THE CAUSE OF FRICTION UPON OUR SIDE
Having concluded a brief review of the causes of friction upon the
Jewish side, we must turn to the cause of friction upon our own.
At first sight it might seem that the task was superfluous. Action and
reaction are equal and opposite. If you have shown why A irritates B,
you have also presumably shown why B irritates A. Or again, if you
regard an alien minority in a community as an irritant (which it nearly
always is and which it certainly is in the case of the Jews), you have,
it would seem, sufficiently defined the position and need not trouble to
examine what part the irritated play in the matter. What is parasitical
at the worst preys upon the general body, at the best disturbs it. The
general body would appear passive. It has no part in the business but to
react against the cause of the disturbance and if possible get rid of
it. As that cause is none of its making, one need not seek for any
responsibility on its side.
The house is ours: the Jew is an intruder (an objector may say), and
there is an end of it.
But the situation is not as simple as that. Quite apart from the fact
that the Jew will certainly not allow such a description of his
activity, there is the obvious truth that where you are dealing with
two _human_ factors, that is, with two factors which have a common
nature and therefore common duties, you are also dealing with two known
and analysable organic things. You are also dealing with two sets of
wills, and these wills we know to be free, in spite of sophists. A man
and a group of men can do well or ill, both absolutely, and relatively
to some particular question in hand; and no group of men can escape
responsibility in relation to any other group with which it is in
contact. It is certain that we play a part ourselves in this quarrel
between us and the Jews. It is a part which is in a measure inevitable,
because it proceeds in a measure from the mere contrast between two
racial characters. But there is a remaining part which can be remedied
by the action of the will.
Though we cannot change that element which is inherent in our nature any
more than the Jews can change theirs, yet an understanding of it makes
all the difference; and we can certainly change those elements which are
inherent in our wills.
The proof of this is that in the long story of the relations between the
two races, there have been, in various times and places, those
exceptional chapters of calm to which I have alluded on an earlier page,
and these could not have been maintained had not the causes of friction
been modified on either side, but especially upon ours.
All that cause of friction which arises from the mere contrast of
character may be set down very briefly. It is included in what has just
been said on the general causes, the difference in nature between the
Jews and ourselves. If their form of courage, their form of generosity,
their form of loyalty is, as it is, of a different quality from ours; if
their defects show the same difference of quality or colour; if we
perpetually feel, as we do feel, the friction caused by this contrast,
so do they, presumably, feel a corresponding friction in their dealings
with us. We shall neither of us be able to change that state of affairs.
We must admit it, and we must try to understand its nature.
Above all, we must not take it for granted that a difference from
ourselves is in itself an evil in another. That is a point to be
insisted upon. When we are dealing with inanimate nature, or with
unintelligent animate nature, we do not ascribe motive, for there is no
motive to ascribe. A man does not go about with bitterness in his heart
against wasps, though the purpose of the wasp is very different from the
purpose of the man and their interests clash. He does not call the wasp
wicked, nor, save as a relief to his feelings, give it moral names. He
does not condemn the wasp. Still less does he condemn all wasps, or
anything else in nature around him that works against his interest. But
when he has to deal with other human beings, man at once begins to
ascribe a motive. He must do so, because he knows that motive is the
spring of all human action, including his own. When that motive differs
from his, contrasts with his and is therefore in any degree inimical to
his, he is inclined to ascribe an evil motive. All that is a truism as
old as the hills.
If you have not to live with those who thus differ from you there is no
great harm done, but if you have to accept them as part of your life, it
is a different matter. It is then essential to the order of the State
that this illusion of directly antagonistic motive should be watched and
restrained.
But all this concerns rather our duty in the matter than the mere cause
of friction.
The first cause of friction is that contrast which is the same whether
we describe it from the alien's point of view, as has just been done, or
from our own.
The causes of friction which lie within the province of the will, and
which are, therefore, directly a matter for reform, are of another kind.
The first of them undoubtedly is our _disingenuousness_ in our dealings
with the Jew.
This disingenuousness extends from our daily habit to our treatment of
history. It is more deep-rooted than most people are aware of, more
widespread than those who are aware of it like to admit. It affects our
relations with the Jews just as much when we are attempting to defend
their position in the State as when we attack them. Indeed, I think it
affects our relations more when we are trying to defend them than when
we attack them. The only two kinds of men who show perfect candour in
their dealings with the Jews are the completely ignorant dupe who can
hardly tell a Jew when he sees one and who accepts as a reality the old
fiction of there being no difference except a difference of religion
(which he has been taught to think unimportant) and the person called an
"Anti-Semite."
Both these types certainly say what they think. That is why in their
heart of hearts the Jews are grateful to both, although both are
intellectually contemptible. The Jew feels, I think, when he meets
either of these types, "At any rate I know where I am." But the great
bulk of men, especially among the more cultivated, are grossly
disingenuous in all their dealings with the Jews. It is the great fault
of our side which corresponds to the fault of secrecy upon theirs. And
when you have allowed for routine, for the necessities of social
intercourse, for convention and the rest, it remains a deliberately
conceived moral evil.
A man and his friend meet in the street a Jew whom they know; they
exchange ordinary civilities with him; they pass on. The moment his back
is turned each comments to his companion upon the Jewish character of
the man they have just left, and almost invariably to his disadvantage.
Now to blame this way of going on does not imply that when you meet your
Jewish acquaintance you are to offend him by saying to his face the kind
of things you say behind his back; that would be a monstrous piece of
cynicism and, in practice, insane. We do not act thus in any relation of
life. But it does mean that in the attitude, the gesture, the tone of
the voice, we play a deliberately false part in our relations with Jews,
which we do not play in our relations with any other people. A peculiar
pretence, a pretence only practised with Jews, is elaborately
maintained. There is no allusion to or admission of our real attitude,
our sense of contrast. We therefore suffer an unnatural strain; and we
relieve of the strain immediately afterwards by an exaggeration of the
contrast we have pretended to ignore. It is blameworthy in a special
degree because it is peculiar to that one case. If we admitted the Jew
as a Jew, talked to him of the things that were uppermost in his mind
and in ours, and treated him as we treat any other foreigner in our
midst, there would have been no harm done. As it is the lie has done a
double harm--to him and to us. To us by an exasperation which is
entirely our own fault, to him by deceiving him as to his true position.
The Jews who mix with the wealthiest classes to-day, especially in
London, have no true idea of their real position in the eyes of their
guests; and the fault is with their guests.
I have cited an obvious daily example, but it is the least important,
for it is passing and shallow. This disingenuousness spreads to
relations more permanent. A man goes into business with a Jew, accepts
him as a partner, works with him constantly and yet nourishes in his
heart a disloyalty to that relationship. It is a phenomenon of constant
recurrence and it poisons the relations between the two races. If a man
is prepared to enter into one of these permanent relations with another
man who differs fundamentally from himself in tradition and human
character, he must face the consequences. One of those consequences, if
he is to remain an honest man, is the acceptation of the position with
all that it implies. He cannot have the advantage--as he hopes to have
it--of the Jewish sobriety, the Jewish tenacity, the Jewish lucidity of
thought, the Jewish international relationships, the Jewish opportunity
of advancement through the aid of his fellows, and at the same time
secretly indulge in a contempt and dislike for his companion, and
relieve that suppressed feeling in his absence. Yet that is what men are
doing daily throughout the business world.
Listen to the conversation of such a man as, having thus engaged in
intimate commercial relationship with the Jew, falls upon misfortune. He
spends the rest of his life denouncing the Jews as a race and his own
companion in misfortune in particular. He has no right to do it. It is
undignified; it is puerile, but, worst of all, it is unjust. He
presumably knew what he was doing when he entered into what could not
but be a difficult relationship. The consequences of that relationship
he should accept whether they turn out well for him or ill.
We find something perhaps even worse to note in the attitude of those
who are successful in their business through an alliance with the Jew.
For in this case gratitude should be added to justice, and that
gratitude is very rarely shown. On the contrary, the non-Jewish partner
is for ever in a mood of complaint about his share. He is perpetually in
a grievance that he has been overreached, or that he has been bullied,
or that he has been robbed, save in those very rare cases where the
success is so overwhelming, the fortunes so rapid, that there is no room
for a grudge. In almost every other case that I have come across there
is that element of recrimination--behind the Jew's back--even under
conditions of success.
I know very well what can be said upon the other side. It can be said
that what I have called upon a former page the "ruthlessness" of the Jew
in commercial relations, as well as his tenacity and all the rest, make
the contest unequal; that in a partnership between Jew and non-Jew the
non-Jew is, as a fact, often overreached and is, as a fact, often left
(as the pretty vocabulary of modern commerce has it) "in the cart." But
pray why did the non-Jew enter into the alliance at all? Was it not
precisely in order that he should benefit, if he could, by those very
qualities which he later denounces? He expected that those qualities
which make for the success of the Jew in commerce would also benefit
himself. He knew that there must always be a certain amount of
competition, even within such an alliance. He backed himself to watch
his own interests under conditions which he knew perfectly well when he
entered into them. He has not a leg to stand upon in quarrelling with
the results of the relationship, for in so doing he is merely
quarrelling with his own judgment and, for the matter of that, his own
plot.
If a man cannot tolerate the contrast between the Jewish race and our
own, or if he regards that race as possessing energies which will
invariably defeat him in the competition of commerce, then let him keep
away from a Jewish alliance altogether. It is the simplest plan. But to
immix himself with the Jewish commercial activity and then to grumble at
the results is despicable.
All this is worse, of course, when one is dealing with relations even
closer than those of commerce. Those relations are numerous in the
modern world, and disingenuousness in them takes the worst possible
form. Men, especially of the wealthier classes of the gentry, will make
the closest friends of Jews with the avowed purpose of personal
advantage. They think the friendship will help them to great positions
in the State, or to the advancement of private fortune, or to fame. In
that calculation they are wise. For the Jew has to-day exceptional power
in all these things. They therefore have the Jew continually at their
tables, they stay continually under the Jew's roof. In all the
relations of life they are as intimate as friends can be. Yet they
relieve the strain which such an unnatural situation imposes by a
standing sneer at their Jewish friends in their absence. One may say of
such men (and they are to-day an increasing majority among our rich)
that the falsity of their situation has got on their nerves. It has
become a sort of disease with them; and I am very certain that when the
opportunity comes, when the public reaction against Jewish power rises,
clamorous, insistent and open, they will be among the first to take
their revenge. It is abominable, but it is true.
And this truth applies not only to friendships, it even applies to
marriages. Marriage between Christian and Jew is, in that rank, an
affair of interest, and the bitterness the relation breeds is excessive.
This disingenuousness, then--lack of candour on the part of our race in
its dealings with the Jew--a vice particularly rife among the wealthy
and middle classes (far less common among the poor), extends, as I have
said, to history. We dare not, or will not teach in our history books
the plain facts of the relations between our own race and the Jews. We
throw the story of these relations, which are among the half-dozen
leading factors of history, right into the background even when we do
mention it. In what they are taught of history the schoolboy and the
undergraduate come across no more than a line or two upon those
relations. The teacher cannot be quite silent upon the expulsion of the
Jews under Edward I or upon their return under Cromwell. A man cannot
read the history of the Roman Empire without hearing of the Jewish war.
A man cannot read the Constitutional History of England without hearing
of the special economic position of Jews under the Mediaeval Crown. But
the vastness of the subject, its permanent and insistent character
throughout two thousand years; its great episodes; its general
effect--all that is deliberately suppressed.
How many people, for instance, of those who profess a good knowledge of
the Roman Empire, even in its details, are aware, let alone have written
upon the tremendous massacres and counter-massacres of Jews and
Europeans, the mass of edicts alternately protecting and persecuting
Jews; the economic position of the Jew, especially in the later empire;
the character of the dispersion?
There took place in Cyprus and in the Libyan cities under Hadrian a
Jewish movement against the surrounding non-Jewish society far exceeding
in violence the late wreckage of Russia, which to-day fills all our
thoughts. The massacres were wholesale and so were the reprisals. The
Jews killed a quarter of a million of the people of Cyprus alone, and
the Roman authorities answered with a repression which was a pitiless
war.
One might pile up instances indefinitely. The point is, that the average
educated man has never been allowed to hear of them. What a factor the
Jew was in that Roman State from which we all spring, how he survived
its violent antagonism to him and his antagonism to it; the special
privilege whereby he was excepted from a worship of its gods; his
handling of its finances--all the intimate parallel which it affords to
later times is left in silence. The average educated man who has been
taught, even in some fullness, his Roman History, leaves that study
with the impression that the Jews (if he had noticed them at all) are
but an insignificant detail in the story.
So it is with history more recent and even contemporaneous. In the
history of the nineteenth century it is outrageous. The special
character of the Jew, his actions through the Secret Societies and in
the various revolutions of foreign States, his rapid acquisition of
power through finance, political and social, especially in this
country--all that is left out. It is an exact parallel to the
disingenuousness which we note in social relations. The same man who
shall have written a monograph upon some point of nineteenth century
history and left his readers in ignorance of the Jewish elements in the
story will regale you in private with a dozen anecdotes: such-and-such a
man was a Jew; such-and-such a man was half a Jew; another was
controlled in his policy by a Jewish mistress; the go-between in
such-and-such a negotiation was a Jew; the Jewish blood in such-and-such
a family came in thus and thus--And so forth: but not a word of it on
the printed page!
This deliberate falsehood equally applies to contemporary record. The
newspaper reader is deceived--so far as it is still possible to deceive
him--with the most shameless lies. "Abraham Cohen, a Pole"; "M.
Mosevitch, a distinguished Roumanian"; "Mr. Schiff, and other
representative Americans"; "M. Bergson with his typically French
lucidity"; "Maximilian Harden, always courageous in his criticism of his
_own_ people" (his _own_ being the German) ... and the rest of the
rubbish. It is weakening, I admit, but it has not yet ceased.
Now this form of falsehood corrodes, of course, the souls of those who
indulge in it. But that does not concern the matter of this book. Where
it comes in as a cause of friction between the two races, and a
removable cause of friction, is in the effect it has upon the Jewish
conception of their position in our society. It falsifies that
conception altogether. It produces in the Jew a false sense of security
and a completely distorted phantasm of the way in which he is really
received in our society. The more this disingenuousness is practised the
more the surprise which follows upon its discovery and the more
legitimate the bitterness and hatred which that surprise occasions in
those of whom we are the hosts. It is not only true of this country; it
is true of every other country in which the Jew has been harboured and
for a time protected. Invariably he has complained that his awakening
was rude, that he was bewildered by what seemed to him a novel and
inexplicable feeling against him; that he had thought he was among
friends and found himself suddenly among treacherous enemies. All this
would have been saved to others in the past, and will be saved to
ourselves in the near future, if this pestilent habit of falsehood were
eliminated.
Disingenuousness is, on our side, the first main cause of the friction
between the two races.
The second main cause of friction upon our side is the unintelligence of
our dealing with the Jews. That unintelligence is allied, of course, to
the disingenuousness of which I have spoken; but it is a separate thing
none the less, and we can learn from the Jews its opposite, for _their_
dealings with _us_ are always intelligent. They know what they are
driving at in those relations, though they often misunderstand the
material with which they deal. But we, over and over again, would seem
not even to know what we are driving at.
What could be more unintelligent, for instance, than the special forms
of courtesy with which the Jew is treated? I am not talking of the
elaborate, false friendship which I have just dealt with under the head
of disingenuousness, but of the genuine attempts at courtesy towards
this alien people--the courtesy expressed by those who have no intimate
relations with them, and do not desire to have intimate relations with
them. It is almost invariably, in those who commonly avoid the Jews, a
courtesy which expresses patronage on the surface of it. It may be
compared with the courtesy that rich men show to poor men--as offensive
a thing as there is in the world.
And how unintelligent is our dealing with any particular Jewish problem;
for instance, the problem of Jewish immigration! We mask it under false
names, calling it "the alien question," "Russian immigration," "the
influx of undesirables from Eastern and Central Europe," and any number
of other timorous equivalents. The process is one of cowardly falsehood,
but the falsehood is not more remarkable than the stupidity, for no one
is taken in and least of all the Jews themselves.
This unintelligence extends to many another field. How unintelligent are
the efforts of the writers who would, as it were, make amends to the
Jews for former persecution by putting imaginary Jew heroes into their
books. In this particular we offend less than did our fathers of the
Victorian period. Dickens' offence was grave. He disliked Jews
instinctively; when he wrote of a Jew according to his inclination he
made him out a criminal. Hearing that he must make amends for this
action, he introduced a Jew who is like nothing on earth--a sort of
compound of an Arab Sheik and a Family Bible picture from the Old
Testament, and the whole embroidered on an utterly non-Jewish--a purely
English character.
How unintelligent are the various defences of the Jew by the non-Jew,
even with the best intentions! You will hear people tell you solemnly,
as a sort of revelation, that there are kindly, witty Jews, Jews who are
good prize-fighters or good fencers. I well remember one old gentleman
who tried hard to convince me (as though I needed convincing) that there
were Jews who had taste. He said to me, "I do not myself go into Jewish
houses, but my son does, and he assures me that much of the decoration
is in good taste." How unintelligent is the idea that because a man's
motives are not open and because he has not the same reasons for serving
the State that you have, _therefore_ he is to be perpetually under
suspicion! How still more unintelligent is the conception that, although
he is alien, yet you cannot use him in certain special services for the
State.
This unintelligence is specially apparent in the treatment of the Jew in
his international relations. The Jew is a nomad, the non-Jew a man with
a fixed habitation. The Englishman, the Frenchman and the rest are
perpetually approaching the Jew as though he also had a fixed
habitation. We seem never to be able to get over the shock of surprise
when we learn that a particular Jew abroad is the cousin, or nephew, or
brother of another Jew with a different name in England, or with
another Jew with yet another name in Pinsk or San Francisco. Yet,
surely, this is of the very essence of the Jewish position. We ought to
take it for granted that the Jew is thus nomadic, international, spread
all over the world, migratory, as we take the same thing for granted in
birds of passage. To adopt the attitude which we almost invariably do
and to feel a shock of surprise when we discover what must in the nature
of things be the most regular feature in the civic situation of the Jew,
is to fall into that most stupid of all stupid errors, the reading of
oneself into others.
I remember the horror and scandal with which men whispered their
discovery that a man with a German name, who had got into trouble a few
years ago, was the first cousin of a Cabinet Minister. Why not? They
seemed to be struck all of a heap by the dreadful revelation that the
names borne by Jews were not always their original names, that rich and
important men often have poor relations, and that poor relations often
get embarrassed.
In terms of their own society the thing would have been simple enough.
They would have felt no surprise to hear that some man of our own race,
who had made a rapid fortune and purchased a political position,
suffered from a disreputable relative, also of our own race. But because
in the case of the Jew there were the two unusual elements of a foreign
name and distant origin, they were bewildered. They even thought it in
some way specially scandalous. They had not appreciated the material
with which they were dealing, and that is the mark of unintelligence.
But the cream of unintelligence, the form in which unintelligent
treatment of him most exasperates the Jew, is undoubtedly that typical,
that ceaseless case of the man who is perpetually crying out against
Israel, and purposing nothing--the man who nourishes a sterile
grievance; who has not even the clarity or vigour to attempt
suppression; who would be horrified at persecution, almost equally
horrified at any breach of convention, and yet continues to cry out
against a state of affairs which he does nothing to put right and for
which he has not even a theoretic solution.
The last of the main causes of friction between the Jews and ourselves
is lack of charity, and that in the simplest form of refusing to go half
way to meet the Jew, and of refusing to put ourselves in the shoes of
the Jew so as to understand his position in our society and his attitude
towards it. It is a universal fault just as common in those who daily
associate with, live off, and fawn upon Jews as in those who keep aloof
from them. It never seems to occur to anyone on our side who has to deal
with the Jewish problem, to make the imaginative effort required. And
yet we have the parallel ready to our hands. The Jew feels among us,
only with far greater intensity, what we feel when we are resident in a
foreign country--a sense of exile, a sense of irritation against alien
things, merely because they are alien; a great desire for companionship
and for understanding, yet a great indifference to the fate of those
among whom he finds himself; an added attachment, not, indeed, to his
territorial home, for he has none, but to his nation. If we could
perpetually bear in mind that parallel, the friction on our side would
be greatly modified.
There are many Jewish societies which ask nothing better than to have
occasional addresses from non-Jews. Those addresses are given, those
Societies are visited, but not nearly as much as they should be.
There is a great Jewish literature--I mean a great mass of books dealing
specially with the Jew's position from the Jew's own point of view. It
is not read or known. I may be told that the fault of all this is
largely that of the Jews themselves on account of their use of secrecy.
I do not think the objection applies. With all his use of secrecy the
Jew is there present among us for us to approach, if we will, and to
understand as best we can. And I say that the approach is not made.
It is an effort, of course. No one knows it better than I; for on more
than one occasion when I have addressed a Jewish audience I have found
myself the object of very severe language. But it is an effort which
every one ought to make who admits that there is a Jewish problem at
all, and it is an effort very rarely made. It is not only an effort
because it involves the crossing of a gulf, it is also an effort because
we find this alien thing in many ways repugnant to us. Yet people make
that effort for the purposes of the State continually where other races
are concerned. It is far more important that they should make it where
the Jews are concerned. For those other alien races, administrated for
the moment by officials of our own race, will not permanently be so
administered. The relations between them and us are for a brief time,
and they are relations that constantly change. The Jew is with us
always; and the type of contact between his race and ours will remain
much the same through an indefinitely long future as they have through
so very long a past.
* * * * *
Here, then, is the summary, as I see it, of the causes of friction
between the two races.
First, a general cause, which lies in the contrasting nature of the two
and upon the irritant effect of that contrast. This cause is not to be
eliminated, though its effects may be modified. It is a profound
contrast and a sharp irritant constant in its activity. The essential is
to recognize its real nature, not to give to it general terms of faults
and vices, but to appreciate the difference of _quality_ involved: above
all, not to tell lies about it and pretend it is not present.
Secondly, as to special causes of friction--I mean causes which on their
side, as on ours, can be, if not eliminated, at any rate modified--I
suggest that the most prominent are: 1. The sense of superiority which,
though it cannot be destroyed, can at least be checked in expression and
which, by a pretty irony, is equally strong upon both sides. 2. The use
of secrecy by the Jews themselves; partly as a weapon of defence, partly
as a method of action, always to be deplored, and of a nature
particularly exasperating to our temperament. 3. Upon our side, a
persistent disingenuousness in our treatment of this minority.
Unintelligence in their treatment: the whole made worse by an
indifference or lack of charity, a refusal to make the effort necessary
for meeting and understanding as well as we can the race which must
always be with us and which is yet so different from our own.
Now these causes of friction permanently present tend to produce what I
have called the tragic cycle: welcome of a Jewish colony, then ill-ease,
followed by acute ill-ease, followed by persecution, exile and even
massacre. This followed, naturally, by a reaction and the taking up of
the process all over again.
In our own time we have seen, quite lately, the succession of the second
to the first of these stages; we have passed from welcome to ill-ease.
That passage threatens a further passage from the second to the third;
from the third to the terrible conclusion.
We feel quite secure to-day from the last extreme of this cycle. We are
certain it will never come to persecution: that is still inconceivable.
But it is not inconceivable everywhere: and no society is free from
change. Some now alive may live to see riots even in this quiet polity
and worse in newer or less settled states.
Such a catastrophe is to be avoided by every effort in our power and a
solution to the problem presented must imperatively be sought. But in
passing we should note, for the consideration of those who may doubt the
acuteness of the problem and the immediate practical necessity for a
solution, the presence of a phenomenon which amply proves that it _is_
acute and that the solution _is_ necessary. That phenomenon is the
presence to-day of a new type, the Anti-Semite, the man to whom all the
Jews are abhorrent.
It is a phenomenon which has increased prodigiously; its rate of
increase is accelerating, and as a warning of the peril, as a proof of
its magnitude, I propose to examine that phenomenon closely in my next
chapter.
THE ANTI-SEMITE