Page:A Political Pilgrim in Europe - Snowden - 1921.djvu/201

 story before and had made careful inquiries in Ireland. It was denied amidst shrieks of hilarity. But if it were true it would have had no terrors for me.

"Lord Alfred Douglas" he began; but I stopped him, tired of it all at last.

"Then that is all?" I queried. "Plain English and, it may be, the Morning Post is your authority for all this nonsense? Here is where you forge your mighty weapons?" He nodded. "Well, I happen to like the Morning Post. I like its brutalities. I admire its consistency. It delivers frontal attacks upon its enemies. It makes no pretence of friendship it does not feel. It is as full of vices as most newspapers, but you know where you have it. There is no flirting with the thing it hates. It is against every political principle I stand for; abuses like a fishwife everything I cherish. It fills me with blind fury on occasion. But it does not cook its news and well, I like it. But beware of its prejudices in estimating any cause it attacks."

I paused to ponder whether the Morning Post would welcome an unsolicited testimonial of this particular sort, and then continued.

"Some newspapers and many men and women have certainly allowed their judgment to be clouded by their prejudice over this question of Bolshevism. To associate Communism with the Jews is also as serviceable to their commercial jealousies as it is to their racial antagonisms. And Bolshevism is only the inevitable throw-up of four years of the most terrible war that ever was waged. I know people in Europe, men of wide culture and of high social standing, who actually profess to believe that it was not the German Kaiser, nor the Austrian Emperor, nor the Junkers, nor the militarists, nor the capitalists, nor the stupid, ignorant millions of deceived and tormented people who caused the war. It was the Jews! The whole wicked business was conceived in the Ghetto! Can raving anti-Semitism go farther?"