The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

Unless those two duties are undertaken together, unless the determination to practise both be of equal weight, the solution I propose will fail. To discuss the problem presented by the presence of the Jewish people, to talk of them as one would of any other, openly and frankly, to interest oneself in their history and in their present doings: all this is only to aggravate the trouble if we use that open dealing for the purpose of doing them a hurt, or if, in the course of it, we allow ourselves (merely from irritation or contrast, from the sense which all must have of opposition to things alien) to react against them without consideration of the immediate and ultimate consequences not only to themselves but to us.

Conversely, the determination to regard their interests and to avoid every possible occasion of conflict, to hold a just measure with them, is quite useless if we falsify the whole relation by secrecy and false convention.

The moment that comes in, there comes in with it a secret dissatisfaction with oneself and with the whole situation. The position is falsified, the seed of animosity greatly stimulated, the danger of mutual contempt made inevitable.

Now let us look at these two branches of what we have to do in the matter, and see what difficulties lie in the way.

In the way of frankly recognizing, examining, taking an open interest in the Jewish minority in our midst there lie three very powerful obstacles. First the inherited convention of polite society; secondly, and much the most powerful, fear; and thirdly, the very reputable desire to avoid offence.

The first of these, the fear of convention, has many roots—the necessity for harmony in a leisured life, that is, the desire to avoid friction even at the expense of truth, the mere momentum of a quiet habit, the fear of misunderstanding which may come from one side casting ridicule upon the other, which may offend the person whom we have misunderstood, or make us ridiculous in his eyes and those of our audience.

There is also, of course, as a cause, more powerful than any other, the force which lies behind all convention, the force which makes a man take off his hat in a church, which forbids his walking without boots in the street on the driest day, that is, the pressure of general practice. But the thing to realize is that in this form—I mean as distinct from any feeling of fear or of charity—the thing is a convention and a convention only. Difficult as it is to break with conventions, unless this convention is broken once and for all, the Jewish problem remains with us unsolved and growing in acuteness and peril.

You can meet an Irishman and discuss with him the conditions of his nation. You can ask an Italian when he was last in Italy, or congratulate a Frenchman upon his acquisition of your tongue or tell him that it is difficult for him to understand your own customs: but a convention arose under the Liberal fiction—to which I have devoted so much space in the earlier part of this book—that to do any of these very natural things in the case of a Jew is monstrous. Your audience is shocked if you ask some learned Jew at a public table a question upon his national literature or history. It is a solecism to refer to his nationality at all, save perhaps now and then in terms of foolish praise—in nine times out of ten praise not to the point and not desired by its recipient. And even praise must be approached most gingerly. You may not ask a Jew in London, however keen your desire for information, whether he had cousins in Lithuania or Galicia who have told him of the conditions of those distressed countries. You may not ask him when his family came to England, nor, if he be a recent arrival, what he thinks of the country. The whole thing is taboo.

More than this: you must, you are expected (or were until quite recently expected) to emphasize in a most extravagant manner the complete identity of your Jewish guest with the people among whom he lives. I do not take offence if some chance acquaintance, noting my French name, talks to me about France, and is interested in my experience as a conscript long ago in that country. Mr. Redmond did not feel himself insulted when those he met in London discussed Irish matters with him, from the most acute difficulty in politics, to the most general allusion to the Abbey Theatre. The editor of an Italian review visiting England is not shocked if you ask him when he left Florence, nor are those around you horrified at the ill-breeding of your question. But in the matter of the Jew there stands this convention cutting you off from any such straightforward and simple way of dealing with a fellow-being. That convention, I say, must be broken down if we are to get any results at all and to establish a permanent peace.

The thing was not, of course, entirely irrational in origin. No custom is. It was to be excused upon several grounds.