I have quoted this old man's speech with no invidious intention but only as an actual example of the way in which the "letting alone" of this great question breaks down. I am as familiar as any Jewish reader of mine with names that have dignified public life in the past, Jewish names, Jewish peers: and I recall in particular the honoured name of Lord Herschell to the friendship between whose nearest and my own I preserve a grateful and sacred memory. * * * * * But to return to the failure of the sentimental argument. The sentimental argument fails because it involves contradictions--that is, incompatibility of fact. Even if one had not this strictly rational principle to guide one, there is the whole of history to guide one. It is true that the pretence of common citizenship has worked now for a shorter, now for a longer, period, but never indefinitely. You always come at last to a smash. The Jew is welcomed in mediaeval Poland; he comes in vast numbers; all goes well. Then the inevitable happens and the Jew and the Pole stand apart as enemies, each accusing the other of injustice, the one crying out that he is persecuted, the other that the State is in danger by alien activity within. Spain alternatively pursued this policy, and its opposite; the whole history of Spain--the original seat of Jewish influence in Europe after the general exile--is a history of alternating attempts at the sentimental solution and a savage reaction against it: the reaction of the man, who, fighting for his life, strikes out violently in terror of death. That is the history not only of Spain but of every other country at one time or another. Indeed, we have before our very eyes to-day the beginning of exactly such a reaction in the West of Europe and the United States of America, and it is the presence of that reaction which has caused this book to be written. The attempt at a Liberal solution has already failed in our hands; if it had not failed there would be no more to be said, or, at any rate, we could postpone the discussion until the actual difficulty began. But we have only to look around us to see that, after these few years, this one lifetime, during which the experiment has flourished in the highest part of civilization, it is already breaking down. Everywhere the old questions are being asked, everywhere the old complaints are being raised, everywhere the old perils are reappearing. We must seek some solution, for if we fail to find it we know from the past what tragedies are in store for us both. There is a problem, a most direct and urgent problem. Once it is recognized, a solution of it is necessarily demanded.