A striking instance of this group nature of intolerance occurred within my own observation on the Western front during the World War. In an attack one of our prisoners was a German lad of eighteen, a harmless peasant boy who had deserted his machine gun and come in willingly as a prisoner; we made him useful about the first aid post, and he carried water, swept out the place, and even wrapped up German helmets to send to America as souvenirs. But Hans had been a machine gunner; if our soldiers had found him at his post they might have shot him on sight. If they had found him with other troops, they would have disarmed him, driven him back to the prison camp. In the first case, he would have belonged to the group of machine gunners, the greatest danger to the American advance. In the second, he would have belonged to the group of German soldiers, and been fair prey for enmity and capture. As it was, he was regarded merely as Hans—and the hated German machine gunner acted as servant to the friendly American bosses.
If these general principles of intolerance are true, we can apply them at once to the peculiar situation of the Jew—everywhere at home, yet everywhere the creature of prejudice; not so very different from the other white nations among whom he lives, yet always distinct from them and always the target of intolerance. Every movement of bigotry, aristocracy, militarism, junkerism in every land makes anti-semitism one of its cardinal shouting-cries, from the emigrés of Russia to the royalist anti-Dreyfusards of France. The Jew is hated everywhere simply because he lives everywhere, and is everywhere a little different from other people. The Jew has a distinct religion, a peculiar tradition and appearance which can sometimes be distinguished—he is different from other people. And the extreme bitterness of this anti-Semitism, more than of any other anti-party the world over, is simply because everywhere the Jew lives on a frontier, in direct group contact with the intolerant of other peoples. Every Jew lives on a Franco-German frontier, or a Mexican-American one. Even in the United States of America, with its proud tradition of tolerance written into the Federal Constitution, there is now a movement of anti-Semitism. The most obvious condition of its rise is the increase of the Jewish community of America, that is, the extension of the frontier line, the contact of more Americans with this “alien,” which means different, people. Add to that the hatred of certain foreign groups aroused during the war, the suspicion of certain radical groups directly after it, the general unsettled condition of world opinion, and the vast increase of European anti-Semitism as the parties of reaction were thrown on the defensive—and the exact form of American anti-Semitism begins to show itself.
But all these local details do not obscure the real nature of this prejudice which we face in America today. It is just another form of the intolerance of everything different which the wandering exiles have had to face during their two thousand years of homeless persecution. Of course, all this has had its effect on the Jew. It has driven the Jew into intolerance in his turn. His intolerance has never expressed itself in terms of persecution or violence, very seldom in terms of hatred. The intolerance of the Jew became, in self-defense, a pride in the Chosen People of God, in his ancient lineage, in his family loyalty, in his glorious tradition. He then emphasized the fact of difference from other peoples, just as they did, and the Jew looked down on the rude, ignorant heathens just as the Christian despised the uncouth alien Jew. Intolerance has one virtue—it makes for loyalty to your own. It has many vices, beginning with false and ignorant pride, culminating in bitter, malignant hatred.
4.
If intolerance is this natural, universal force, what then is tolerance? How can tolerance ever hope to succeed in a world divided into so many hostile and suspicious groups? Tolerance means the exercise of the individual intelligence. It means that a man has dared to look at the facts and to say: “My people is wrong. This foreigner is just as good as I am.” Or this Jew, or Catholic, or negro, as the case may be. It means that a man has the courage to defy the public opinion of his own group, and to use his own brains instead of going along with the crowd. It means that general principles of right and wrong, applicable universally, have begun to replace the old tribal morality, of sticking by your own through thick and thin. It represents the growth of free inquiry, of science, of the unbiased use of the human intellect, the broadening of the human sympathies. It represents also the breaking down of group control, that instant and unthinking emotional response of the crowd to that which is congenial or against that which is different. Tolerance is the typical virtue of the modern world because the modern world is becoming increasingly self-conscious, intelligent and individualistic, and especially because the modern world is beginning to afford opportunities for real acquaintance between members of different peoples, not merely the superficial frontier contacts which make for prejudice. Above all, tolerance marks the growth of the larger, more inclusive group which includes the smaller ones, and outlaws intolerance between them. In the American army during the World War intolerance was at its lowest, simply because all the various elements in our people were acutely conscious of their common country. Old-time prejudices, left over from the Civil War, were forgotten. Religious and racial intolerance were minimized because there was a common purpose, and a common intolerance of a common enemy.
The coming of tolerance between any two groups, then, means that these two have been included, in the minds of their own members, as parts of a larger, more inclusive body to which they both owe loyalty. Such a tolerance between the nations of the world, now so ready to make war at the slightest provocation, would imply an international or a supernational loyalty, a genuine brotherhood of man, and a real fatherhood of God. Tolerance means that intelligence has made inroads into the old habit of following the group custom blindly through thick and thin. It means that sympathy has succeeded hatred, that suspicion has given way to brotherhood and love. Tolerance is the supreme challenge to the authority of the group to master the thinking man. Treachery to one’s own nation or faith is no such challenge, for that simply means that the traitor preferred another rule and another standard to the one in which he was born. But tolerance is the challenge; it serves notice that no absolute authority, no ancient usage of hatred or bigotry, no instinct to fear the stranger, can forever dominate.
There is a fine summary of this whole question in “The Group Mind” by Professor William MacDougall of Harvard. Dr. MacDougall says of the modern world:[59]
Instead of maintaining universal intolerance, we have made great strides toward universal tolerance.... The religious tolerance and liberty of the modern era are features of the general increase of tolerance and liberty, and must be ascribed to the same causes as this wider fact. For long ages men have felt sympathy and given considerate and just treatment to those who have been nearest to them; at first, to the members of their own immediate family; later to the fellow-members of their own small society; and then, as societies expanded into complex caste societies, to the members of their own caste; later, as castes were broken down, to all their fellow citizens; and later still in some degree to all men.
And he concludes the examination of the subject by saying:
The coming of religious toleration was due to the application of the spirit of inquiry to religious systems; these inquiries produced irreconcilable sects, whose strife prepared the way for compromise and toleration.