disposing of the last obstacle to the civil and
political enfranchisement of the English Jews, and ridiculed the
notion that they would regard England, "not as their country, but
merely as their place of exile." Mr. Wolf thus formulates his faith:
"In the purely religious communities of Western Jewry we have the
spiritual heirs of the law-givers, prophets, and teachers who,
from the dawn of history, have conceived Israel, not primarily
as a political organism, but as a nation of priests, the chosen
servants of the Eternal."

Mr. Claude Montefiore, who is second to none as an interpreter
of modern Judaism, has lately been writing in a similar strain.
The Jew is a Jew in respect of his religion; but, for the ordinary
functions of patriotism, fighting included, he is a citizen of
the country in which he dwells. A Jewish friend of mine said the
other day to a Pacificist who tried to appeal to him on racial
grounds: "_I would shoot a Jewish Prussian as readily as a Christian
Prussian, if I found him fighting under the German flag_." Thus, to
enrol a regiment of Jews is about as wise as to enrol a regiment
of Roman Catholics or of Wesleyan Methodists. Jews, Romans, and
Wesleyans alike hold with laudable tenacity the religious faiths
which they respectively profess; but they are well content to fight
side by side with Anglicans, or Presbyterians, or Plymouth Brethren.
They need no special standard, no differentiating motto. They are
soldiers of the country to which they belong.

Here let me quote the exhilarating verses of a Jewish lady,[*] written
at the time of the Boer War (March, 1900):

"Long ago and far away, O Mother England,
We were warriors brave and bold,
But a hundred nations rose in arms against us,
And the shades of exile closed o'er those heroic
Days of old.

"Thou hast given us home and freedom, Mother England.
Thou hast let us live again
Free and fearless 'midst thy free and fearless children,
Sparing with them, as one people, grief and gladness,
Joy and pain.

"Now we Jews, we English Jews, O Mother England,
Ask another boon of thee!
Let us share with them the danger and the glory;
Where thy best and bravest lead, there let us follow
O'er the sea!

"For the Jew has heart and hand, our Mother England,
And they both are thine to-day--
Thine for life, and thine for death, yea, thine for ever!
Wilt thou take them as we give them, freely, gladly?