k and laziness; they had no
sense of property; were it not for unjust laws even now the Jews would
possess all the land of South Russia....

Benham listened with a kind of fascination. "But," he said.

It was so. And with a confidence that aroused a protest or so from the
onlookers, the Jewish apologist suddenly rose up, opened a safe close
beside the fire and produced an armful of documents.

"Look!" he said, "all over South Russia there are these!"

Benham was a little slow to understand, until half a dozen of these
papers had been thrust into his hand. Eager fingers pointed, and several
voices spoke. These things were illegalities that might some day be
legal; there were the records of loans and hidden transactions that
might at any time put all the surrounding soil into the hands of the
Jew. All South Russia was mortgaged....

"But is it so?" asked Benham, and for a time ceased to listen and stared
into the fire.

Then he held up the papers in his hand to secure silence and, feeling
his way in unaccustomed German, began to speak and continued to speak in
spite of a constant insurgent undertone of interruption from the Jewish
spokesman.

All men, Benham said, were brothers. Did they not remember Nathan the
Wise?

"I did not claim him," said the spokesman, misunderstanding. "He is a
character in fiction."

But all men are brothers, Benham maintained. They had to be merciful to
one another and give their gifts freely to one another. Also they had
to consider each other's weaknesses. The Jews were probably justified
in securing and administering the property of every community into which
they came, they were no doubt right in claiming to be best fitted for
that task, but also they had to consider, perhaps more than they did,
the feelings and vanities of the host population into which they brought
these beneficent activities. What was said of the ignorance, incapacity
and vice of the Roumanians and Russians was very generally believed and
accepted, but it did not alter the fact that the peasant, for all his
incapacity, did like to imagine he owned his own patch and hovel and did
have a curious irrational hatred of debt....

The faces about Benham looked perplexed.

"THIS," said Benham, tapping the papers in his hand. "They will not
understand the ultimate benefit of it. It will be a source of anger
and fresh hostility. It does not follow because your race has supreme
financial genius that you must always fo