The Privileged Race
It will be as well to preface these Thoughts with a solemn declaration.
They are written sincerely and without malice or desire to give offence.
You may be surprised by this portentous giving of assurances which you should be able to take for granted—and probably do —in every article in this paper. But other articles have other subjects. This one relates to Jews.
There are a number of subjects, as every journalist knows, which have only to be discussed reasonably for hysterical protests to pour in from some group of sentimentalists. But there is one mastersubject which has only to be raised, let alone discussed, in a scientific way, for the writer to be accused on all hands of malice, prejudice, intolerance, and an unChristian spirit -So shamefully has the English people allowed Liberalism to rob it of liberty of speech in so vital a matter.
Hence the great discrepancy between what is written and spoken about Jews in this country in press and Parliament and what comes out in so many quarters in
private conversation. Hence the unreasoning violence with which the undercurrent of resentment against their influence in the country breaks out on occasions. Hence the fantastic forms taken by the tales about the hidden hand of Jewry.
For the honest seeker after truth in these things is howled down. Several people may drop their subscriptions to this paper when they read this.
A good many years ago Mr. Belloc, in predicting much that has since happened to the Jews, and much that is still to come, as a result of this suppression, analysed its nature with great moderation. Not only is there what may fairly be called a conspiracy of silence to hush up facts discreditable to Jews; it is not considered " the thing " to refer even to the existence of Jews or a Jewish culture in our midst, still less to the fact of any particular person being a Jew.
To this, as Mr. Belloc insisted, many Jews make a suicidal contribution of their own. They try to conceal their race, particularly by adopting typically English.names. After coming across ,a few examples of this deception on the.part of those who have . been claiming their confidence in publicJe affairs, men will believe the wildest tales of secret conspiracies to enslave the human race.
It is all part of the attempt to persuade. Englislunen that no distinctive Jewish culture exists in England, at any rate outside Whitechapel. Secularist Judaism and secularist Liberalism are its inspirers. Before them was English Protestantism, to a large extent a reversion from Christianity to Judaism and now running to seed in " British-Israel."
Yet the inspirers of this legend about the non-existence of this culture have done more than anyone else to establish it here. The ideal of Liberalism has always been a culture in which every philosophy of life is free to be represented so long as it admits every other. Its success in bringing about this cultural chaos enabled Judaism, provided it were sufficiently secular, to make itself at home in a once Christian country and claim to be British without ceasing to be Jewish.
Since then it has become the dominant outlook in Ehgland, protected by a specially instituted series of prosecutions.
It would be interesting to know how often similar prosecutions have been instituted against the writers and quoters of the revolting calumnies of the " Maria Monk " type even when Protestant rioting against Catholics was in full tide.
it is a grave matter if an English Christian may not refer to the prevalence in his country of alien and non-Christian influences without being ruled out of court as " prejudiced" or dragged into it as a Jew-baiter. It is perfectly possible to wish to preserve for one's country what is left of its Englishry and its Christianity without being prejudiced and without hating a single Jew.
A Jew should not be the object of any Christian's hailed. Mere psychological antipathies, where they exist, are felt on both sides and with other races. They may bar personal friendship in individual cases (though it is not often they do) but they should never bar Christian charity. And when a Jew accepts Christ and baptism it is sinful to refuse him Christian brotherhood and he quickly acquires the outlook of Christendom.
When he remains a Jew by religion we are entitled to exclude him from our culture, as he has a right to exclude others from his, but not for that reason to withhold our respect. It is time for that when he is engaged in corrupting our culture.
It was an evil day both for Christendom and for Jewry when Jewry and Liberalism persuaded the politicians and the press to pretend that Jewry did not exist—unless it Was being persecuted. Men are led thereby into suspecting that Jews are corrupting Christendom all the time, and on the foundations of that suspicion the Hitters and the Streichers rise to power. Jews were far safer in the Ghetto, which indeed was instituted chiefly for their safety.