cheap-labour crusade. Religious prejudices may account for one part of
it, but not for the other nine.

Protestants have persecuted Catholics, but they did not take their
livelihoods away from them. The Catholics have persecuted the
Protestants with bloody and awful bitterness, but they never closed
agriculture and the handicrafts against them. Why was that? That has the
candid look of genuine religious persecution, not a trade-union boycott
in a religious dispute.

The Jews are harried and obstructed in Austria and Germany, and lately
in France; but England and America give them an open field and yet
survive. Scotland offers them an unembarrassed field too, but there are
not many takers. There are a few Jews in Glasgow, and one in Aberdeen;
but that is because they can't earn enough to get away. The Scotch pay
themselves that compliment, but it is authentic.

I feel convinced that the Crucifixion has not much to do with the
world's attitude toward the Jew; that the reasons for it are older than
that event, as suggested by Egypt's experience and by Rome's regret
for having persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian, under
the mistaken impression that she was merely persecuting a Jew. Merely a
Jew--a skinned eel who was used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that
in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew
comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully
with the average Jew in business--in either straight business or the
questionable sort.

In Berlin, a few years ago, I read a speech which frankly urged the
expulsion of the Jews from Germany; and the agitator's reason was as
frank as his proposition. It was this: that eighty-five percent of
the successful lawyers of Berlin were Jews, and that about the same
percentage of the great and lucrative businesses of all sorts in Germany
were in the hands of the Jewish race! Isn't it an amazing confession?
It was but another way of saying that in a population of 48,000,000, of
whom only 500,000 were registered as Jews, eighty-five per cent of the
brains and honesty of the whole was lodged in the Jews. I must insist
upon the honesty--it is an essential of successful business, taken by
and large. Of course it does not rule out rascals entirely, even among
Christians, but it is a good working rule, nevertheless. The speaker's
figures may have been inexact, but the motive of persecution stands out
as clear as day.

The m