The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

First, there was the fact that many people were known to cherish so strong an hostility to Jews that to emphasize the Jewish character of anyone present might awaken that hostility.

Then there was the peculiar rapid transition both of Jewish movements and of Jewish fortunes. In the case I have suggested, of asking a London Jew whether he had relatives in Galicia or Lithuania, you might be stumbling upon relations much poorer than himself in the East End of London; or, again, you might seem to be emphasizing the nomadic character of the race and thereby also emphasizing the contrast between it and our own.

But much the strongest excuse for the convention was the well-founded idea that its exercise pleased the Jews themselves. Men avoided direct mention of Jewish nationality because it was felt that such direct mention was almost an insult. It was a thing which the Jew in whose presence you found yourself desired to have kept in the background; and though we might not understand why he desired it, yet we respected his desire as we do that of anyone with whom we wish to preserve harmonious relations. Most men, for instance, are indifferent upon, say, the matter of smoking. Most men are quite at their ease when they are asked whether they smoke or not, and if they do, whether they prefer this or that brand of tobacco. But now and then one comes across a man who, from some accident of training (as, for instance, a man whose mother brought him up to think smoking a mortal sin), does not like to have it alluded to.

I myself know the case of a man of the highest culture and of considerable social position to whom you may not say anything about pigs either in connection with farming or in connection with food; for his sympathies are Mohammedan. In these exceptional cases, when we know of our guest's particular desire, we yield to it for the sake of harmony and of right living. So is it in this matter of the former convention against alluding to Jewish nationality or Jewish interests in any form. Whether the Jews were wise or not to cherish that convention, as they undoubtedly did, does not concern this part of my argument. I am talking of our duty and not of theirs. But I say that unless the convention is softened and at last dissolved, nothing can be done. Both parties should know that it only does harm. It renders stilted and absurd all our relations; it fosters that suspicion of secrecy which I have insisted upon as the chief irritant in those relations, and it creates a feeling of exception, of oddity, which is the very worst service that could be rendered to the Jews themselves.

Some little time ago the convention went so far that even a mention, a neutral—nay, a laudatory mention, of anything Jewish in a general company led to an immediate awkwardness. Men looked over their shoulders, women gave downward glances right and left. A sort of hunt began, to see whether anyone present could possibly in any remote connection be offended by the monstrous deed. If a man said, "What a poet Heine was and how thoroughly Jewish is his irony!" and said it in a room full of people, the adjective "Jewish" acted like a pistol shot—could anything be more absurd! Yet so it was.

But the point I make is not against the absurdity of this convention but against its peril. It is an obstacle to all right handling of what is becoming daily a more and more insistent and acute difficulty.

It is obvious that the getting rid of such a convention is not to be effected by violent methods, nor immediately. But our duty is to accelerate its decline and, within reason, to enlarge every opportunity for treating the Jewish nationality precisely as one treats any other. I mean precisely as one treats any other in conversation or in writing. We all know the insane type which loves to break convention merely because it is a convention, and we shall certainly have to be on our guard against this sort of person in the near future, as this particular convention begins to break down. But without encouraging such eccentricities there is ample room for an increasing ease in the recognition of what after all we know to be reality, a reality which requires open discussion for the good of us all. The danger is lest even this merely conventional obstacle should by too long a resistance dam up forces which tend to break it down and therefore lest, when it is pulled down, we should admit the other extreme of licence, with its opportunity for insult and damage. That is what has happened in the case of other much more reasonable Victorian conventions, and we must not have it happen in the case of the convention which for so long forbade us to admit that a Jew was a Jew or to take any open interest, when he was present, in the things which he himself thinks the most interesting of all.

And if anyone shall answer that convention is necessary, lest on its decline open hostility should follow, I can only say that this is to despair of any equitable solution at all. But my whole thesis in this book is that such a solution need not yet be despaired of.

There is one more thing to be said in this matter of the old taboo. However long it may linger in the small educated class, it has gone for ever among the populace, and it is the popular instinct we shall have mainly to deal with in the difficult times ahead of us.

The populace in this country talks upon Jewish matters with a frankness which would astonish the drawing-rooms, and has so talked upon them for a generation past—ever since the great novel influx of poor Jews began to pour into our towns. It not only talks thus openly to and of Jews upon its own level, but it is thoroughly alive to the presence and power of Jews in government. Those who think that a continuance of the convention can put off the necessity for a solution would be disillusioned if they would spend a few days east of Aldgate, and mix with their fellow-citizens there.