“I do like it from a general standpoint,” she replied; “I think it the best paper in the world. But especially do I like your own particular column, ‘From a Prophet’s Chamber.’ But, Mr. Hammond, about the Jew—you are going in strong for him, aren’t you?”
“From the ordinary newspaper point, yes,” he said. “I cannot quite recall how my mind was first switched on to the subject, but I do know this—that the more I study the past history of the race, and the future predictions concerning it, the more amazed I am, how, past, present, and future, the Jews, as a nation, are interwoven with everything political, musical, artistic—everything, in fact. And I wonder, equally, that we journalists, as a whole—I speak, of course, as far as I know my kinsmen in letters—should have thought and written so little about them.
“Take their ubiquitousness, Miss Finisterre,” went on Hammond. “There does not appear to have been an empire in the past that has not had its colony of Jews. By which I do not mean a Ghetto, simply, a herding of sordid-living, illiterate Hebrews, but a study colony of men and women, who, by sheer force of intellect, of brain power, have obtained and maintained the highest positions, the greatest influence.
“Why, in China, even, isolated, conservative China, before Christ was born in Bethlehem, the Jews were a prosperous, ubiquitous people, worshipping the one God, Jehovah, amidst all the foulness of Chinese idolatries.”
Madge Finisterre listened with rapt interest. The man before her, fired with his subject, talked marvellously. A good listener helps to make a good talker, and Tom Hammond talked well.
“It is not simply that they practically hold the wealth of the world in their hands, that they are the world’s bankers, but they are dominating our press, our politics.”
With glowing picture of words he poured out a flood of wondrous fact and illustration, winding up presently with:
“Then you cannot kill the Jew, you cannot wipe him out. Persecution has had the effect of stunting his growth, so that the average Britisher is several inches taller than the average Jew. But the life of the Hebrew is indestructible. Sometimes of late I have asked myself this question, as I have reviewed the history of the dealings of so-called Christianity with the Semitic race—Has Christianity been afraid of the Jews, or why has she sought to stamp them out?”
The pair had been so engrossed with their talk that they had lost all count of time. A half-hour had slipped by since Tom Hammond had sent his messenger to Wallis’s. The young fellow suddenly appeared at the door.
“Got it, Charlie?”