The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

CHAPTER VI THE CAUSE OF FRICTION UPON OUR SIDE

Having concluded a brief review of the causes of friction upon the Jewish side, we must turn to the cause of friction upon our own.

At first sight it might seem that the task was superfluous. Action and reaction are equal and opposite. If you have shown why A irritates B, you have also presumably shown why B irritates A. Or again, if you regard an alien minority in a community as an irritant (which it nearly always is and which it certainly is in the case of the Jews), you have, it would seem, sufficiently defined the position and need not trouble to examine what part the irritated play in the matter. What is parasitical at the worst preys upon the general body, at the best disturbs it. The general body would appear passive. It has no part in the business but to react against the cause of the disturbance and if possible get rid of it. As that cause is none of its making, one need not seek for any responsibility on its side.

The house is ours: the Jew is an intruder (an objector may say), and there is an end of it.

But the situation is not as simple as that. Quite apart from the fact that the Jew will certainly not allow such a description of his activity, there is the obvious truth that where you are dealing with two human factors, that is, with two factors which have a common nature and therefore common duties, you are also dealing with two known and analysable organic things. You are also dealing with two sets of wills, and these wills we know to be free, in spite of sophists. A man and a group of men can do well or ill, both absolutely, and relatively to some particular question in hand; and no group of men can escape responsibility in relation to any other group with which it is in contact. It is certain that we play a part ourselves in this quarrel between us and the Jews. It is a part which is in a measure inevitable, because it proceeds in a measure from the mere contrast between two racial characters. But there is a remaining part which can be remedied by the action of the will.

Though we cannot change that element which is inherent in our nature any more than the Jews can change theirs, yet an understanding of it makes all the difference; and we can certainly change those elements which are inherent in our wills.

The proof of this is that in the long story of the relations between the two races, there have been, in various times and places, those exceptional chapters of calm to which I have alluded on an earlier page, and these could not have been maintained had not the causes of friction been modified on either side, but especially upon ours.

All that cause of friction which arises from the mere contrast of character may be set down very briefly. It is included in what has just been said on the general causes, the difference in nature between the Jews and ourselves. If their form of courage, their form of generosity, their form of loyalty is, as it is, of a different quality from ours; if their defects show the same difference of quality or colour; if we perpetually feel, as we do feel, the friction caused by this contrast, so do they, presumably, feel a corresponding friction in their dealings with us. We shall neither of us be able to change that state of affairs. We must admit it, and we must try to understand its nature.

Above all, we must not take it for granted that a difference from ourselves is in itself an evil in another. That is a point to be insisted upon. When we are dealing with inanimate nature, or with unintelligent animate nature, we do not ascribe motive, for there is no motive to ascribe. A man does not go about with bitterness in his heart against wasps, though the purpose of the wasp is very different from the purpose of the man and their interests clash. He does not call the wasp wicked, nor, save as a relief to his feelings, give it moral names. He does not condemn the wasp. Still less does he condemn all wasps, or anything else in nature around him that works against his interest. But when he has to deal with other human beings, man at once begins to ascribe a motive. He must do so, because he knows that motive is the spring of all human action, including his own. When that motive differs from his, contrasts with his and is therefore in any degree inimical to his, he is inclined to ascribe an evil motive. All that is a truism as old as the hills.