There is also, of course, as a cause, more powerful than any other, the force which lies behind all convention, the force which makes a man take off his hat in a church, which forbids his walking without boots in the street on the driest day, that is, the pressure of general practice. But the thing to realize is that in this form--I mean as distinct from any feeling of fear or of charity--the thing is a convention and a convention only. Difficult as it is to break with conventions, unless _this_ convention is broken once and for all, the Jewish problem remains with us unsolved and growing in acuteness and peril. You can meet an Irishman and discuss with him the conditions of his nation. You can ask an Italian when he was last in Italy, or congratulate a Frenchman upon his acquisition of your tongue or tell him that it is difficult for him to understand your own customs: but a convention arose under the Liberal fiction--to which I have devoted so much space in the earlier part of this book--that to do any of these very natural things in the case of a Jew is monstrous. Your audience is shocked if you ask some learned Jew at a public table a question upon his national literature or history. It is a solecism to refer to his nationality at all, save perhaps now and then in terms of foolish praise--in nine times out of ten praise not to the point and not desired by its recipient. And even praise must be approached most gingerly. You may not ask a Jew in London, however keen your desire for information, whether he had cousins in Lithuania or Galicia who have told him of the conditions of those distressed countries. You may not ask him when his family came to England, nor, if he be a recent arrival, what he thinks of the country. The whole thing is _taboo_. More than this: you must, you are expected (or were until quite recently expected) to emphasize in a most extravagant manner the complete identity of your Jewish guest with the people among whom he lives. I do not take offence if some chance acquaintance, noting my French name, talks to me about France, and is interested in my experience as a conscript long ago in that country. Mr. Redmond did not feel himself insulted when those he met in London discussed Irish matters with him, from the most acute difficulty in politics, to the most general allusion to the Abbey Theatre. The editor of an Italian review visiting England is not shocked if you ask him when he left Florence, nor are those around you horrified at the ill-breeding of your question. But in the matter of the Jew there stands this convention cutting you off from any such straightforward and simple way of dealing with a fellow-being. That convention, I say, must be broken down if we are to get any results at all and to establish a permanent peace. The thing was not, of course, entirely irrational in origin. No custom is. It was to be excused upon several grounds.