It is therefore plain that, however startling and improbable the statement may seem when made by a Gentile, the Jews themselves regard the influences of modern lands as inimical to Judaism.
But there is still a further consideration, which is distinctly set forth in Jewish writings, namely, that the trend of the modern State is harmful to all that Judaism holds to be essential to its moral and spiritual welfare.
The modern State is changing, and Jewish observers sense the fact more readily than do the rest of the people, because Jews see in the change both an opportunity and a menace. If the State continues to change according to the trend of the general mind of the world, Jewish ideas of supremacy will find less and less opportunity to be realized—that is the menace. If the change, or the spirit of change, can be seized and twisted to Jewish purposes, as was done in Russia, and a Jewish type of State erected on the ruins of the old—that is the opportunity. Readers of these articles know that stimulation of “the spirit of change” is one of the clearest planks in the World Program.
As Cyril M. Picciotto points out in his “Conceptions of the State and the Jewish Question,” there is a tendency to “increase the control of the State over the individual.” This, of course, has nowhere been done so thoroughly as in Russia under the Jewish Bolshevik régime, but it is not of this that Mr. Picciotto speaks, it is of the tendency observed in the Gentile states; and he asks: “In the face of such a tendency in political development (which it is not rash to assume will be more pronounced in the future than in the past) how does the Jew stand?”
He adds: “The time is not far distant when the development of the State will continue on organic and collectivist lines. The central authority will embrace an ever wider area, and will make such a penetration into the