long ago in that country. Mr. Redmond did not feel himself insulted when those he met in London discussed Irish matters with him, from the most acute difficulty in politics, to the most general allusion to the Abbey Theatre. The editor of an Italian review visiting England is not shocked if you ask him when he left Florence, nor are those around you horrified at the ill-breeding of your question. But in the matter of the Jew there stands this convention cutting you off from any such straightforward and simple way of dealing with a fellow-being. That convention, I say, must be broken down if we are to get any results at all and to establish a permanent peace.
The thing was not, of course, entirely irrational in origin. No custom is. It was to be excused upon several grounds.
First, there was the fact that many people were known to cherish so strong an hostility to Jews that to emphasize the Jewish character of anyone present might awaken that hostility.
Then there was the peculiar rapid transition both of Jewish movements and of Jewish fortunes. In the case I have suggested, of asking a London Jew whether he had relatives in Galicia or Lithuania, you might be stumbling upon relations much poorer than himself in the East End of London; or, again, you might seem to be emphasizing the nomadic character of the race and thereby also emphasizing the contrast between it and our own.
But much the strongest excuse for the convention was the well-founded idea that its exercise pleased the Jews themselves. Men avoided direct mention of Jewish nationality because it was felt that such direct mention was almost an insult. It was a thing which the Jew in whose presence you found yourself desired to have kept in the background; and though we might not understand why he desired it, yet we respected his desire as we do that of anyone with whom we wish to preserve