unlimited power in this matter, what would you do?" The implied answer was that the Anti-Semite could do nothing. He could not make a law which would segregate the Jews for they could escape that law by mixing with those around them. He could not make a law exiling them; for, first, it would be impossible to define them; secondly, even if that were possible, those defined would not be received elsewhere. What could he do? The implication was, I say, that he could do nothing; he was supposed, in the presence of that question, to admit his futility.
Unfortunately we now know that he can do something. The Anti-Semite can persecute, he can attack. With a sufficient force behind him he can destroy. In much of this destruction he would have, in a present state of feeling and in most countries, the mass of public opinion behind him. He could begin with a widespread examination of Jewish wealth and its origins and an equally widespread confiscation. He could use the dread of such confiscation as a weapon for compelling the divulgence of Jewish origins where a man desired to conceal them. He could do this not only in the case of the wealthy men, but, through the terror of wealthy men, over the whole field of the Jewish community. He could introduce registration and with it a segregation of the Jews. Inspired as he would be by no desire for a settlement agreeable to them, but solely for a settlement agreeable to himself, he could aim at that harsh settlement, and even though he might not reach his goal, it is not pleasant to envisage what he might do on his way to it.
But even though the Anti-Semite fail to acquire full power, there remain attached to his great increase in numbers and intensity of feeling the prime questions, "What is the meaning of the thing? Why has it arisen? Why is it spreading? What are the forces nourishing it?"
These are the main questions which those who regret the presence of such a passion in the body politic, which those who are alarmed about it, which those who, like the Jews themselves, must, if they are to avoid a