All the main part of the mutual Duty is on _our_ side. Therefore have I given it the space it seems to deserve and confined to no more than these few lines correlative suggestions for those who, after all, are not responsible to us for their actions and may properly resent the airing of _our_ views on the domestic details of their alien organization. VARIOUS THEORIES CHAPTER XIV VARIOUS THEORIES Before approaching my conclusion it may be well to review certain subsidiary theories which I have not hitherto touched in my discussion, because they stand apart from its argument. There is a whole group of historical and other theories upon the position of the Jews which either imply that there is no problem, or if there is one that it cannot be solved, or even that if there is a problem it is of a sort that does not need solution, because that solution would be of no practical value. There come in the first place those theories upon the international position of the Jews which are frankly non-rational, and which vary from those which may be defended with some show of reason from the history of the past, to those which are wholly imaginary. None of these, even though some one of them should be true, can find much place here because none lends itself to discussion. Thus there is the conception of a curse; the conception that Israel must, until its conversion, suffer a perpetual pilgrimage and perpetual hostility. It is a statement bound up with that other popular prophecy that in the last days Israel will be reconciled with the Universal Church. Those who have these ideas at the back of their minds (they are more numerous than modern thought would like to admit), at heart despair of any solution, and would not attempt to urge it with any hope of success. They say, "The thing is fated and must continue." But even they, I think, must admit that just as philosophy admits a paradox of determination and free will, so political effort must admit a paradox of foreseen failures and our duty, in spite of them, to aim at a political good. Whether it be indeed true or not, that reconciliation is impossible and that in the long run the quarrel must drag itself out, it is certainly profoundly immoral to look on at the spectacle with no attempt to ameliorate its evils. There is again the theory (which I mention in passing and leave to its adherents) that the British and the Jews are in some way mysteriously allied by Providence, so that any solution which does not give the fullest satisfaction to Israel (no matter at what cost to poor Japhet) is treason. These people mystically regard Britain as the handmaid of Jewry, and there is a section of them who further regard their fellow-countrymen as the ten lost tribes. I have in my library some specimens of their literature.