“For all that,” remarked Noah, “the Jew is a profound money hunter. It is but natural he should be. That cupidity, or, if you prefer, that gold-greed, has been through centuries developed as his one hope for safety. In the oppressions which have borne upon him, and which in all countries save this still bear him down, your Jew has found in money his last cave of retreat. He might bulwark himself with riches. With others, gold would mean luxury; with the Jew, it stood for life itself, and to go wanting it was to be tooth and nail about the digging of his own grave.” “And it is your theory, then,” said I, “that the great need for gold which for ages was to stare the Jew in the face, became the seed of that genius, to gather which now the race is heir to?” “Without question,” said Noah. “More; since the Jew has been safe of his goods and his blood in this land of ours, and the rowels of that great need no longer lance the flanks of effort and set it to the leap, we rear a kind of Jew who owns no mighty care for money. I will find you Jews in our midst who can still be hawks to swoop, but who have no hold to keep. They will spend you their riches or give them away like water. We shall yet rear an American Jew who has no skill to get money. Still, going back to that first thought--for it is worrying my soul like a dog--of those money influences busy with the enlistment of Webb, I am free to say that even in his worst hour your Jew would never take a bribe. He would sell neither his friend nor his principle; those were never Jewish ways of money-finding.” “Your Jew makes a stout patriot,” said I. “I could want no better American than a Jew.” “Why, then,” responded Noah, “there be none to whom America means so much. You, being of the strain of Saxon-Dane, would have justice in England, welcome in Russia, friendship in France. What would your Jew meet? Your Jew loves America because he loves himself; he is a patriot since he is a Jew.” “And yet,” I protested, “it is no question of cool selfishness with your Jew. He is as spontaneously the patriot as any other. Take Judah Touro: whose money or whose blood was more at the beck of his country that January day at New Orleans?” “Why, yes, that is true,” said Noah. “But you should reflect: patriotism, like every other emotion--if it be a mother's love for her child--has ever its first feet in selfishness. That would be the tale of Jew or Gentile the wide world round. Selfishness seems but a rough, unworthy root, but from it have flowered art, poetry, science, or what you will. The lineage of each sentiment of beauty, whether it be the tenderest charity or that self-sacrifice that lays down its life, begins with selfishness--that mighty cornerstone of the world.” “Beware of metaphysics,” said I. “That, at least, would be our matter-of-fact General's caution.”