Certain wild-eyed objectors to the series of studies on the Jewish Question have made the assertion that The Dearborn Independent has declared cowardice to be a Jewish trait. That the statement is false as regards this paper does not change the fact that the subject has been generally discussed in and out of army circles. If it ever becomes necessary to discuss it in these studies, the facts will be set forth as far as they are obtainable. But the point just now is that Mr. Levi has had somewhat to say which may repay reading:
“Physical courage has always been an incident, not an element, of Jewish character. It has no independent existence in their make-up, and always depended on something else. With some exceptions this may be said of all Oriental people. The sense and fear of danger is highly developed in them, and there is no cultivation of that indifference to it which has distinguished the great nations of Western Europe.” (Page 205)
Were a non-Jew to call attention to this difference between the Jews and others, he would be met with the cry of “anti-Semitism” and he would be twitted with the fact that all his relatives may not have served in the war. Loudest to twit him would be those who served in what our soldiers called “the Jewish infantry,” the quartermaster’s corps in the late National Army.
It is to this aversion to danger, however, that Mr. Levi attributes the Jews’ greatness among the nations. Other nations can fight, the Jews can endure, and that, he says, is greater. Note his words (the italics are his own):
“Other nations may boast conquests and triumphs born of aggression, but though the fruits of victory have been manifold, they have not been enduring; and it may be truly said that the nation whose greatness grows out of valor passes through the stages of discord and degeneracy to decay.... In the virtue of endurance I believe the Jews have a safeguard against the decay that has marked the history of all other peoples.”