The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

If you have not to live with those who thus differ from you there is no great harm done, but if you have to accept them as part of your life, it is a different matter. It is then essential to the order of the State that this illusion of directly antagonistic motive should be watched and restrained.

But all this concerns rather our duty in the matter than the mere cause of friction.

The first cause of friction is that contrast which is the same whether we describe it from the alien's point of view, as has just been done, or from our own.

The causes of friction which lie within the province of the will, and which are, therefore, directly a matter for reform, are of another kind. The first of them undoubtedly is our disingenuousness in our dealings with the Jew.

This disingenuousness extends from our daily habit to our treatment of history. It is more deep-rooted than most people are aware of, more widespread than those who are aware of it like to admit. It affects our relations with the Jews just as much when we are attempting to defend their position in the State as when we attack them. Indeed, I think it affects our relations more when we are trying to defend them than when we attack them. The only two kinds of men who show perfect candour in their dealings with the Jews are the completely ignorant dupe who can hardly tell a Jew when he sees one and who accepts as a reality the old fiction of there being no difference except a difference of religion (which he has been taught to think unimportant) and the person called an "Anti-Semite."

Both these types certainly say what they think. That is why in their heart of hearts the Jews are grateful to both, although both are intellectually contemptible. The Jew feels, I think, when he meets either of these types, "At any rate I know where I am." But the great bulk of men, especially among the more cultivated, are grossly disingenuous in all their dealings with the Jews. It is the great fault of our side which corresponds to the fault of secrecy upon theirs. And when you have allowed for routine, for the necessities of social intercourse, for convention and the rest, it remains a deliberately conceived moral evil.

A man and his friend meet in the street a Jew whom they know; they exchange ordinary civilities with him; they pass on. The moment his back is turned each comments to his companion upon the Jewish character of the man they have just left, and almost invariably to his disadvantage.

Now to blame this way of going on does not imply that when you meet your Jewish acquaintance you are to offend him by saying to his face the kind of things you say behind his back; that would be a monstrous piece of cynicism and, in practice, insane. We do not act thus in any relation of life. But it does mean that in the attitude, the gesture, the tone of the voice, we play a deliberately false part in our relations with Jews, which we do not play in our relations with any other people. A peculiar pretence, a pretence only practised with Jews, is elaborately maintained. There is no allusion to or admission of our real attitude, our sense of contrast. We therefore suffer an unnatural strain; and we relieve of the strain immediately afterwards by an exaggeration of the contrast we have pretended to ignore. It is blameworthy in a special degree because it is peculiar to that one case. If we admitted the Jew as a Jew, talked to him of the things that were uppermost in his mind and in ours, and treated him as we treat any other foreigner in our midst, there would have been no harm done. As it is the lie has done a double harm—to him and to us. To us by an exasperation which is entirely our own fault, to him by deceiving him as to his true position.

The Jews who mix with the wealthiest classes to-day, especially in London, have no true idea of their real position in the eyes of their guests; and the fault is with their guests.

I have cited an obvious daily example, but it is the least important, for it is passing and shallow. This disingenuousness spreads to relations more permanent. A man goes into business with a Jew, accepts him as a partner, works with him constantly and yet nourishes in his heart a disloyalty to that relationship. It is a phenomenon of constant recurrence and it poisons the relations between the two races. If a man is prepared to enter into one of these permanent relations with another man who differs fundamentally from himself in tradition and human character, he must face the consequences. One of those consequences, if he is to remain an honest man, is the acceptation of the position with all that it implies. He cannot have the advantage—as he hopes to have it—of the Jewish sobriety, the Jewish tenacity, the Jewish lucidity of thought, the Jewish international relationships, the Jewish opportunity of advancement through the aid of his fellows, and at the same time secretly indulge in a contempt and dislike for his companion, and relieve that suppressed feeling in his absence. Yet that is what men are doing daily throughout the business world.