utile, and undignified proceeding. I shall content
myself with putting the following questions to the Jews: Is it not
true that, in countries where we live in perceptible numbers, the
position of Jewish lawyers, doctors, technicians, teachers, and
employees of all descriptions becomes daily more intolerable? Is it
not true, that the Jewish middle classes are seriously threatened? Is
it not true, that the passions of the mob are incited against our
wealthy people? Is it not true, that our poor endure greater
sufferings than any other proletariat? I think that this external
pressure makes itself felt everywhere. In our economically upper
classes it causes discomfort, in our middle classes continual and
grave anxieties, in our lower classes absolute despair.

Everything tends, in fact, to one and the same conclusion, which is
clearly enunciated in that classic Berlin phrase: "_Juden Raus!_" (Out
with the Jews!)

I shall now put the Question in the briefest possible form: Are we to
"get out" now and where to?

Or, may we yet remain? And, how long?

Let us first settle the point of staying where we are. Can we hope for
better days, can we possess our souls in patience, can we wait in
pious resignation till the princes and peoples of this earth are more
mercifully disposed towards us? I say that we cannot hope for a change
in the current of feeling. And why not? Even if we were as near to the
hearts of princes as are their other subjects, they could not protect
us. They would only feel popular hatred by showing us too much favor.
By "too much," I really mean less than is claimed as a right by every
ordinary citizen, or by every race. The nations in whose midst Jews
live are all either covertly or openly Anti-Semitic.

The common people have not, and indeed cannot have, any historic
comprehension. They do not know that the sins of the Middle Ages are
now being visited on the nations of Europe. We are what the Ghetto
made us. We have attained pre-eminence in finance, because mediaeval
conditions drove us to it. The same process is now being repeated. We
are again being forced into finance, now it is the stock exchange, by
being kept out of other branches of economic activity. Being on the
stock exchange, we are consequently exposed afresh to contempt. At the
same time we continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellects
who find no outlet, and this endangers our social position as much as
does our increasing wealth.