Introductory Chapter to The Jews (1937) by Hilaire Belloc, part 1 of 6

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INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER TO THE THIRD EDITION

WHEN this book was first published fifteen years ago, the things it had to say were new to the English public. The Jewish question had never been properly discussed or understood. For most people it did not exist.

This was less true of the English-speaking world as a whole. In the United States, and particularly in the town of New York, the Jewish question was ever present and at times acute; but it had not reached either in scope or intensity the position it has achieved to-day. Being on a new subject and one, in England at least, so unfamiliar, it is remarkable that a new edition was called for in half a dozen years. The time lag between the day when matters of high public importance are first heard and the general discussion of them, even on a small scale, is set going, is usually a good deal longer than that; especially where, as in this case, the Press is concerned (through its dependence on Commercial advertisement) to say as little about it as possible.

Now that a third edition is called for, nine years later, we are in a different world so far as the Jewish question is concerned. Three things of first-class magnitude have changed everything and have aroused universal interest on the subject here discussed. That interest may increase until it breeds something much graver than mere debate.

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These three things which have of late accentuated the Jewish question are, first, the advance of the European Revolution by the recent great and definite stage it has taken since it was launched with the enormous massacres in Russia twenty years ago. The Revolution has obtained power in Spain, holds nearly half that country and is there fighting desperately to extend its power. As continental writers have recently put it, “The conflagration has now caught on at both ends of Europe.” Moscow is in power at Valencia, at Barcelona and (though precariously) at Madrid.

The second thing is the violent reaction against the European Revolution of the government of Berlin, with the consequent exile and persecution of Jews throughout the German Reich. It is now over four years since this completely new departure in European politics began and there has been time to appreciate the first of its effects.

The third thing is the maturing of the Zionist experiment in Palestine.

This last is not of sudden or recent appearance like the first two. The Zionist experiment has been passing through gradual growth for many years. It has been present in the minds of men ever since the Great War, and the idea behind it has been present for a life-time. What is of actual and immediate importance therein is not the idea, still less the name, but the high stage of development which it has reached. For twenty years, ever since the Balfour Declaration) was first made, the policy of the Zionists has been in action. For fifteen or sixteen years it has consolidated and taken root. But it was not until the new Prussian policy, attacking the Jewish race as a whole, was launched that Zionism entered what may be called “the acute phase,” and it was not till the Arab revolt of 1935-6 that the West in general and England in particular began to understand how serious the business was.


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These three things taken together open a new chapter in the discussion of that great problem with which the future will be necessarily occupied: the problem of settling the Jewish question in justice and peace.

If that problem is not so solved the fault will be ours, it will not be that of the Jews. That it can be solved and permanently solved in only one fashion, is the thesis of this book. That there is a new development through the three things here set down, is now so clear to everybody that we can grasp the practical points of future policy more firmly and in more detail.

The cry “I told you so” is futile, but the drawing of lessons from experience is the very opposite of futility, it is the most valuable form of constructive political thought. If you warn a man who cannot read, that a board marked “danger” on a frozen pond means thin ice, and that its neighbourhood should be avoided, then, if the poor fellow falls through, to say “I told you so” when he is dragged out dripping to the bank, leads nowhere, except to his exasperation and to the satisfaction of one’s own vanity. But if, after the event, you can convince him by this experience that these six odd marks which he did not understand and neglected — D, A, N, G, E, R — means “look out! Thin Ice!” then you have done something constructive. If ever the cry, “I told you so” was well founded, it was so founded in the case of this book, but the book will do no good unless its argument is understood.

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The peculiar and universal danger of Communism working from Moscow, its character and its intensity, has been lit up under the fierce glare of the fires consuming shrines and churches throughout Spain. It has been emphasized by the murder of religion in as much of that unhappy country as was seized by the revolutionaries.

Jews as such are not Communists, but the modern Communist movement was inspired and is directed by Jews. That is why the term “Jewish Communism” is heard everywhere in conversation, though not in the Press; the Revolution now advancing in Europe is a part of the Jewish problem.

My original statement that it would prove impossible to prolong the silly pretence that no Jewish question exists, and that ignoring it would lead to an explosion at some point, has been amply illustrated in the case of Germany.

The judgement that the Zionist experiment must at last prove unstable and would clamour for readjustment has become equally plain.

In each of these typical fields a new departure has begun and a new stage of development has been reached in a struggle which will soon preoccupy the whole world. No limit has as yet been set to the progress made by the Revolution, by the German persecution of the Jews, or by the reaction against Zionism; each of the three curves is still rising, but we are already now, in 1937, at a point on each of the three curves where their formulae call be set, down and their probable future course plotted out: the immediate past has, by this time, afforded enough evidence for such conclusions.

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I therefore take each of these three main forms of what is at root the same problem and examine, them separately in their order:

First, the nature and progress of the Revolution at work throughout our culture and inspired by Jewish Communism.

Next, the active opposition to Jewish power, the “counter-offencive” as they call it, which has been launched by Berlin.

Lastly, the business of Palestine.

The nature of the conflict in Spain and how and why it is a branch of that general revolutionary movement called Jewish Communism must first be appreciated.

The original revolution in Moscow set out to destroy Capitalism.

The reasons which made that task appeal to the Jewish temperament in general and to the Russian Jews in particular have been set out in this book and need no repetition. The reasons that made Spain their next field of action, after their attempt to work through Central Europe had broken down, do need explanation because they are thoroughly misunderstood. Spain is a long way from Russia; the Spanish temperament in all its forms differs more from the Russian temperament than any other in Christendom. The Spaniard — Castilian, Andalusian, Galician, even Catalonian — is intensely personal. The theory or philosophy of Communism could never be accepted by the mass of the Spanish people as it might be by the mass of the Russian people. The positive side of Jewish Communism as expressed by Mordecai himself (Marx) and by all the other exponents of it, Jew and Gentile, is their insistence on the control of the means of production, distribution and exchange, by officials of the community — which turn out in practise to be in large proportion Jewish. The exploitation of the poor by the rich is thus destroyed and on the supposition that the officials of the community will be full of justice and charity every one of the community will receive his due share of the produce proceeding from the State machine.


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Everyone will also be a slave of the State; but as the proletarian worker under Capitalism is almost a slave already, he gains by the change. His life under Communism is even more controlled by the will of other men than under Capitalism, but he is free from the anxiety of unemployment and (in theory at least) entitled to the full results of his labour.

With that positive side of Communism, I say, the Spaniard had no sympathy whatever. You can find a few real communists up and down Spain, but they are for the most part intellectuals of the common middle-class type which you may find everywhere: academic theorizers at the best and adventurers at the worst. The new Communism, however, proceeding from Moscow had another side, quite different from the positive one. This other side may by courtesy be called the negative side, for it did not directly point towards the establishment of Communism. But it certainly had highly positive characteristics of its own.