Appeal to Realism

The Jewish press is very much agitated over the naval agreement Great Britain has made with Germany. I cannot understand why. Have we been so naive as to believe that any great power would be sufficiently unselfish to sacrifice its national interests for the Jews or for “civilization”? If so, then we have learned nothing from nineteen tragic centuries.

Clarence Darrow once said to me that he could not recall a single altrustic act that had ever been performed by any nation. Allowing even for lapses of memory, his contention is essentially correct. Whereas individuals are capable of altruism, nations apparently are not. National self-interest is not only the dominant but the exclusive motive in international relations. There is, of course, a difference between blind and enlightened selfishness, and occasionally a nation rises to the latter. But in the light of history, no nation can be expected to sacrifice a single advantage to promote the interests of any other group or of society as a whole.

We Jews had better be realistic about the struggle with Hitlerism. It is our struggle, and ours alone. There isn’t a nation on earth that would not be ready to strike a profitable bargain with Hitler, regardless of how it affected the German Jews. Does this seem too cynical? Then look at the immigration statistics. Has any nation’s heart bled so sympathetically for the Nazis’ victims that it gave them refuge in any substantial number? Voices may have been raised against their mistreatment, but no nation was prepared to make any real sacrifice for them.

What about labor and the church? Certainly, these have been attacked by the Nazis. Nevertheless, I can see nothing fundamentally different between what Hitler and Mussolini have done to the labor unions. And I anticipate that the protests of labor in one case will be about as short-lived and ineffective as in the other. American labor on the whole is hardly aware of the anti-Nazi boycott and may be expected soon to ignore it altogether.

With regard to the church, it must be remembered that important international religious bodies, like the Baptists, have met in Germany since Hitler came to power, and although there were occasional guarded insinuations of disapproval, nothing was said or done to indicate to the German nation that they were prepared to fight against Hitlerism.

Nor must we forget what has happened in Russia. In Germany, the forms, at least, are being preserved. In Russia, the Communists set out to destroy religion completely. Of course, there were bitter protests at first from the outraged churches of the world. But where are they today? The destruction of religion in Russia has been finally accepted as a fact. And at present, increasing numbers of clergymen are going there to study approvingly the “great social experiment.”

It is not cynicism but realism which leads me to have no faith in the continuous moral indignation of mankind. The other nations will make bargains with Hitler when it suits their advantage. Tourists will return with glowing reports of the increased prosperity, efficiency, and orderliness of Germany under the Nazis. The churches will work out some modus vivendi with Goebbels and Rosenberg-Labor will accept and adjust itself to the realities of the situation.

For the Jew, however, no adjustment, no compromise, no bargain is possible. Even if we should wish to come to terms with the Nazis, it could not be done. For they have declared war not on our ideas or institutions, but on our blood. Something flows in our veins, they say, which makes us everywhere and at all times inferior and undesirable.

Very well then, war it must be, even though the odds are against us and we fight alone. Not war with arms, but with ideas and economic sanctions. Self-defense demands that we meet every Nazi lie with the truth, in the faith that eventually the truth will prevail. Self-respect demands that we have no traffic with the Nazis, even though it affect not in the least their attitude or their activities. If the corner grocer abuses my wife and threatens to attack my children, shall I continue to patronize him, even though I know that my refusal to do so will not put him out of business? To the extent that there is economic power behind the boycott, it will serve as a warning to other nations that may be tempted to emulate Hitler. Regardless, however, of its practical effects, the absolute boycott of Nazi Germany is the only self-respecting position the Jew can decently take.

Although we wage the battle alone and even appear to be worsted, there is the assurance not only of our own integrity but that we have found this fight before and somehow have prevailed. The Titus who wrote “Judaea Capta, Judaea Devicta” is a name on an ancient stone, but the very hill from which he hurled his firebrands at Jerusalem is now the seat of a great Hebrew University, a testimony to the imperishable faith and destiny of the Jew.