A VIRILE RACE

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19765, 21 December 1935, Page 12

A VIRILE RACE

HISTORY OF THE JEWS. DEBT OF SCIENCE AND ARTCONSTANT TENACITY. There have been many attacks o the Jews, but (writes James Dougla in the Daily Express) I have neve been able to find any book which : an adequate defence of the Jews. Th: is strange, for the Jews have an ovei whelming defence against all thei enemies. The case for the Jews is that the were for several thousands of year a small band of wandering Semite: and that they created a vision of Go . out of which Christianity and Chris tendom miraculously grew. The othe Semitic tribes have done nothing lik this. Only this poor and weak branc of the Semitic stock has performe the marvel that has made the moderi world. The supreme evidence in defence of the Jews is the basic fact tha Jesus, the Founder of Christianity was a Jew. If there had been n< Hebrew prophets Christianity woulc never have shaped the history of th< whole world. The Bible is and always will b< the greatest bo6k in any language It has been translated into everj tongue and every dialect of the human race. It is the one book of man. It is a Jewish book, and the Christian religion is a Jewish religion. It is their religion and not their race which has preserved the Jewish people through all their perils ever since they escaped from their capticity in Babylon 3000 years ago. The great empires of the ancient world have vanished and perished, but this small and obscure group of nobodies has survived them all through 30 centuries of exodus and dispersion. Our own Western civilisation may vanish and perish like the Greeks, Roman, Assyrian, Sumerian, and Persion civilisations, but the _ Jewish people will survive its destruction. The Jews are time-proof and change-proof. Never Absorbed. No race has ever assimilated or absorbed the Jews. Disraeli proudly said it is impossible for an inferior race to absorb a superior race. Their enemies have flung them into many melting-pots, but they have never found a pot which could melt them. ‘Ut is all very well,” says Henry Ford, “to talk of the meltingpot, but so far from the Jews meltingin the pot, it looks as if they would melt the pot itself.” The persecution of the Jedish race is the darkest chapter in the history of Christianity. “The heroism of the defenders of every other creed,” says Lecky, “fades into significance before this martyred people, who for 13 centuries, confronted all the evils that the fiercest fanaticism could devise, enduring obloquy and spoliation, the violation of the dearest ties, and the infliction of the most hideous sufferings, rather than abandon their faith.” They were outraged, tortured and bprned alive. They were imprisoned and banished. They were shut up in ghettos. They were convicted of the -worst crimes on the worst evidence. But their genius triumphed over their enemies. They have produced great philsophers, artists, poets, physicians, statesmen, philanthropists, inventors, merchants, financiers, and men of science. Test of Nations. f Disraeli said that Providence -would add good or ill fortune to nations according as they dealt ill or well by the Jews. History certifies that profound saying. In Spain thousands of Jews were burned alive. The Spanish Empire perished. The Romanoffs persecuted the Jews in a thousand pogroms. Their Empire dissolved in ruins. Spain and Russia attest the truth of Disraeli’s generalisation. This is not to say that persecution of the Jews involves the ruin of a State; it is true, however, that a persecuting State contains elements that may ultimately doom it. There is no doubt that nations which treat the Jews well are richly rewarded by their liberality and tolerance. For example, the century after the Norman conquest witnessed an outburst of architectural energy which covered England with castles and cathedrals. Castle and cathedral alike owed their existence to the loans of the Jews. There are still “Jews’ houses” at Lincoln and elsewhere. They were almost the first houses of stone which superseded the English hovels. There was a Jewish Medical School at Oxford. In the thirteenth century royal displeasure fell upon the Jews in England. They were forbidden to hold real property, to employ Christian servants, or to move through the streets -without the two white palets of wool on their breasts which distinguished their race. Driven Out. At last Edward drove the Jews from his realm. Of the 16,000 Jews who preferred exile to apostasy few survived. One shipmaster marooned his cargo of Jewish merchants on a sandbank and told them to call a new Moses to save them from the sea. It was not until the nineteenth century that the full emancipation of the Jews followed the emancipation of the Catholics. England became the asylum of all the fugitive Jews in Europe. They played a great part in her economic development Jews became our national heroes. Henry Irving made Shylock a tragic figure. He romanticised the Jew that Shakespeare drew. Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, and Charles Rcade ennobled the Jew. Disraeli conquered the Tory prejudice against the Jews. But he had a hard fight. While he was pleading for the Jews in the House of Commons, Lord John Russell said to Gladstone: “Look at him, how manfully he sticks to it, though he knows that every word he says is gall and wormwood to every man who sits around him and behind him.” The talents of the Jews have found full scope in every English institution. They have adorned the law and the Legislature. They have added lustre to every profession. They have promoted every enterprise. They have married into our oldest families. They have become patrons of all the arts and sciences. The theatre owes much to Jewish dramatists, actors, and actresses. Sir Arthur Pinero and Sir Herbert Beerholm Tree are examples. Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt,, the two greatest actresses of their day, were Jewish. Einstein and Hertz. Perhaps the greatest man of genius

in the world of science since Sir Isaao T'ewton, is Einstein. . Heinrich Hertz, the wireless pioneer, was a Jew. Fritz Haber, a German Jew, during the war bestowed on Germany the secret of extracting nitrogen from the air. Jewish blood probably ran in the veigs of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. His mother’s name was Moss.. There was a Jewish strain in the Great Victorian poets, Robert Browning and Matthew Arnold. The Jews invented the bill of exchange. They have wielded enormous power in the City, in the Bank of England, and the Stock Exchange. Persecution has forced the Jews to change their names. The Jews have no surnames. They were compelled by law to adopt surnames, so that they could be registered. The Jew must get a surname of some sort. He cannot invent one, so he takes a name that pleases him. It is not fair to blame him. The Jew likes the best of everything, and therefore he likes the best of names. Whatever may be the faults of the Jews, we must remember that they are largely the product of ancient oppression and persecution. In short, the Jews are what the Christians have made them. They arc martyrs of history, but they have thriven and they will always thrive on their martyrdom.