courage. And such individual
opinions will often differ violently from those of men with whom he is
most closely connected. "Why," I can understand some distinguished
Jewish publicist in England saying, "should I be compromised by people
knowing that such-and-such a Bolshevist in Moscow or in New York is my
cousin or nephew? I am conservative in temperament; I have always served
faithfully the state in which I live; I heartily disapprove of these
people's views and actions. If their relationship with me were known I
should fall under the common ban. That would be unjust. Therefore I keep
the relationship secret."
The plea is sound, but it does not cover the ground. It is not
sufficient to explain, for instance, the habit of hiding relationships
between men equally distinguished and equally approved in the different
societies in which they move. It does not explain why we must be left in
ignorance of the fact that a man whom we are treating as the best of
fellow-citizens should hide his connection with another man who is
treated with equal honour in another country. There are occasions where
national conflicts make the thing explicable. A Jew in England with a
brother in Germany and a father at Constantinople might well be excused
in 1915 for calling himself Montmorency. Yet we note that often where
there is most need to hide the connection, the connection is not hidden
at all. On the contrary, it is openly advertised. We all recollect the
name of one Jewish financier who was most unjustly treated during the
war. He had faithfully served this country and the breach of his
connection with it was (to my mind at least, and I think to most people
who can judge the matter) a very bad thing for Britain in the conflict.
Yet there was here no change of name and no attempt to hide the
connection between himself and his brother, who stood, in another
capital, for the financial policy of our enemies.
Again, the Rothschilds, present in the various capitals of Europe, have
never pretended to hide their mutual relationships, and no one has
thought any the worse of them, nor has this open practice in any way
diminished their financial power.
There must be more than necessity at work; I suggest that there is
something like instinct, or, at any rate, an inherited tradition so
strong that recourse to it seems natural.
Now it cannot be too forcibly emphasized that secrecy in any of these
forms--working through secret societies, using false names, hiding of
relationships, denying Jewish origin--specially exasperates this, our
own race, among which the Jews are thrown in their dispersion. It is
invariably discovered, sooner or later, and whenever it is discovered
men have an angry feeling that they have been duped, even in cases where
the practice is most innocent and is no more than the following of
something like a ritual.
I doubt whether the Jews have any idea how strongly this force works
against them. If a man were to say "my name is so-and-so; my father was
born at such-and-such a place in Galicia; my brother is still there in
such-and-such a business"--if he told us all that, he would not suffer
upon our appreciating later on that members of his family abroad were
connected with movements we disapproved: no, not even with a Government
in active hostility to our own. Everybody knows the international
position of the Jew. Everybody knows that he cannot avoid that position.
Everybody makes allowances for it. And I conceive that the abandonment
of this habit of secrecy is not only possible but would be very greatly
to the advantage of the whole race.
Perhaps its most absurd form (not its most dangerous form) is the
secrecy maintained by distinguished men with regard to their Jewish
ancestors. They and their Jewish relations often suppress it altogether
or, at best, touch on it rarely and obscurely. Why should they act thus?
Take the case of two men at random out of hundreds whose names are
universally known and by most people respected, the name of Charles
Kingsley, the writer, and the name of Moss-Booth, the founder of the
Salvation Army. Here are two men who in very different fields played a
great part in English life and who both owed their genius and nearly all
their physical appearance to Jewish mothers. I should have thought it to
the advantage of the Jewish race and of the individuals concerned that
this fact should be widely known. The literary abilities of Charles
Kingsley, the organizing and other abilities of Booth are not lessened
in people's eyes, but, if anything, enhanced, by a knowledge of their
true lineage. Yet the mention of that lineage is treated as though it
were a sort of insult. I have heard it wrung out in some passionate plea
for the Jewish race as a proof that they are not devoid of abilities,
but never generally published.
Surely it would be more sensible to emphasize in every possible case the
Jewish or partially Jewish origin of men who distinguished themselves,
and thus to show under what a debt Europeans stand to the Jewish blood.
To treat the matter as a sort of sacred labyrinth, as a mysterious
temple into which one may now and then be allowed to peep is ridiculous.
The Jews cannot have their cake and eat it too. If it is--surely it must
be--in their eyes a matter for pride to belong to blood which they hold
to be superior and to a tradition of such immense antiquity, then it
cannot be at the same time a matter of insult. Yet the convention is
desperately maintained by the Jews themselves. If a man tells me that he
hates the English, and in reply I say, "That's because you are an
Irishman," he does not fly at my throat. He takes it as a matter of
course that the history of the English government in Ireland excuses his
expression. So far from being insulted at being called an Irishman he
would be insulted if you said he was not an Irishman. And so it is with
many another nationality which has suffered oppression and persecution.
I can find no rational basis for a contrary policy in the case of the
Jews. Moreover the habit does this further harm: it makes men ascribe a
Jewish character to anything they dislike, and thus extends
undeservedly the odium against the race.
A foreign movement against one's nation, an unpopular public figure, a
detested doctrine, are labelled "Jewish" and the field of hate, already
perilously wide, is broadened indefinitely. It is useless to say, "The
Jews do not admit the connection, the names are not Jewish, there is no
overt Jewish element." He answers, "Jews never do admit such connection;
Jews admittedly hide under false names; Jewish action never _is_ overt."
And--as things are, until they change--there is no denying what he says.
His judgment may be as wild as you will (I have heard Sinn Feiners
called Jews!), but, so long as this wretched habit of secrecy is
maintained, there is no correcting that judgment. A universal suspicion
is engendered and spreads.
Meanwhile the same vice drags into publicity every ill-sounding Jewish
act and name and leaves in obscurity the honoured names and useful
public actions of Jewry. For a false name, like a forgery, advertises
itself.
It is not always recognized in this connection that the Jewish "booms,"
which are so fruitful a cause of exasperation, depend on this same
policy of concealment and on that account add to the volume of anger as
each new trick is discovered.
Not that the objects of these world-wide campaigns are unworthy of
attention. The Jewish actor, or film-star, or writer or scientist
selected is usually talented; the victim of injustice whose case is
advertised on the big drum has often a genuine grievance. But that the
notice demanded is out of all proportion and that its dependence on
Jewish organization is always kept hidden.
So much for the element of secret action. A great deal more might be
written upon it, but there are two reasons against enlarging thereon.
First, a full discussion would take up far too much of my space;
secondly, it would tend to add what I particularly wish to avoid in
these pages, I mean emphasis upon the errors of the Jew. It would
continue a quarrel, our whole object in which is to find peace.
2. THE EXPRESSION OF SUPERIORITY BY THE JEW
This is a very different matter. The mere _sense_ of superiority is not
something in which any special policy can be recommended, because it is
there and cannot be remedied. It is part of the whole position. But it
is possible to restrain its expression. For that purpose it is of value
to define it, to put it upon record and to estimate its effect upon our
issue.
The Jew individually feels himself superior to his non-Jewish
contemporary and neighbour of whatever race, and particularly of our
race; the Jew feels his nation immeasurably superior to any other human
community, and particularly to our modern national communities in
Europe.
The frank statement of so simple and fundamental a truth is rarely made.
It will sound, I fear, shocking in many ears. To many others it will
sound not so much shocking as comic, and to many more stupefying.
The idea that the Jew should think himself our superior is something so
incomprehensible to us that we forget the existence of the feeling. If
it be constantly reiterated, for the purpose of dealing with this great
political difficulty, it is perhaps reluctantly admitted, but still
held as sort of abnormal, bewildering truth. I contend that the
forgetfulness of that truth, the attempt to solve the problem without
that truth remaining constant and fixed in the mind of the statesman, is
in a very large measure the cause of our failure in the past; and that
the way the Jew openly acts upon it in gesture, tone, manner, social
assertion, is a very important factor in the quarrel between his race
and ours.
Consider the attitude of statesmanship in the past towards this vital
conflict. In every such attitude I think the Jewish conviction of
superiority has been omitted.
For the attitudes taken up by European statesmen in the past towards the
alien Jewish element in their midst have always been one of three
sorts:--
(1) Either they have acted as though there were no Jewish nation, as
though the Jew were merely a private citizen like any other who happened
to have peculiar opinions and customs of his own but who was not
substantially different from the men around him.
(2) Or they have attempted to suppress, or to expel, or to destroy the
Jew with ignominy and violence.
(3) Or, while recognizing the existence of the Jewish nation as
something separate from their own fellow-nationals whom they have to
administrate, the statesmen have tried to arrive at equilibrium by a
sort of pact in which Jewish separateness was recognized, _but under
conditions of disability_.
Now in all these three methods there is absent all recognition of the
Jewish feeling of superiority.
In the first it is obviously lacking because the whole idea of a Jewish
nation is absent. It is equally obviously lacking from the second
method, that of persecution: the persecutor instinctively acts as though
the Jew felt himself to be an inferior. In the third method it is also
absent, not in theory but in practice. For the statesmen who have acted
thus in the past have not attempted to give the Jews a _separate_ status
only, they have in point of fact nearly always given them an _inferior_
status. By so doing they have exasperated the Jewish national sentiment.
For instance, certain nations have treated Jews as a separate people, as
aliens, by forbidding them untrammelled residence, and enforcing
registration. But when it came to taxation or freedom from military
service, _then_ there was no special recognition of the Jew.
There is indeed a fourth attitude which has occasionally appeared in
history when States have been in active decline or have fallen into the
hands of base and weak men, and that is the exaggerated flattery and
support of a few powerful wealthy Jews by administrators who were bribed
or cowed. We are suffering from that to-day. But these exceptional cases
(they have always led to national disaster) do not form a true category
of _Statesmanship_ in the matter. Nor is there even in those who thus
actually advantage a few Jews above their own fellow-citizens, and give
them special prominence and power, so much a recognition of the Jewish
sense of superiority as a secret hatred of their Jewish masters.
Bitter as is everywhere the secret attack on the Jews by those who have
subjected themselves for gain or publicity, it is nowhere so bitter as
in the private speech of the politicians.
It would seem in the presence of so many failures in policy, and all
these failures having in common the non-recognition of this Jewish
feeling, that success can never be obtained unless we fully allow for
it. I submit that there will never be peace between any Jewish alien
minority and the community within which it may happen to reside until
those who administrate that community fully accept, and studiously avoid
the exasperation of, this state of the Jewish mind.
In statesmanship, as in every other form of human activity, exact
definition is of the first importance. We must distinguish at the outset
between this Jewish sense of superiority and any real superiority. The
statesman is not concerned with the rightness or wrongness of the Jewish
attitude. It may be a most absurd illusion, or it may be a most profound
vision. He has nothing to do with that. Having made up his mind that the
small and quite alien minority must be tolerated and must be allowed to
live as happily as possible in the midst of a community from which it so
profoundly differs, his next duty is to know thoroughly the nature of
the material upon which he is acting and with which he has to deal.
He may smile at the Jewish sense of superiority; he may even be
privately indignant; but he must be quite sure that it is a permanent
part of the nation with which he has to settle. It will never be
removed. The Jew in the East End of London, the poorest of the poor,
feels himself the superior of the magistrate before whom he is hauled,
of the policeman who keeps order in the streets, and immensely the
superior of the simple-faced soldiers and sailors, whose trade is the
most typical of our own race. He even feels himself the superior of
those whom he better understands--the negotiators: the people who live
by cunning. The expression of our faces, our gesture, our manner; the
very fact that our minds, less acute, are also broader, confirms his
feeling.
This fixed idea of superiority which appears in every phrase and
implication, is taken for granted by the Jew. It is felt, I say, by the
poorest and most oppressed, the least rich and the most unfortunate of
the Jewish people in our midst. Unfortunately--and this is the crux--it
proceeds to _unrestrained expression_. It is this which is so violently
resented. It is this which aggravates the quarrel. It is this which must
be kept in control if we are to have peace; not the sense of
superiority, that is ineradicable, but the expression of it. It appears,
as we all know, with extraordinary emphasis in the action and manner of
the few very wealthy Jews with whom the directing classes of the nation
are better acquainted. But whether he be a rich man suffering only from
alien and hostile surroundings, or a poor man suffering from all the
lowering forces of squalor, of destitution and of contempt, the Jew
feels himself the potential master of his hosts and shows it. He reposes
in the same confidence as was felt by Disraeli when he said: "The Jew
cannot be absorbed; it is not possible for a superior race to be
absorbed by an inferior." But unfortunately he does not only repose on
that foundation; he also _acts_ upon it, and that is intolerable.
We must, I say, allow for this feeling in any settlement we make; we
have also to study its consequences. Otherwise we shall be baffled by
phenomena which would seem inexplicable. But we need not allow for--on
the contrary, we should actively condemn--an open attitude of Jewish
contempt for ourselves.
Here are some consequences of this open expression of
superiority--consequences which we all discover to-day in the relations
between the Jewish people and ourselves and which are leading us into a
situation very dangerous for them and for us.
First, you have that familiar handling of European things by the Jew,
which is continually stirring the wrath of the European and as
continually leaving the Jew in wonderment what possible harm he can have
done. Thus, the Jew will write of our religion, taking for granted that
it is folly, and will marvel that we are offended. He will appear in our
national discussions, not only giving advice, but attempting to direct
policy, and will be puzzled to discover that his indifference to
national feeling is annoying. He will postulate the Jewish temperament
as something which, if different from ours, must, whether we like it or
not, be thrust upon us.
He acts in all these things as every one acts instinctively in the
presence of those whom they take for granted to be inferiors, and when
men talk of the "Jewish insolence," or the "Jewish sneer," they imply
that attitude. We are wrong if we take these things as calculated
insult. The action of the Jew, in so far as it proceeds from this sense
of superiority, is no more calculated and no more deliberately hostile
than are our own actions whenever we find ourselves in relations with
those whom we think inferior to ourselves. But we are right to point
them out, to resent them, to reprove them, and, if it became necessary,
to end them.
The Jewish problem will never be solved unless we make allowances for
the sense of superiority, take it for granted as an unavoidable evil,
and restrain our indignation in its presence; but neither will it be
solved if we permit its more and more open expression.
Another consequence of this attitude: The Jew, on account of it, makes
no effort to get into touch with the mass of the race in the midst of
which he may happen to be living. He is content to remain separate from
it, and thinks he cannot help remaining separate from them. And he shows
it. He consents to associate with the _élite_, with those who direct,
with those who have some special sort of function, but it seems to him a
waste of time to attempt communion with the rest. And he shows it. That
is what Renan meant when he said that the Jews were the least democratic
of all people. Renan, who was supported by Jewish money and lived, while
he was doing his best work, dependent on a Jewish publisher; Renan, who
was so fascinated by the history of Israel, and who decided himself to
become a scholar in all Hebraic things, understood the Jew not at all.
His judgments upon them are invariably superficial and to one side of
the truth; the judgments of a foreigner--an admiring foreigner but not a
sympathetic foreigner. And when he said that the Jews were not
democratic he was, instead of passing a judgment upon an intimate
political instinct of the Jewish people, simply noting an external
phenomenon. For the Jews are, as a fact, strongly democratic--no nation
more so--in their national relations among themselves; they only appear
undemocratic to us because they openly look down on us among whom they
live.
Another form taken by that open expression of the sense of superiority
among the Jews: It lends to all their actions in our State a certain
assurance and solidity which vastly strengthens their power of
resistance, no doubt, but also provokes their misfortunes. The religious
interpreter of history might say that they had been specially endowed
with this sense by Providence because Providence intended them to
survive as a national unit miraculously, in the face of every
disability; to remain themselves for 2,000 years under conditions which
would have destroyed any other people in perhaps a century: and yet
intended to suffer. The rationalist will say that the expression of a
sense of superiority, and the power of resistance that accompanies it
are but different names for the same thing; that but for the presence of
that expression of superiority the resistance could not have succeeded,
but for the resistance there could have been no persecution; that there
was no design in the matter, only the chance presence of a particular
quality which has produced its necessary and logical effect. But
whichever be the true explanation, the historical fact remains, that
this sense of superiority produced an open and overweening expression of
it whenever the Jews have been free to give vent to their feelings, and
that while it has had, as one great consequence, the strengthening of
the identity, permanence, survival of the Jewish people, it has also
had, for another great consequence, their recurrent oppression following
on every period of freedom.
There is one last thing to be said, which it is almost impossible to say
without the danger of giving pain and therefore of confusing the problem
and making the solution more difficult. But it must be said, because, if
we shirk it, the problem is confused the more. It is this: While it is
undoubtedly true, and will always be true, that a Jew feels himself the
superior of his hosts, it is also true that his hosts feel themselves
immeasurably superior to the Jew. We can only arrive at a just and
peaceable solution of our difficulties by remembering that the Jew, to
whom we have given special and alien status in the Commonwealth, is all
the while thinking of himself as our superior. But on his side the Jew
must recognize, however unpalatable to him the recognition may be, that
those among whom he is living and whose inferiority he takes for
granted, on _their_ side regard him as something much less than
themselves.
That statement, I know, will be as stupefying to the Jew as its converse
is stupefying to us. It will seem as extraordinary, as incredible, and
all the rest of it; but it is true, and it is a permanent truth. Unless
the Jews recognize that truth the trouble will go on indefinitely. There
is no European so mean in fortune or so base in character as not to feel
himself altogether the superior of any Jew, however wealthy, however
powerful, and (I am afraid I must add) however good. True, virtue has a
superiority of its own which cannot be hidden, and the cruel, or the
treacherous, or the debauched European cannot but feel himself morally
inferior to a Jew who is just, self-governed, merciful, generous, and
the rest of it. But we know how it is with national feelings. The type
is stronger for us than the individual; and while we may recognize
certain superior characteristics in the individual, we are thinking all
the while of the race, of the communal form, and contrasting our own
with the alien form to the disadvantage of the latter.
So difficult is it for the Jew to appreciate this factor in the problem
that his lack of appreciation has been almost as great a cause of
difficulty in the past as the same lack upon our side. We seem to him
insolent when, in our own eyes, we are merely acting normally as
superiors.
What emotion does it not create, I wonder, in some Jewish merchant or
money-dealer who has purchased a high directing place in our plutocracy
when he discovers from the gesture, the tone, the expression of some
chance poor Englishman, perhaps no more than an embarrassed hack writer,
a clear feeling of superiority? Must it not seem to him mere insolence?
"What possible claim" (he will say within himself) "has this _goy_, and
a poor unsuccessful _goy_ at that, to treat _me_ as though I were less
than he! I, who am worth millions, who am ruling and doing what I will
with his own national leaders, who dispose of his State very much as I
choose, and who belong to that nation which is wholly above all others,
the Jewish people?" Everywhere the Jew discovers the consequences of
this feeling, even though that feeling be to him so incomprehensible
that he can hardly admit its existence.
Well, whether he likes to admit it or not, it is there. Individual Jews
may be flattered for the sake of their wealth or because of the fear of
them, in which a commercial community stands. Such Jews as mistake the
current printed word which they read for the spoken words they never
hear may fall into the error of thinking that this sense of superiority
on our part did not exist. They must be warned, if ever the problem is
to be solved, that it _does_.
In their case, just as in ours, a right solution can only be arrived at
by the frank admission that the feeling is there and by the fixed
knowledge that, whether the feeling be an illusion or represent a
reality, it will not change; but also by a repression of it in our
mutual relations.
We may add to our summary of this subtle but profound cause of
disturbance the further truth that a paradox of the sort is to be found,
though perhaps less emphasized, in every other political problem. The
diplomat resident in a foreign capital has to consider not only his own
certitude that his hosts are inferior, but their certitude of their own
superiority to him and his. The general in the field may be certain of
his mastery over an opponent, but if that opponent is as yet undefeated
he will do ill to forget that he is matched by a confidence equal to his
own. Still more does the negotiator in commerce act upon this principle
and recognize it, or at least if he fails to do so, he invites disaster.
For when the commercial man is occupied in overreaching his neighbour,
his chances of success very largely depend upon his treating that
neighbour as though he really were what he believes himself to be. He
may be dealing with a stupid and vain man easily to be overmatched and
impoverished, but if he lets it appear that he regards his proposed
victim as a vain and stupid man, then he will miss his bargain.
In general, there is no success over others, nor even (which is much
more necessary), any permanent arrangement possible with others, unless
we know, allow for, and act upon the self-judgment of others, however
wrong we may believe that self-judgment to be.
It is clear that in this conflict between the Jew and, let us say, the
European (for it is between the Jew and the white Occidental race that
our present problem lies, though the same problem arises with all other
races among whom the Jew may find himself), both parties cannot be
right. A being superior to the race of man and looking on our petty
quarrels might be able to decide which of the two opponents were nearer
reality, and whether we are the better justified in our contempt of the
Jew or the Jew in his contempt of us. But in working out our own
solution without the aid of such guidance, there is no rule but for both
parties to take for granted what each regards as an illusion in the
other; to restrain its expression for the sake of reaching a settlement;
and in the settlement they arrive at, to admit as a factor necessarily
and permanently present what each still secretly regards as a folly, but
an incurable folly, in the other.
The alternative to such self-restraint is a falling back into the old
circle of submission, consequent anger accompanied by shame and
violence, and these followed by remorse.
THE CAUSE OF FRICTION UPON OUR SIDE