So it is with history more recent and even contemporaneous. In the history of the nineteenth century it is outrageous. The special character of the Jew, his actions through the Secret Societies and in the various revolutions of foreign States, his rapid acquisition of power through finance, political and social, especially in this country--all that is left out. It is an exact parallel to the disingenuousness which we note in social relations. The same man who shall have written a monograph upon some point of nineteenth century history and left his readers in ignorance of the Jewish elements in the story will regale you in private with a dozen anecdotes: such-and-such a man was a Jew; such-and-such a man was half a Jew; another was controlled in his policy by a Jewish mistress; the go-between in such-and-such a negotiation was a Jew; the Jewish blood in such-and-such a family came in thus and thus--And so forth: but not a word of it on the printed page! This deliberate falsehood equally applies to contemporary record. The newspaper reader is deceived--so far as it is still possible to deceive him--with the most shameless lies. "Abraham Cohen, a Pole"; "M. Mosevitch, a distinguished Roumanian"; "Mr. Schiff, and other representative Americans"; "M. Bergson with his typically French lucidity"; "Maximilian Harden, always courageous in his criticism of his _own_ people" (his _own_ being the German) ... and the rest of the rubbish. It is weakening, I admit, but it has not yet ceased. Now this form of falsehood corrodes, of course, the souls of those who indulge in it. But that does not concern the matter of this book. Where it comes in as a cause of friction between the two races, and a removable cause of friction, is in the effect it has upon the Jewish conception of their position in our society. It falsifies that conception altogether. It produces in the Jew a false sense of security and a completely distorted phantasm of the way in which he is really received in our society. The more this disingenuousness is practised the more the surprise which follows upon its discovery and the more legitimate the bitterness and hatred which that surprise occasions in those of whom we are the hosts. It is not only true of this country; it is true of every other country in which the Jew has been harboured and for a time protected. Invariably he has complained that his awakening was rude, that he was bewildered by what seemed to him a novel and inexplicable feeling against him; that he had thought he was among friends and found himself suddenly among treacherous enemies. All this would have been saved to others in the past, and will be saved to ourselves in the near future, if this pestilent habit of falsehood were eliminated. Disingenuousness is, on our side, the first main cause of the friction between the two races.