Chosen Peoples by Israel Zangwill

If I were asked to sum up in a word the essential difference between Judaism and Germanism, it would be the word "Recessional. " While the prophets and historians of Germany monotonously glorify their nation, the Jewish writers as monotonously rebuke theirs. "You only have I known among all the families of the earth," says the message through Amos. "_Therefore_ I will visit upon you all your iniquities. " The Bible, as I have said before, is an anti-Semitic book. "Israel is the villain, not the hero, of his own story. " Alone among epics, it is out for truth, not high heroics. To flout the Pharisees was not reserved for Jesus. "Behold, ye fast for strife and contention," said Isaiah, "and to smite with the fist of wickedness. " While some German writers, not content with the great men Germany has so abundantly produced, vaunt that all others, from Jesus to Dante, from Montaigne to Michael Angelo, are of Teuton blood, Jewish literature unflinchingly exposes the flaws even of a Moses and a David. It is this passion for veracity unknown among other peoples -- is even Washington's story told without gloss? -- that gives false colour to the legend of Israel's ancient savagery. "The title of a nation to its territory," says Seeley, "is generally to be sought in primitive times and would be found, if we could recover it, to rest upon violence and massacre. " The dispossession of the Red Indian by America, of the Maori by New Zealand, is almost within living memory. But in national legends this universal process is sophisticated.

Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, the AEneid told the all-invading Roman, putting of course the contemporary ideal backwards -- as all missons are put -- and into the prophetic mouth of Jove: --