For something between a dozen and twenty years this policy was successful. The method though less and less firmly established as time went on, has not yet quite failed. None the less that policy was very ill-advised. It was used not only to ridicule the Anti-Semite, but what was quite illegitimate, quite irrational (and bound in the long run to be fatal), it was used to prevent all discussion of the Jewish question, though that question was increasing every day in practical importance and clamouring to be decided.
It was the instinctive policy with the mass of the Jewish nation, a deliberate policy with most of its leaders, not only to use ridicule against Anti-Semitism but to label as "Anti-Semitic" any discussion of the Jewish problem at all, or, for that matter, any information even on the Jewish problem. It was used to prevent, through ridicule, any statement of any fact with regard to the Jewish race save a few conventional compliments or a few conventional and harmless jests.
If a man alluded to the presence of a Jewish financial power in any region—for instance, in India—he was an Anti-Semite. If he interested himself in the peculiar character of Jewish philosophical discussions, especially in matters concerning religion, he was an Anti-Semite. If the emigrations of the Jewish masses from country to country, the vast modern invasion of the United States, for instance (which has been organized and controlled like an army on the march), interested him as an historian, he could not speak of it under pain of being called an Anti-Semite. If he exposed a financial swindler who happened to be a Jew, he was an Anti-Semite. If he exposed a group of Parliamentarians taking money from the Jews, he was an Anti-Semite. If he did no more than call a Jew a Jew, he was an Anti-Semite. The laughter which the name used to provoke was most foolishly used to support nothing nobler or more definitive than this wretched policy of concealment. Anyone with judgment could have told the Jews, had the Jews cared to consult such an one, that their pusillanimous policy was bound to fail. It was but a postponement of the evil day.
You cannot long confuse interest with hatred, the statement of plain and important truths with mania, the discussion of fundamental questions with silly enthusiasm, for the same reason that you cannot long confuse truth with falsehood. Sooner or later people are bound to remark that the defendant seems curiously anxious to avoid all investigation of his case. The moment that is generally observed, the defence is on the way to failure.
I say it was a fatal policy; but it was deliberately undertaken by the Jews and they are now suffering from its results. As a consequence you have all over Europe a mass of plain men who so far from being scared off from discussing the Jewish problem by this false ridicule are more determined than ever to thrash it out in the open and to get it settled upon rational and final lines.
That would perhaps be no great harm in itself. It would merely mean that a false policy had failed, and that proper frank and loyal discussion would succeed all this hushing up and boycott. Unfortunately the false policy had other and much worse consequences. It exasperated men who had already begun to interest themselves in the political discussion and who would not tolerate undeserved ridicule. It heaped up a world of determined opposition to the Jews. It is not exactly that the Anti-Semite has already won or even is as yet certainly on his way to winning, but he now has his chance of winning. Whereas, some few years ago, he had the tide against him, he is now, through the fault of the Jews themselves, at its turn. He now finds himself on an extreme wing, it is true, but attached to a very large body which is already strongly biassed against the Jews, dislikes their presence among us, and is determined to act against them, not only where they still have great power, but also where that power is visibly declining, and even where they are in danger.
It must not be forgotten, as we survey this growing menace, that a policy which reaches no finality is not on that account futile. It must not be forgotten that in the minds of many men (one might say in the minds of most men) during periods of excitement, a policy of repression, though always failing to reach finality, may still be continuous: it may become a habit and may endure indefinitely in the vast suffering of its victims. The Jews have seen that happen in many a small nationality other than their own. They have seen, no doubt, that continued repression acting in an atmosphere of equally continuous rebellion has usually in the long run failed, but they must admit that the maintenance of such repression, with all its accompaniments of moral and physical torture, confiscation, exile and all the rest, has often been a policy long drawn out. It has been drawn out in some cases for centuries. It is not true that, because a policy does not aim at a complete settlement, therefore it cannot be undertaken and vigorously pursued. It can. Time and again a hostile force has attempted to eliminate opposition, or even contrast, and to eliminate it by every instrument, including massacre itself. Sometimes, very rarely, it has succeeded. Usually it has, in the long run, failed. But in the great majority of cases it has at any rate continued long after its failure was apparent. That is the danger which menaces from the phenomenon I have examined in this chapter. It would be madness in the Jews to neglect that phenomenon. It is now so strong in numbers, intensity of conviction, and passion that it menaces their whole immediate future in our civilization. Its ultimate causes we have explored. Its immediate cause, the cause of its sudden development and present startling growth, we have seen to be the Jewish action in Russia, and to this, which I have already touched upon in my third chapter, where I sketched the sequence of events leading up to the present situation, I will next turn, in order to make a more detailed examination of it. For undoubtedly it is the sudden appearance of Jewish Bolshevism that has brought things to their present crisis.
BOLSHEVISM