The Jew in London; A Study of Racial Character and Present-Day Conditions (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... own than be a guest in a grand palace.' And the same thing has been put even more trenchantly by a correspondent of the Jewish World: --'There is no such thing as an English Jew, just as there is no such thing as a German Chinaman.' Such a statement is commendably frank and honest; and it is certainly hard to see how a Zionist can at once burn with enthusiasm for the National Idea of Israel, and at the same time profess himself to be heart and soul an Englishman. In fact, the position of those who do so seems to be barely respectable, and it is not improved by their attempts to justify it, which commonly consist in the quaintly sophistical plea that devotion to two countries is as easy a matter as devotion to two parents; they have a father-land and a mother-land, and their patriotic ardour is divided impartially between the two. Such ' an argument can hardly be very convincing even to those who employ it; and there is something questionably ambiguous in their whole position. To put the case quite baldly, it would appear that they are anxious to share the status, the goodwill, and the privileges of English citizenship, but at the same time steadily refuse to throw in their lot for good and all with the English nation. They wish, in fact, to stake out a claim in the Promised Land without renouncing the flesh-pots of Egypt. It is an attitude of which the motive is more intelligible than the logic, but it is hardly an attitude which can be permanently maintained. To discuss the probable future of Zionism would take us too far afield, but it is worth while to emphasise one or two points in which it illustrates the main contention of this essay. English Zionism is at bottom a religious rather than a politicalA Protest 1 against movement, and appears...