And if anyone shall answer that convention is necessary, lest on its decline open hostility should follow, I can only say that this is to despair of any equitable solution at all. But my whole thesis in this book is that such a solution need not yet be despaired of.
There is one more thing to be said in this matter of the old _taboo_. However long it may linger in the small educated class, it has gone for ever among the populace, and it is the popular instinct we shall have mainly to deal with in the difficult times ahead of us.
The populace in this country talks upon Jewish matters with a frankness which would astonish the drawing-rooms, and has so talked upon them for a generation past--ever since the great novel influx of poor Jews began to pour into our towns. It not only talks thus openly to and of Jews upon its own level, but it is thoroughly alive to the presence and power of Jews in government. Those who think that a continuance of the convention can put off the necessity for a solution would be disillusioned if they would spend a few days east of Aldgate, and mix with their fellow-citizens there.
Allied to this obstacle of convention is the very real obstacle of charity.
Now we are here dealing not with a positive charity but with a negative one and with a form of charity uncommonly like slackness.
The man who honestly thinks that any allusion to Jewish races in contemporary art, history or letters in the presence of a Jew is offensive and therefore to be avoided, from goodness of heart, _and who also practises the same virtue where any other foreigner is concerned_ is rare indeed. There are such men, for men of exceptional goodness coupled with exceptional stupidity are to be found. But the excuse of charity as it is generally put forward is not wholly ingenuous. Where it is ingenuous our reply to-day must be that even at the risk of occasional ill-ease, the danger of offence must be risked; for unless we risk it there is increasing peril of a much greater offence against justice. For whatever reason open discussion is burked, even for the reason of charity, we only put off the evil day, and charity so used may be compared to the charity which refuses to take action in any other critical problem of increasing gravity. The charity which hesitates to control the supplies of a spendthrift, or to wage a defensive war in a just cause, or to defend an oppressed man at the risk of quarrelling with his oppressor, is a charity misdirected.