hing solid.

No change of mood in the public meant any change in the _New Witness_
group. In a powerful article in reply to an old friend who asked for
peace because the war was destroying freedom, Belloc told him that
freedom had gone long since for the mass of Englishmen. "How many,"
wrote G.K., "pacifists or semi-pacifists . . . resisted the detailed
destruction of all liberty for the populace _before the war?_ It is a
bitter choice between freedom and patriotism, but how many fought for
freedom before it gave them the chance of fighting against
Patriotism?"*

[* _New Witness_, May 31, 1917.]

Again and again they touched the spot on the question of trading with
the enemy. In this as in all their attacks they made one point of
enormous importance. Do not, they said, look for traitors and spies
among waiters and small traders--look up, not down. You will find
them in high places if you will dare to look. They dared.

And here came in once more what was commonly regarded as a strange
crank peculiar to the Chesterbelloc--their outlook towards Jews.
Usually those who referred to it spoke of a religious prejudice.
Again and again the _New Witness_, not always patiently but with
unvarying clarity, explained. They had no religious prejudice against
Jews, they had not even a racial prejudice against Jews (though this
I think was true only of some of the staff). Their only prejudice was
against the pretence that a Jew was an Englishman.

It was undeniable that there were (for example) Rothschilds in Paris,
London and Berlin, all related and conducting an international family
banking business. There were d'Erlangers in London and Paris
(pronounced in the French style) whose cousins were Erlangers
(pronounced in the German style) in Berlin. How, the _New Witness_
asked, could members of such families feel the same about the war as
an Englishman? They could not, to put it at its lowest, have the same
primary loyalty to England or to Germany either. Their primary
loyalty must be, indeed it ought to be, to their own race and kindred.

Yet this was surely an excessive simplification. We have only to
remember that lately a son of the d'Erlanger house died gallantly as
an English airman: we have only to remember the thousands of Jews who
fought in our ranks in this war and the last. Very many Jews _are_
patriotic for England and for America: many were patriotic for
Germany. This, no doubt, makes the problem more acute, but any