At any rate, if they cannot, there is an end of all statesmanship and of all useful political action even in details.
Next, there are the two converse attitudes towards the question which certainly are affecting, the one an increasing audience upon our side and the other perhaps an interested though but secret audience upon the other; I mean those two converse theories whereby, on the one side, there is the Messianic idea of the Jew ultimately controlling the world, on the other an extreme dread of that idea and a belief that it is being actively pursued to the destruction of our institutions and religion.
I can understand that, with the traditions of his race behind him and with the tone of their sacred writings in his ears, a Jew should lean in some degree to such a conception, or at any rate that some Jews should lean towards it. Certainly in face of the ridiculously exaggerated power of the Jews in recent times (it is now declining, for secrecy was of its essence and it has now been brought into the arena of open discussion) it was natural that men should fall into the exaggeration of panic. They saw the Jew, a tiny fraction of most communities, not more than a twentieth of any community, exercising a power quite out of proportion to his numbers or, indeed, to his ability; and they saw that power directed towards ends which were Jewish ends and therefore hostile or indifferent to the rest of mankind. But my reason for rejecting not only exaggerations of this idea but its fundamental implication is that it seems to me practically impossible. It connotes abilities upon the Jewish side, a continuous will upon the Jewish side, both of which are obviously absent. And you have only to look at history to see that long before things come to anything like a struggle for supremacy it is the Jew who suffers most from the suspicion of holding such a design, not we. Indeed, that is one of the important elements in the dangerous situation which has been created to-day.
That large and greatly increasing body of men who so fear Jewish domination, and are vigorously reacting against the Jews under the