Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/236

Counter-Currents would history have accorded them? If our early settlers were masterful, they earned the right to mastery, and the price they paid for it was endurance. To the sacrifices which they made, to their high courage and heroic labours, we owe law, liberty, and well-being.

It is because the Jew has received from us so much, and given us so little, that his masterfulness affronts our sense of decency. When the Jewish Anti-Defamation League boasts—perhaps without warranty—that it has taken "the first and most important step in excluding the 'Merchant of Venice' from the curriculum of the grammar and high schools of this country, by having the play removed from the list of requirements laid down by the Collegiate Entrance Requirement Board," we feel that a joke has been carried too far. Nobody can seriously associate the "Merchant of Venice" with a defamation of the Jewish character. Heaven knows, the part 220