Another striking peculiarity of Disraeli was his fondness for veiled allusion. Nearly all of his most popular novels--and this was _one_ of the main reasons for their phenomenal popularity--were thinly veiled representations of Disraeli's own contemporaries, who were easily recognizable by the reading public. Take, for instance, the admirable burlesque entitled _Ixion in Heaven_, where the author tells how Ixion, king of Thessaly, having fallen into disrepute on earth, was taken up into heaven by Jupiter and feasted by the gods. Here Jupiter is really George the Fourth and Apollo is the poet Byron. The latter's pose of gloomy misanthropy, as well as his habit of fasting to keep from growing fat, are admirably satirized in the following dialogue: "You eat nothing, Apollo," said Ceres. "Nor drink," said Neptune. "To eat, to drink, what is it but to live; and what is life but death. . . . I refresh myself now only with soda-water and biscuits. Ganymede, bring some." Now this fondness for veiled allusion is distinctly a Hebrew characteristic. The Arabs today have a saying, "as fond of a veiled allusion as a Hebrew." This has always been a Hebrew trait. I suppose no literature of any people consists so largely of allegory, in proportion to its bulk, as does the Hebrew. In proof of this assertion, one needs but to allude to the vogue in post-exilic Judaism of the Apocalypse, in which contemporary history was presented in the form of allegory, and to the Rabbinical fondness for the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. So it would not be difficult to show that not only these qualities I have mentioned, but all the qualities that made Disraeli admired or feared were his by virtue of his Jewish inheritance. _Zangwill's Prophetic Spirit in "The War God"_ Israel Zangwill knows the Jews, not as George Eliot did, through a process of philosophic induction, but at first hand, because he is a Jew by birth and breeding. He, unlike Heine, has never tried to conceal the fact that he is a Jew. In Israel Zangwill all the tenderness and sympathy, all the tenacity, the suppleness and adaptability, and it may be added, the baffling inconsistencies of his race appear. Inconsistent he certainly is. He has been an ardent Zionist, and in his story "Transitional" (from _They That Walk in Darkness_) he seems to hold that assimilation will never solve the Jewish problem; yet in _The Melting Pot_ he obviously regards assimilation as the inevitable and desirable end of Judaism. In spite of his inconsistencies, Zangwill is one in whom the ancient ideals of Israel live again. It is in the spirit of the prophets that he wrote _The War God_ (1912). This play, with all its faults as an acting drama, is nevertheless a remarkable document, voicing, as it does, on the very eve of the breaking down of European civilization, the old prophetic protest against the brutality and waste of war.