Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/62

 France, The condition of mind which expresses itself as Anti-Semitism always seems connected with motives and emotions of a sinister sort, but it tries to appear as if it sprang from natural, and even noble indignation. Many Jews in France were rich, they had their hands on high finance, they were powerful, and, it was said, of course unscrupulous, at once the enemies of religion, of patriotism, and of the poor. The clerical journal, the Libre Parole, made common cause against them with "Nationalist" and "advanced" newspapers. So far as the Socialists were interested at all, they were at first prejudiced against the rich Jew who was made the victim of this propaganda. The clerical and aristocratic hatred for the bourgeois Republic in which it was said the Jews had grown so powerful was especially strong in the army, where, says Jaurès, in the preface to his book, Les Preuves, "the clerical party, having lost, during the Republican period, … the direction of public administration, of the Civil Service, had found a refuge.… There the old directing classes … grouped themselves into a proud, exclusive clique. There the influence of the Jesuits, patient and subtle recruiting officers among the higher command, was exercised in a sovereign fashion." This aristocratic and clerical feeling was naturally antagonistic to the Jewish officers, of whom there were five hundred.