Offhand, the only English writers I can consider who, before the times of Hitler, made a definite effort to stay up for Jews are Dickens and Charles Reade. Carefully examined, the claim is seen to be nonsense, but there are all the time a couple of distinguished individuals who might be cited in help of it. All I would say with confidence is that antisemitism is a part of the larger drawback of nationalism, which has not yet been critically examined, and that the Jew is evidently a scapegoat, though for what he’s a scapegoat we don’t yet know. Antisemitism is just one manifestation of nationalism, and never everyone can have the disease in that exact form. But British nationalism, i.e. nationalism of an mental kind, may revive, and doubtless will revive if Britain comes out of the current war enormously weakened. I don’t suppose it an exaggeration to say that if the “intellectuals” had executed their work somewhat more completely, Britain would have surrendered in 1940. However the disaffected intelligentsia inevitably included a large number of Jews. It so occurs that for some many years past Britain has had no nationalist intelligentsia value bothering about.

There may be more antisemitism in England than we care to admit, and the war has accentuated it, but it is not sure that it’s on the rise if one thinks when it comes to a long time relatively than years. Anyone who wrote in that pressure now would bring down a storm of abuse upon himself, or extra most likely would find it impossible to get his writings revealed. There was a perceptible antisemitic strain in English literature from Chaucer onwards, and without even getting up from this desk to consult a e book I can consider passages which if written now would be stigmatised as antisemitism, within the works of Shakespeare, Smollett, Thackeray, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley and numerous others. He has merely induced a pointy division between the politically conscious person who realises that this is not a time to throw stones on the Jews, and the unconscious person whose native antisemitism is elevated by the nervous pressure of the warfare. The young intellectuals of 1950 could also be as naively patriotic as those of 1914. In that case the sort of antisemitism which flourished among the anti-Dreyfusards in France, and which Chesterton and Belloc tried to import into this nation, may get a foothold.

“Since I do know that antisemitism is irrational,” he argues, “it follows that I do not share it.” He thus fails to start out his investigation within the one place where he could get hold of some dependable proof-that is, in his own mind. About twenty years ago, in Rangoon, I was getting right into a taxi with a good friend when a small ragged boy of truthful complexion rushed up to us and began an advanced story about having arrived from Colombo on a ship and wanting money to get again. During the previous twenty-5 years the actions of what are known as “intellectuals” have been largely mischievous. He would probably not have been accepted as an officer in the navy, for instance, nor in what is known as a “smart” regiment within the army. “Anyone ever observe down papers that have cited your work to see what they took from the paper? The Jew who grew up in Whitechapel took it with no consideration that he would be assaulted, or at the very least hooted at, if he ventured into one of many Christian slums nearby, and the “Jew joke” of the music halls and the comic papers was almost persistently ailing-natured. Higher up the intellectual scale, antisemitism is rationalised by saying that the Jew is a person who spreads disaffection and weakens national morale.

I have already indicated that I consider antisemitism to be basically a neurosis, but in fact it has its rationalisations, that are sincerely believed in and are partly true. I have no onerous-and-quick idea concerning the origins of antisemitism. In principle a Jew suffered from no legal disabilities, however in impact he was debarred from certain professions. Nevertheless, thirty years ago it was accepted roughly as a legislation of nature that a Jew was a determine of fun and-although superior in intelligence-slightly deficient in “character”. This counter-attack (see for example such books as Arnold Lutin’s The nice Gorilla or Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags) has an antisemitic pressure, and it might most likely be more marked if the subject weren’t so clearly harmful. Charlotte, in her quest for a husband, dates an funding banker with anger management points, a photographer who encourages her to put on menswear, a bad kisser, and a man who calls out names during climax.