In terms of their own society the thing would have been simple enough. They would have felt no surprise to hear that some man of our own race, who had made a rapid fortune and purchased a political position, suffered from a disreputable relative, also of our own race. But because in the case of the Jew there were the two unusual elements of a foreign name and distant origin, they were bewildered. They even thought it in some way specially scandalous. They had not appreciated the material with which they were dealing, and that is the mark of unintelligence. But the cream of unintelligence, the form in which unintelligent treatment of him most exasperates the Jew, is undoubtedly that typical, that ceaseless case of the man who is perpetually crying out against Israel, and purposing nothing—the man who nourishes a sterile grievance; who has not even the clarity or vigour to attempt suppression; who would be horrified at persecution, almost equally horrified at any breach of convention, and yet continues to cry out against a state of affairs which he does nothing to put right and for which he has not even a theoretic solution.
The last of the main causes of friction between the Jews and ourselves is lack of charity, and that in the simplest form of refusing to go half way to meet the Jew, and of refusing to put ourselves in the shoes of the Jew so as to understand his position in our society and his attitude towards it. It is a universal fault just as common in those who daily associate with, live off, and fawn upon Jews as in those who keep aloof from them. It never seems to occur to anyone on our side who has to deal with the Jewish problem, to make the imaginative effort required. And yet we have the parallel ready to our hands. The Jew feels among us, only with far greater intensity, what we feel when we are resident in a foreign country—a sense of exile, a sense of irritation against alien things, merely because they are alien; a great desire for companionship and for understanding, yet a great indifference to the fate of those among whom he finds himself; an added attachment, not, indeed, to his territorial home, for he has none, but to his nation. If we could perpetually bear in mind that parallel, the friction on our side would be greatly modified.