“But they are not necessarily Bolshevik,” I replied. “The rich Jew is rarely, if ever, a Bolshevik. He is like the rich Gentile, he has too much to lose. The rich Jew is not only an anti-Bolshevik; he is sometimes anti-Jew! That is, he loses his sense of Jewish nationality in his citizen’s pride in his adopted country.”
“Henry Ford doesn’t take so easy a view of it as you do. He is putting up a great fight against the Jews in Detroit. What about Italy? What about Ireland?”—here his voice fell to a fearful whisper—“Sinn Fein, you understand? De Valera is a Portuguese Jew.”
“How do you know that?” I had heard this wild story before and had made careful inquiries in Ireland. It was denied amidst shrieks of hilarity. But if it were true it would have had no terrors for me.
“Lord Alfred Douglas——” he began; but I stopped him, tired of it all at last.
“Then that is all?” I queried. “Plain English and, it may be, the Morning Post is your authority for all this nonsense? Here is where you forge your mighty weapons?” He nodded. “Well, I happen to like the Morning Post. I like its brutalities. I admire its consistency. It delivers frontal attacks upon its enemies. It makes no pretence of friendship it does not feel. It is as full of vices as most newspapers, but you know where you have it. There is no flirting with the thing it hates. It is against every political principle I stand for; abuses like a fishwife everything I cherish. It fills me with blind fury on occasion. But it does not cook its news and—well, I like it. But beware of its prejudices in estimating any cause it attacks.”
I paused to ponder whether the Morning Post would welcome an unsolicited testimonial of this particular sort, and then continued.
“Some newspapers and many men and women have certainly allowed their judgment to be clouded by their prejudice over this question of Bolshevism. To associate Communism with the Jews is also as serviceable to their commercial jealousies as it is to their racial antagonisms. And Bolshevism is only the inevitable throw-up of four years of the most terrible war that ever was waged. I know people in Europe, men of wide culture and of high social standing, who actually profess to believe that it was not the German Kaiser, nor the Austrian Emperor, nor the Junkers, nor the militarists, nor the capitalists, nor the stupid, ignorant millions of deceived and tormented people who caused the war. It was the Jews! The whole wicked business was conceived in the Ghetto! Can raving anti-Semitism go farther?”
“But surely there must be something in it when such people as you describe, men of good brain and fine character, hate the Jews? Why, the whole world is beginning to be up in arms against them. The whole world cannot be wrong. There is something in it.”
“There is exactly this much in it and no more,” I said, picking up a notorious anti-Semitic journal and reading slowly,“‘De Valera’s mother was an Irishwoman, and, judging from the wonderful organizing ability he possesses, his father must have been a Jew!’ What do you think of that for evidence? Judging from the wonderful organizing ability he possesses Mr. Lloyd George’s father must have been a Jew; yet I am sure he was a very much respected Welsh Nonconformist. Judging from the wonderful organizing ability she possesses Miss Pankhurst’s father must have been a Jew; yet I know he was a much esteemed Gentile lawyer of Manchester. The thing is absurd.”
Prejudice was too strong. He left me, unconvinced. But it is simply incredible how many sane people build up a case against a person or a race on evidence as worthless as that which I have just quoted.