“That’s different. It’s not about brains and attainments. I can’t make you see. I suppose it’s Christianity.”
“What is Christianity? You think Christianity is favourable to women? On the contrary. It is the Christian countries that have produced the prostitute and the most vile estimations of women in the world. It is only in Christian countries that I find the detestable spectacle of men who will go straight from association with loose women into the society of innocent girls. That I find unthinkable. … With Jews womanhood has always been sacred. And there can be no doubt that we owe our persistence as a race largely to our laws of protection for women; all women. Moreover in the older Hebrew civilisation women stood very high. You may read this. Today there is a very significant Jewish wit which says that women make the best wives and mothers in the world.”
“There you are. No Englishman would make a joke like that.”
“Because he is a hypocrite.”
“No. He may, as you say, think one thing and say another; but long long ago he had a jog. It was Christianity. Something happened.