All this is true, but there remains an element not to be accounted for
on any such pleas. There are in the experience of all of us, an
experience repeated indefinitely, men who have no excuse whatsoever for
a false name save that advantage of deceit. Men whose race is
universally known will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and
after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original
and true name be used in its place. This is particularly the case with
the great financial families. Some, indeed, have the pride to maintain
the original patronymic and refuse to change it in any of their
descendants. But the great mass of them concealed their relations one
with another by adopting all manner of fantastic titles, and there can
be no object in such a proceeding save the object of deception. I admit
it is a form of protection, and especially do I admit that in its origin
it may have mainly derived from a necessity for self-protection. But I
maintain that to-day the practice does nothing but harm to the Jew.
There are other races which have suffered persecution, many of them, up
and down the world, and we do not find in them a universal habit of this
kind.
Again, who can say that the bearing of a Jewish name to-day, or at any
rate in the immediate past, is or was a handicap in commerce where
Occidental nations were concerned? And as for the Eastern nations, the
Jews there are so sharply differentiated that a false name can be of no
service merely to hide the racial character of its bearer. There must be
another motive present.
The same arguments apply for and against other forms of secrecy. A man
may plead that if secrecy in relationship were not maintained the
dislike of Jews would lead to false accusations. The Jew is highly
individual, especially in intellectual affairs. He takes his own line.
He expresses his opinions with singular courage. And such individual
opinions will often differ violently from those of men with whom he is
most closely connected. "Why," I can understand some distinguished
Jewish publicist in England saying, "should I be compromised by people
knowing that such-and-such a Bolshevist in Moscow or in New York is my
cousin or nephew? I am conservative in temperament; I have always served
faithfully the state in which I live; I heartily disapprove of these
people's views and actions. If their relationship with me were known I
should fall under the common ban. That would be unjust. Therefore I keep
the relationship secret."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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