But a mere category of this kind is, as I have said, useless to explain the fundamental quality, the hidden root, of the ceaseless conflict between the very soul of the Jew and the soul of the society around him. All these points are but manifestations of some profound, some subterranean power for contrast, the value of which we cannot grasp, but the effects of which are only too apparent. And there remains in the minds of those who most rely upon this race and of those who most suspect them the sense of an impassable gulf between them and ourselves. It is the recognition, the admission of such a contrast, the telling of the truth about it, the working upon it as a necessary condition, which must form the foundation for any solution at which we can arrive. * * * * * There is one feature in the European's attitude towards the Jews which must be specially dealt with, and that is the false impression that the friction between us and them is in the main a quarrel with their wealth. That impression has been greatly weakened by the recent revolutionary activity of the Jew surging up from the depths, appearing upon the surface, and producing the great upheaval in Russia, and the attempted upheavals elsewhere. But though the new Jewish revolutionary movement has shaken the old insistence on Jewish wealth it is hard to eradicate it. It has been present throughout the ages, and will remain at the back of people's minds perhaps for ever, because the few Jews who do concentrate on piling up great fortunes concentrate on that task so entirely. Yet the impression is false and is the fruitful cause of the worst misunderstandings. For the Jews are not a rich nation, and the very fact that they stand in the popular mind--and especially in the mind of rich people in times of corruption--for wealth, is an example of the way in which they are misunderstood and of the way in which injustice to the Jew arises. The Jews are a poor nation. An enemy would say that they were poor because they did not work, but this again would be an injustice, because the Jew works exceedingly hard and has often in the past and does still in many places work hard, not only in negotiation and commerce but with his hands. We see the Jews in the Middle Ages monopolizing important manual occupations in some districts--dyeing and shipbuilding, for instance. And there are many parts of Eastern Europe where they work upon the land to-day. The Jews are a poor nation because they are an alien nation and because their activities are for the most part condemned to working against the grain, in a society which is not their own. But that they _are_ a poor nation is not only true but abundantly evident to any one who has travelled and watched their various settlements with any sympathy.