Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/14

You Gentiles in your midst, scattered among you from one end of the Western world to the other, we have the right to retain our identity if we are but another addition to the gentile peoples. (Nor, by the way, do I believe that we could have retained it so long had this been the case.) If we are but one more people added to the long roster of peoples, living and dead, we have no claim worth while, under these circumstances, to continuity of separate consciousness. Such a claim could never have arisen had we remained secure, segregated on our own soil—it would have been our tacit birthright. But as it is, our existence is secured at an infinite expense of special effort on our part, and of peculiar discomfort to you. Wherever the Jew is found he is a problem, a source of unhappiness to himself and to those around him. Ever since he has been scattered in your midst he has had to maintain a continuous struggle for the conservation of his identity. Is it worth while, in the face of this double burden, our own and yours, to perpetuate what may be, 10