The War and DemocracySeton-Watson, R. W. (Robert William)
History
The War and Democracy
Seton-Watson, R. W. (Robert William)
Europe -- Politics and government -- 1871-1918; Nationalism -- Europe; World War, 1914-1918
§13. _The Future of Turkey._--The entry of Turkey into the great war
marks a further stage in the winnowing process from which we hope that a
regenerated Europe will emerge. Two of the main causes of the war are the
Turk and the Magyar, whose effete and tyrannous systems have each in its
own manner and degree long kept South-Eastern Europe in a ferment of unrest
and reaction. It is a matter of profound regret that two infinitely more
virile and progressive races, the German and the Jew, should be fighting
their battles for them, and indeed bolstering up causes which would
otherwise speedily collapse by reason of their own inward rottenness. It is
the Triple Alliance which has made it possible for the iniquitous racial
hegemony of the Magyars to survive in Hungary; it is the joint policy of
Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin which has hampered the progress of the Balkan
States, and above all the development of every Slavonic nation; and in this
their most valuable allies have been the Jewish Press and the Jewish _haute
finance_ of Germany, Austria and Hungary. Just as we hope and believe that
one result of this war will be the emancipation of Germany and German
"culture" from the corroding influences of militarist doctrine, so there
are good grounds for hoping that it will also give a new and healthy
impetus to Jewish national policy, grant freer play to their many splendid
qualities, and enable them to shake off the false shame which has led
men who ought to be proud of their Jewish race to assume so many alien
disguises and to accuse of anti-Semitism those who refuse to be deceived
by mere appearances. It is high time that the Jews should realise that few
things do more to foster anti-Semite feeling than this very tendency to
sail under false colours and conceal their true identity. The Zionist
and the orthodox Jewish nationalist have long ago won the respect and
admiration of the world. No race has ever defied assimilation so stubbornly
and so successfully, and the modern tendency of individual Jews to
repudiate what is one of their chief glories suggests an almost comic
resolve to fight against the course of nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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