The Jews

by Hilaire Belloc

One attitude towards the question which I have heard fairly often in the mouths of Jews and seen in their writings is something like this: "Our affairs have nothing to do with people outside our nation. This discussion of what you call 'the Jewish problem' is an impertinence upon your part. There is a Jewish problem indeed, but it is a domestic problem, and we request you (with some asperity) to mind your own business."

If this attitude were sound, the search for what I have called a solution, though it might satisfy the intelligence, would be a breach of civic morals. In the same way it would be a breach of civic morals for me to work out a solution for the quarrel between Mr. Jones and his mother-in-law, neither of whom I have ever met and with whom I have no relations, and then to press this solution upon the contending parties. But the flaw in this attitude is that the problem is essentially one involving two parties, the Jews and the non-Jews. The problem we are attempting to solve is a problem expressed in terms of both. Some would even say that there is hardly a domestic question within the Jewish nation which does not have its reaction upon society outside it, and which it is not the business of that society outside to inquire into. That would be pressing things rather far. But the main problem is intimately concerned with both parties and as much with the one as with the other. It is true, indeed, that the consequences of a false solution, or of shirking the solution altogether, would be more acute for the Jew than for us; but we should both suffer, and even on our side the suffering would be grievous.

Even if there were no question of suffering in the ordinary sense of the term, there would still be the question of justice. The Jews who resent a statement of the problem and an attempt at solving it are not doing their own people any good and are at the same time denying us the right of putting our own affairs in order, which denial is, of course, intolerable: for the position of the Jews in our great States and in Islamic society is something which those States and that society have to determine. They cannot leave it in the air. To some conclusion they must come, and soon, and on the nature of that conclusion depends their peace.

Two theories, proceeding from very different states of mind, the opposite each of the other, but each exclusive of any solution, spring from the root idea that there is something inexorably malignant in the relations between the Jew and his surroundings. In the one form this takes the shape of affirming that the unfortunate Jew is invariably ill-treated by his wicked hosts and always will be so ill-treated. In the other it takes the form of saying that the wicked Jew will always be conspiring and trying to hurt his good, kind hosts and always will be so conspiring. In either case it is no good trying to find a solution, for it is affirmed that the quarrel is in the nature of things. People will say to one, "Why attempt to change something which cannot be changed? Why talk of your material as something other than what it is? Cats will always quarrel with dogs, and if you want to avoid a quarrel the only thing to do is to keep the dogs and cats of your household apart."

It is precisely because I do not believe either form of this idea to be true that I have sought for a solution. I do not believe either form of doctrine to be true because the evidence is against it. That evidence is to my hand and can be examined by my own unaided powers, as it can be examined by any other person in our modern society. I cannot recollect one single case in all the hundreds of Jews I have come across—not one in the score whom I can count as intimates—who showed any sign of this malignant hatred. I have heard many outbursts of exasperation which, when we think of the past, are natural enough; but of some persistent and evil desire to hurt those among whom they live, some instinctive desire unconnected with past suffering, and acting as a sort of instinct, I have seen no trace. If such were to be discovered in some exceptional Jew out of a large acquaintance I should conclude that it might be true of a small minority, but common sense and common experience are sufficient to show that it does not affect the mass.

Of the causes of friction, even of acute friction, which I have enumerated in former pages, there is the habit of secrecy, there is the mutual contempt, arising in each from a sense of superiority over the other; there is the quarrel between what is national and what is international, between what is of us and what is alien. There are, in a word, plenty of elements suggesting accidental antagonism, but of intrinsic antagonism there is no evidence—there is no evidence, I mean, that the Jews would still desire to destroy a society in which they found themselves at their ease.

And, if we examine ourselves, we shall be equally convinced that there is no corresponding desire upon our side to do a wrong to the Jew. We also are exasperated by the memory of insult in moments of quarrel, of international action opposing our national interests and of friction between what is native and what is alien; but that is a very different thing from permanent and necessary antagonism. I know very well what is called "modern thought" gives to the unconscious part of man a large place and reduces, as much as it can, the field of reason. I cannot agree with it. It seems to me that man is essentially rational; and his political relations can be arranged consonantly with his conscious morals and his conscious logic.

At any rate, if they cannot, there is an end of all statesmanship and of all useful political action even in details.

Next, there are the two converse attitudes towards the question which certainly are affecting, the one an increasing audience upon our side and the other perhaps an interested though but secret audience upon the other; I mean those two converse theories whereby, on the one side, there is the Messianic idea of the Jew ultimately controlling the world, on the other an extreme dread of that idea and a belief that it is being actively pursued to the destruction of our institutions and religion.