Introductory Chapter to The Jews (1937) by Hilaire Belloc, part 4 of 6

Pg 40

I do not mean “ Is the Nazi action towards the Jews a just solution or not?” for it is not a solution at all. I mean rather “Will the effects proceeding from this sudden piece of radical reform make towards a final equitable result?”

There is no doubt that the Nazi attack was sincere. There is no doubt that in the eyes of its authors it was provoked by a situation which they thought intolerable.

But can it be fruitful?

Let us begin by remarking that this shock has cleared the air. That is the effect of most shocks. They get rid of humbug. It is perhaps their chief advantage, and often their only one. “The Germans,” you will have heard it said, “have belled the cat. No one now is afraid to discuss the Jewish question as they used to be. That is all to the good.” Yes, it is all to the good that free discussion should arise on a matter which had been under such an irrational taboo. It is indeed true that since the violent attack on the Jewish race by the Prussian Government through wholesale spoliation, the destruction of their professional careers in Germany, the extraordinary restrictions upon intercourse and, most extravagant of all, the declaration of Jewish blood up to and including the last generation but one—all these things have cleared the air. So for that matter would an attack by a Jewish State against a Christian or Mahommedan minority clear the air. Anything at once sudden, startling and violent, clears the air. But beyond that the Nazi policy has done very little. Those who support it in its own country talk extravagantly about it. They say, “ We have conquered the Jews and therefore we have won the Great War.” These are the actual words they use. I am not exaggerating. They seem to think they have done something which is for all time and which will have the most prodigious results.

Pg 41

Now there are two criticisms to be made of this attitude. The first is that the attack made upon the Jews in Germany is neither thorough nor final. The second is that you will not achieve a victory until you have some moral consecration for it. A murder may have some lasting political result if you can ensure the continuance of its effect by the continued prosperity of the murderer. But injustice of this kind cannot solve any problem, and there is grave and glaring injustice in the Nazi policy against the Jews, for these two simple reasons, as familiar to Greek philosophy as to the Christian conscience ; first, that justice concerns the individual soul, not a type or race. Secondly, that you cannot justly destroy a bilateral agreement by a unilateral declaration.

Let us look at the agreement, open or implied, between our civilization and the Jews everywhere, but particularly in the Prussianized German Reich, for it was there that this agreement had the fullest effect and that Jews most benefited by it. We Europeans had said to the Jews, “ You are citizens like ourselves. You have made your arrangements for living under our code of laws, and that code guarantees you your possessions and your contracts.” It is not immoral to declare a new policy and to say, “ We will in future regard Jews as citizens of a different class from those around them, their hosts ; they are in fact different and we propose in future to” recognize that fact instead of carrying on with the fiction —for it is no better — that there is no difference between us.” But when things of that kind are done, justice demands that the effect shall be gradual, and that the loser by any new regulation shall be compensated. We may make a law tomorrow to say that a foreigner shall not own English land in freehold: if we apply that law retrospectively without compensation, and deprive the foreigner of land which he has bought at his own sacrifice, we have committed theft.

Pg 42

Now that has gone on all over the field of Judao-German relations, and because these actions are grossly unjust, therefore immoral, they must inevitably carry with them retribution.

A citizen acts under a certain code of law. He exercises his civil rights and proposes to bring up his son in the profession of, say, medicine. He stints himself perhaps in his daily life in order to provide the money for the young man’s training. The lad is trained; passes examinations, walks the hospitals, obtains a good degree, and launches out into his profession. After some years of practice he is successful, marries on the strength of it, and is established. Then out of the blue, you say to him, “Because you are a Jew, you shall no longer be allowed to carry on your profession.” You ruin him by breaking a clear contract. You do so with no moral excuse.


Pg 43

It is exactly the same with any other of the professions, membership of which has suddenly been forbidden to Jews in the Reich. It is no answer to say that the proportion of Jews in these professions was excessive ; it is no answer to say the Jew was a new arrival. “You made a contract with him, and you have broken it”. There is no reply to that indictment. The main rules of justice are clear enough, and they have here been violated.

Most of my readers I fear will not accept the proposition that a violation of morals on a large scale carries with it retribution on a similar scale. They are short-sighted if they think thus, but daily experience, carrying no further than daily experience, is certainly on their side. Every day we see violations of justice going on around us which are followed by no evil consequence to the evil-doer. On the contrary, we see given him more wealth, or leisure, or fame, or standing, or some other good than he had before. Men are thereby tempted to deny the ultimate justice of God in temporal affairs. But what no one can deny is the missing of a mark. If your policy is unjust, it may or may not be followed by retribution, that is debatable; but if your policy is aimed at securing a certain result and it manifestly does not secure it, then the failure of your policy is not debatable. Now the Nazi attack upon such of the Jewish race as are subject to Berlin is, as I have said, not thorough, not final, but incomplete, and I think soon to prove abortive.

I say this apart from the fact that Israel is eternal, and Nazidom most certainly not eternal. The policy has missed its mark, on lower grounds : it has missed its mark, because it has not dared to be thorough and has not had the competence to be well thought out.

Pg 44

Take two points, one by one, and see how the policy fails.

You can prevent marriage between a declared Jew, or a person of declared Jewish blood, and a person of other blood, or of supposedly other blood, but you cannot prevent affairs between the two, and you cannot even be certain in this particular case that the person of supposedly Jewish blood is really Jewish, or that the supposedly non-Jewish person has no Jewish blood in him which may reappear in another generation. The attempted prohibition is mechanical and that alone is sufficient to make it futile as applied to human affairs, for human affairs are essentially organic and non-mechanical, and, apart from that, it relies upon necessarily insufficient evidence. It may be said that a certain rough knowledge of the situation is sufficient, and if the mixture of races cannot be entirely prevented it may be largely checked, but it can be checked much less largely than the promoters of this policy seem to think.

Or, again, take the provision affecting the professions. You do not make it affect — probably you cannot make it affect — money dealing; and yet that profession of money dealing is the most important profession in the modern world. The official attack upon the Jews in the Reich has nowhere been more lopsided and glaringly ineffective than in its dealing with the big financial houses. The Nazis allow the influence of those houses to go on; they probably could not help allowing it; but in allowing it they give away the whole of their position. It was the same with the multiple-shops and other big businesses which were in Jewish hands. The Nazis had not the will or the power to suppress them.

Pg 45

But perhaps the worst weakness of the whole attack upon the Jews in Germany is that it has no philosophy behind it, or at least no philosophy of general application and of ascertainable principle. Because an eccentric Frenchman of the name of Gobineau affirmed that the principal virtues derive from a certain stock which he called Germanic (and which, by the way, he found especially pure in the Spanish peasantry!), you cannot — even if this eccentric Frenchman were divinely inspired — make certain that the people living in Germany who did not happen to be Jews are of this peculiar and god-like sort. It is tomfoolery to pretend it. It is racial vanity gone mad. Now illusion in any form can be a restricted evil if it is not acted upon with logical thoroughness, but once you act on an illusion logically you pass the practical line between sanity and madness. If you cherish an illusion that you are the Emperor of China, and neither act upon that illusion nor draw rational deductions from it (such as that your wife is the Empress of China), there is no great harm done. Your excellent wife can be merciful to your foible, and yet when she is out of your presence cease to play the part of the Empress. But were you to act upon the illusion, condemn people to death on the strength of it and try to execute them, your illusion will go off the rails. Extravagance pushed beyond a certain point is unworkable, because it is mad.