They are accused of not tilling the soil, their accusers ignoring the fact that no Jew is allowed to buy, or to lease, or to occupy land, and is, in fact, excluded by law from acting as a farmer. Take next the charge of "aloofness." Probably this charge is well founded, but what can be expected of a people so newly freed from the Ghetto? If you treat a race for centuries as lepers, and visit its members with dire penalties, if they do not keep "aloof" they are likely to remain for some time disinclined to free intercourse. The third charge is, in reality, that the Jews of the world, having obtained control of cosmopolitan finance, act together in the interests of their race, and inflict grievous injuries upon the nations. But what proof is there of this? Curiously enough, Mr. Arnold White--though in other ways he seems to encourage this charge--accuses the great Jewish financiers of not doing this very thing. He tells us that after the Russians had driven the Jews into the Pale they wanted to raise a loan. One would have expected the great Jewish loanmongers to have absolutely refused to help the enemy of the race. Instead they basely, as we think, found Russia the money she wanted. But though this was a base act, it certainly is not consistent with the charge that the Jews control the international money market for tribal ends. We believe, in fact, that this whole charge is a pure delusion. The great financiers, whether Jew or Gentile, look for a profit, and not to deep and mysterious racial aspirations. The charge that the Jews are steeped in materialism, and so are a demoralizing element in the community, is equally unfair and absurd. Many Jews may be fond of pomp of a vulgar kind, and may affect what we confess personally to finding very disagreeable forms of Asiatic luxury; but these are externals. In essentials and as a race the Jews are no more materialistic than their neighbors. And can we say that they are a demoralizing element when it is universally confessed that the Jews are among the best fathers, sons, and husbands in the world? [Footnote 41: From an article in the London Spectator.]