But, be this as it may, the tremendous explosion which we call Bolshevism brought the discussion of the Jewish problem to a head. The two forces which had hitherto held back the discussion of that problem were that Liberal fiction which had ruled for more than a generation, according to which it was indecent even to mention the word Jew, or to suggest that there was any difference between the Jew and those who harboured him; and, secondly, the fact that the Jews were erroneously regarded by most of the well-to-do people in the West--that is, by most of those who had the control of the Press and therefore of all public expression--as so controlling wealth that they were at once the natural guardians of property and so placed that an attack upon them jeopardized the wealth of the critic. The man who had gone into the City, or who had his life spent upon the Bourse in Paris, or who was negotiating any great capitalist enterprise, who had to do in whatever capacity with the running of the great banks or with the international means of communication by sea and land, even the man who got his precarious living by writing--each and all had hitherto felt that a public silence upon the Jewish problem was necessary to his private welfare. Those who recognized the gravity of the problem had hitherto been moved by fear to be silent upon it, at least in public, though in private they were often voluble enough. Those who recognized it in a lesser degree had also been affected by the same fear. Lastly, you had the large class who were under no necessity for restraint, whether from fear or any other cause, but who were quite content to leave things as they were so long as they received their regular salary or dividends, and who were profoundly convinced that any interference with the Jew would imperil those dividends or that salary.