First, a general cause, which lies in the contrasting nature of the two and upon the irritant effect of that contrast. This cause is not to be eliminated, though its effects may be modified. It is a profound contrast and a sharp irritant constant in its activity. The essential is to recognize its real nature, not to give to it general terms of faults and vices, but to appreciate the difference of quality involved: above all, not to tell lies about it and pretend it is not present.
Secondly, as to special causes of friction—I mean causes which on their side, as on ours, can be, if not eliminated, at any rate modified—I suggest that the most prominent are: 1. The sense of superiority which, though it cannot be destroyed, can at least be checked in expression and which, by a pretty irony, is equally strong upon both sides. 2. The use of secrecy by the Jews themselves; partly as a weapon of defence, partly as a method of action, always to be deplored, and of a nature particularly exasperating to our temperament. 3. Upon our side, a persistent disingenuousness in our treatment of this minority. Unintelligence in their treatment: the whole made worse by an indifference or lack of charity, a refusal to make the effort necessary for meeting and understanding as well as we can the race which must always be with us and which is yet so different from our own.
Now these causes of friction permanently present tend to produce what I have called the tragic cycle: welcome of a Jewish colony, then ill-ease, followed by acute ill-ease, followed by persecution, exile and even massacre. This followed, naturally, by a reaction and the taking up of the process all over again.
In our own time we have seen, quite lately, the succession of the second to the first of these stages; we have passed from welcome to ill-ease. That passage threatens a further passage from the second to the third; from the third to the terrible conclusion.
We feel quite secure to-day from the last extreme of this cycle. We are certain it will never come to persecution: that is still inconceivable. But it is not inconceivable everywhere: and no society is free from change. Some now alive may live to see riots even in this quiet polity and worse in newer or less settled states.
Such a catastrophe is to be avoided by every effort in our power and a solution to the problem presented must imperatively be sought. But in passing we should note, for the consideration of those who may doubt the acuteness of the problem and the immediate practical necessity for a solution, the presence of a phenomenon which amply proves that it is acute and that the solution is necessary. That phenomenon is the presence to-day of a new type, the Anti-Semite, the man to whom all the Jews are abhorrent.
It is a phenomenon which has increased prodigiously; its rate of increase is accelerating, and as a warning of the peril, as a proof of its magnitude, I propose to examine that phenomenon closely in my next chapter.