There was little for David himself to learn about the by-ways and customs of this nebulous territory—from his earliest childhood he had wandered there. And he realized that it was not to the habitual thinkers that the war and what it involved had made such a shattering difference—but to those who had never thought before.... Poor old Richard ... all those tumbled we’s and they’s of his utterance ... he hardly knew yet where he belonged—too doggedly proud to include himself with the nation who did not want him—yet jibbing at classification with the despised alien enemy. Poor old Richard, it was rather a shame.
“At any rate, we’re both in the same boat,” David exclaimed, carried away by a quick impulse to solace. Immediately his companion, in a manner of speaking, toppled him out of the boat.
“No, we’re not. You’re born over here. You’re all right. You’d be English if you weren’t a pro-German.”
“Damn it! I’m not a pro-German. I’m a Jew.”
“What the——” Richard in his astonishment stopped dead on the pavement.
“Well?”
“What has being a Jew got to do with it? It’s a question of nationality, not religion.”
“The Jews are a nation. If it were only a theological difference, why should that have affected such a very marked distinction of feature and temperament? Going to Synagogue instead of to Church doesn’t alter the curve of a nose. Of course we’re a nation apart, apart and scattered—but racially the most united in the world. And that’s another of my private reasons for wearing khaki—because the English have been good to the Jews, have given them sanctuary and treated them as equals. They have a claim on our services. While Germany has always behaved like a swine to Judea.... I’m not a pro-German, Marcus, but there’s a kinship between English Jews and German Jews and Russian Jews and Italian and American and Polish and Roumanian and Austrian Jews, that no war ever waged can entirely destroy. I don’t want to see a Jew hurt—and, oh God! I don’t want to hurt another Jew. We’re a race of artists and financiers and wanderers—not of fighters.”
“I don’t know about that. Jehovah was a God of din and battle, wasn’t He? I’m a bit foggy about the Old Testament, but I seem to remember that they were always at it, hammer and tongs. And pater says that Jews are ardent patriots by temperament.”
“Yes—with nowhere to put it. All countries, and no countries, and the countries from which we’ve been driven, and the countries where we hope to go back.... I’m sorry we can’t change over, you and I, Richard. The feeling of persecution isn’t new to me.... I’ve got the sense of it in my very bones.... I’ve been hounded with my ancestors from the East through Russia ... through Central Europe....”