HABIT OR LAW?
If it be true that the friction between the Jew and the civilization in
which he lives is aggravated by his habit of secrecy and by our
disingenuousness, by his expression of a sense of superiority which
galls us, and on our side by a lack of charity and of intelligence in
dealing with him, it would follow that no solution can be more than
approximate: that whatever arrangement be come to the contrast will
remain, and with it a certain latent friction, which always accompanies
contrast.
But there is between a simmering of that kind and the active boiling of
the question to-day (with the threat of its boiling _over_) all the
difference in the world. But even though the solution be imperfect, it
might be reasonably stable: we might at least have peace, though not
friendship. It further follows from the elements of the problem that the
solution lies along the lines of either party modifying whatever in its
action is an irritant to the other; whatever, that is, can be modified
by the will, and is not mixed up with something ineradicable.
The Jew cannot help feeling superior, but he can help the expression of
that superiority--at any rate he can modify such expression. He can
certainly, though it be at a great expense of tradition and habit, get
rid of that pestilent pseudo-defence of secrecy which poisons all the
relations between him and ourselves. We on our side can drop what is the
converse of that secrecy, the disingenuousness, the lack of candour,
into which we are fallen in our relations with the Jew. That cannot but
mean a great breach with our tradition and with habit also, but the
advantage is worth the sacrifice. We can (it must be the work of each
individual, it cannot be a corporate work) approach the Jew with more
respect and yet with more frequency. We can, I think, advance by many
degrees from the lack of charity we now show, even if we despair of
living in real intimacy with a people so different in their deepest
qualities from ourselves.
Personally, I am not sure that such closer intimacy might not be
established; I have never found any difficulty in reaching and retaining
intimate acquaintance with the Jews of my own circle--but I may have
been fortunate. I know that with most of my fellows it is not so, and
perhaps the Jew will always remain to the mass of those about him
something strange and unapproachable, and I fear, repulsive. But there
is no reason, why we should mix with that hesitation in our relations an
element of indifference, still less of contempt, still less, again, of
cruelty.
I repeat the formula for a solution: it is recognition and respect.
Recognition is here no more than the telling of the truth: there is a
Jewish nation. Jews are citizens of that nation; and recognition means
not only the telling of this truth on special occasions but the use of
it as a regular habit in our relations on both sides.
This statement is, upon any just analysis of the Jewish question, so
obvious and so simple, that it needs neither insistence upon it nor
development. Its plain statement is sufficient. But there attaches to a
solution so determined a much more active and complicated question, upon
the uncertainty of which not only this reform but many another has made
shipwreck. The question must be answered rightly, because, if we answer
it wrongly, the whole scheme fails.
The question is this: Should the social habit, the general method in
writing and speaking and in all relations, precede in this case the
institutional action, legal changes, constitutional definitions? Or
should the legal changes, the new institutions, the constitutional
definitions come first?
To decide rightly is of great moment, for this reason, that a wrong
decision may destroy all the effect of goodwill.
In my judgment the wrong decision would be that which would give
precedence to legal change, to new definitions, to new institutions, and
attempt out of them to build a new spirit. I take it that this reversal
of the true order would make all stable peace impossible.
It must be admitted, of course, that changes suggested by the Jews
themselves, the development of their own institutions, a voluntary
segregation of their community in other fields than those in which they
have already effected that segregation, stand in another category. These
new and definitely Jewish institutions we should always welcome. But the
attempt at framing public regulations, which are to defend the community
as a whole against an alien minority, when that minority must live with
one permanently and as a regular feature of the life of the community,
invariably tends to oppression, if such regulations are made the first
steps in a settlement instead of being left, as they should be, to the
last. Any separatist legislation should arise naturally out of a long
practice and full recognition of the Jews as a separate people and of
the accompaniment of that recognition with respect. If the advance is
made on our side, the Jew may refuse any such bargain. He may dig his
heels in and insist, as many another privileged class has insisted
before him, that he will continue to enjoy all that he has ever enjoyed,
that he will continue his demand for a dual allegiance, that he will
insist on the very fullest recognition as a Jew, and at the same time on
what is fatal to such recognition, the fullest recognition as a member
of our own community.
If he does _that_ (and there are those who tell us he will certainly do
so, and will refuse all reform), then the community will be compelled to
legislate in spite of him. It will be perilous for him and for us; it
may even be the beginning of grievous trouble for both, but it will be
inevitable. It will appear in a mass of legislation all over Europe,
which will affect this country with the rest.
The present situation cannot last indefinitely. It is already uncertain
even here, in England; it has reached further stages on the road to ruin
elsewhere. But if the Jew sees the peril in time, and appreciates the
nature of that change, the beginnings of which we have all seen and
which is proceeding at so great a pace, then relations can be
established out of which (later) formal rules, acceptable to both
parties, should proceed. And in that case it would be, I repeat, the
gravest of errors to initiate new positive laws and a new status before
a foundation had been prepared by the re-establishment of honest
relations; and that can only be done by a frank admission of reality, by
the open and continual admission everywhere that Israel is a nation
apart, is not, and cannot be, of us, and shall not be confounded with
ourselves.
There is great temptation to delay, because the acuteness of the problem
is not felt here as yet, among the well-to-do, and still more because it
differs in different communities. The peril seems still far distant from
us, though it may be at the very door of our neighbours. Routine, the
inheritance of the immediate past, the false security produced by the
conventions of that past, may well tempt those who dislike the effort of
a change to shirk that change. But I would ask any intelligent and
thoughtful Jew who still thinks he can rely upon the false position of
the nineteenth century whether the same forces are there to support him
to-day as were present then?
Take a particular example. In Poland and in Roumania the old fiction has
been temporarily imposed by force. The Jew, who in both these countries
is felt to be more alien than any other foreign European could be, is
imposed upon the Government and society of each country by the Western
Governments as a full citizen. The strain here is immensely aggravated
because it arose not from the nature of society but from the action of
outsiders; the English, the French, the American Governments (but
particularly the American and the English) have erected in Eastern
Europe this unstable, unjust and artificial state of affairs. It cannot
last, for it is unreal.
The communities in question may make no laws which recognize the Jew;
alternatively, the door is open for oppression: and the moment the hated
foreign interference weakens, oppression will come.
Well, when under the pressure of a real social difficulty and a crucial
one, the unreal settlement is torn up, by the passing of new laws
recognizing the Jew (but harshly, and under no agreement with him) or by
actual hostility, does the Jew in his heart of hearts think that he
would have the same support from the West now as he would have had
thirty years ago? He knows very well he would not.
Thirty years ago you would have got from all the traditional Liberalism
of France, from the great bulk of its governing class and the whole of
its academic organization, from what was then the solid and still
respected body of old Republicans, an immediate answer to the Jewish
appeal. In England that answer would have been unanimous and
enthusiastic. You would have had torrents of leading articles, great
public meetings, Cabinet Ministers speechifying all over the place in
the sacred cause of toleration. Every one knows that to-day the appeal
of the Eastern Jews, though it might still be supported officially,
would be received by the public with indifference. Ten years hence it
may be received with derision.
Or take another example. Let us suppose--it is highly probable--that the
Zionist experiment breaks down, that Englishmen refuse to have their
soldiers' lives risked in a quarrel which is not their own and refuse to
support out of their inordinate taxation a top-heavy colony which gives
them no advantage and concerns them not at all. On the breakdown of that
experiment, should it come soon, would there still be the support for
its re-establishment that you would have had even ten years ago? There
certainly would not. Ten years hence it is probable enough that you
would get, not indifference to such re-establishment, but the most
active hostility. All over the world the stream has turned in the same
direction.
Unfortunately the effect of that change has been to excite hatred rather
than a desire for a settlement and to move men towards blind action
rather than towards a reasoned examination of the difficulty. That is
why the thing seems to me urgent, although there are still large areas
of Western society in which its urgency is masked and half forgotten.
When I say "_urgent_" I mean that this my essay, which is to-day still
to the point, and the solution recommended in which is still feasible,
may very well, within the lifetime of its writer, become old-fashioned
out of all recognition. The peaceful settlement here proposed with
deliberate vagueness and softness of outline may seem in a few years as
out of date, as unreal through the intervening change, as do to-day the
old tags about the purity of parliamentary life and the seriousness of
party politics.
My solution may appear at the end of this generation as mildly
inapplicable to the acute situation _then_ arisen between the Jews and
ourselves as appear to-day the old debates on the very tentative demand
for Home Rule in the '80's. Let us act as soon as possible and settle
the thing while there is yet time. For in the swirl and rapids of the
modern world, which grow not less as towards a calm, but more intense as
towards a cataract, every great debate takes on with every year a
stronger form, a nearer approach to conflict; and none more than the
immemorial debate, still unconcluded, between Islam and Christendom and
the Beni-Israel.
But for my part, I say, "Peace be to Israel."
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_.