Page:George Pitt-Rivers - The World Significance of the Russian Revolution (1920).pdf/10

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
viii
PREFATORY LETTER

body of men as well as the bounty and beauty of the land; it has been and is carried on by blonde and flat-nosed Jews—at least in this country—as successfully as by their dark and sharp-featured brethren on the Continent of Europe.

All this "tu-quoque" argument is, of course, no excuse whatever for the Jews. There is no doubt that the Jews regularly go one better or worse than the Gentile in whatever they do, there is no further doubt that their influence to-day justifies a very careful scrutiny, and cannot possibly be viewed without serious alarm. The great question, however, is whether the Jews are conscious or unconscious malefactors. I myself am firmly convinced that they do not think that I wish to exonerate them on that account. … A conscious evildoer has my respect, for he knows at least what is good, an unconscious one—well: he needs the charity of Christ—a charity which is not mine—to be forgiven for not knowing what he is doing. But there is in my firm conviction not the slightest doubt that these revolutionary Jews do not know what they are doing; that they are more unconscious sinners than voluntary evildoers. I am glad to see that this is not an original observation of mine, but that you yourself have a very strong foreboding about the Jews being the victims of their own theories and principles. … On p. 39 of your pamphlet you write: "It may be that the Jews have always been instrumental in bringing about the events that they most heartily disapprove of; that maybe is the curse of the Wandering Jew." If I had not the honour, as well as the pleasure, of knowing you personally, if I were not strongly aware of your passionate desire for light and your intense loathing of unfairness, this sentence, and this sentence alone, which tells the truth, will absolve you in my eyes from the odious charge of being a vulgar anti-Semite.

No, you are not a vulgar, you are a enlightened, critic of our Race. For there is an anti-semitism, I hope and trust, which does the Jews more