And, if we examine ourselves, we shall be equally convinced that there
is no corresponding desire upon our side to do a wrong to the Jew. We
also are exasperated by the memory of insult in moments of quarrel, of
international action opposing our national interests and of friction
between what is native and what is alien; but that is a very different
thing from permanent and necessary antagonism. I know very well what is
called "modern thought" gives to the unconscious part of man a large
place and reduces, as much as it can, the field of reason. I cannot
agree with it. It seems to me that man is essentially rational; and his
political relations can be arranged consonantly with his conscious
morals and his conscious logic.
At any rate, if they cannot, there is an end of all statesmanship and of
all useful political action even in details.
Next, there are the two converse attitudes towards the question which
certainly are affecting, the one an increasing audience upon our side
and the other perhaps an interested though but secret audience upon the
other; I mean those two converse theories whereby, on the one side,
there is the Messianic idea of the Jew ultimately controlling the world,
on the other an extreme dread of that idea and a belief that it is being
actively pursued to the destruction of our institutions and religion.
I can understand that, with the traditions of his race behind him and
with the tone of their sacred writings in his ears, a Jew should lean in
some degree to such a conception, or at any rate that some Jews should
lean towards it. Certainly in face of the ridiculously exaggerated power
of the Jews in recent times (it is now declining, for secrecy was of its
essence and it has now been brought into the arena of open discussion)
it was natural that men should fall into the exaggeration of panic. They
saw the Jew, a tiny fraction of most communities, not more than a
twentieth of any community, exercising a power quite out of proportion
to his numbers or, indeed, to his ability; and they saw that power
directed towards ends which were Jewish ends and therefore hostile or
indifferent to the rest of mankind. But my reason for rejecting not only
exaggerations of this idea but its fundamental implication is that it
seems to me practically impossible. It connotes abilities upon the
Jewish side, a continuous will upon the Jewish side, both of which are
obviously absent. And you have only to look at history to see that long
before things come to anything like a struggle for supremacy it is the
Jew who suffers most from the suspicion of holding such a design, not
we. Indeed, that is one of the important elements in the dangerous
situation which has been created to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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