Page:The International Jew - Volume 1.djvu/86

 82 ? Would he like to know how it is done, and who does it? Mr. Brisbane could find all these things and give them to the public by using his efficient staff of investigators and writers on this Question.

Whether Mr. Brisbane would feel free to do this, he himself best knows. There may be reasons why he would not, private reasons, prudential reasons.

However that may be, there are no reasons why he should not make a complete study of the Question—a real study, not a superficial glance at it with an eye to its “news value”—and arrive at his own considered conclusion. There would be no intolerance about that. As it is now, Mr. Brisbane is not qualified to take a stand on either side of the Question; he simply brushes it aside as troublesome, as the old planters used brush aside the anti-slavery moralists; and for that reason the recent defense of the Jew is not a defense at all. It is more like a bid for favor.

Mr. Brisbane’s chief aversion, apparently, is toward what he calls race prejudice and race hatred. Of course, if any man should fear that the study of an economic situation would plunge him into these serious aberrations of mind, he should be advised to avoid that line of study. There is something wrong either with the investigation or with the investigator when prejudice and hatred are the result. It is a mighty poor excuse, however, for an intelligent man to put forward either on his own behalf or on behalf of those whose minds he has had the privilege of molding over a course of years.

Prejudice and hatred are the very conditions which a scientific study of the Jewish Question will forestall and prevent. We prejudge what we do not know, and we hate what we do not understand; the study of the Jewish Question will bring knowledge and insight, and not to the Gentile only, but also to the Jew. The Jew needs this as much, even more than the Gentile. For if the Jew can be made to see, understand, and deal with certain matters, then a large part of the Question vanishes in the solution of ideal common sense. Awaking the Gentile to the facts about the Jew is only part of the work; awaking the Jew to the facts about the Question is an indispensable part. The big initial victory to be achieved is to transform Gentiles from being