Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/208

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You Gentiles

follows the accidental revelation of his origin. He must bear silently with those countless unspoken snubs, half-snubs, unuttered queries, faint Ah-yes astonishments, which will be his lot until the day of his death. He must not feel himself implicated in a general slander of the Jews: he may only protest in a generous, disinterested sort of way, as a fair-minded "gentile." An angry retort or repudiation might be the ruin of him—he would suddenly realize the intolerable nature of his position.... It is not an easy thing to kill one's self by degrees.

Such a Jew has the whole way to go. He is not entering a world already made easier for him by an admixture of Jewish blood. He does not move forward to a partly prepared position. All is alien around him. His claims have no precedent. There is something pitifully impotent in his demand: "But I am an Englishman, like you; an American, like you. I have no affiliations outside of this country except those general human affilia-

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