extraneously to the blood from which his family sprang. For though it is true that the direction, the staff of Communism is Jewish, yet its convinced adherents are in the mass of our blood.
And in that connection I am reminded of another theory or fact attaching to the history of Israel, which is that the intellectual independence of the Jew has been as marked throughout the ages as his solidarity. There are many, I know, of that nation who regard such exceptions as vagaries and almost condemn them as traitors; yet they are no small asset to the reputation of their people and their names, however much they may be repudiated by their compatriots, shed lustre upon the whole body from which they sprang. These include (let it be remembered) not only the "sceptical" philosophers, not only the materialists, but also those extraordinary exceptions who have lent the vigour, the tenacity and the lustre of the Jewish intellect to the service of the Catholic Church. I make bold to say that in no one of the Faith has there been more devotion than in those who, like Ratisbonne (and he was but one among many), have put such qualities at the service of what they have discovered to be alone divine. A cynic might add St. Paul, but, for that matter, the whole origin of the Church was intermixed with the intense individual efforts of such men.
In this connection also every wise man will admit that there is no greater error than to exaggerate the consciousness of Jewish action whether the error proceed from those who admire or who detest it. To hear their modern opponents talk one might imagine that the Jewish people formed a small club of which every member knew every other while each worked in the unison of a disciplined body. That aberration I have dealt with more than once upon former pages. The truth is that no nation on earth presents so many surprising exceptions to its general action as does this nation, and that no nation on earth, when it moves in one general direction, as it often does, is actuated by a common motive less conscious. We who stand outside the Jewish body may mark its cohesion,