PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS IN GERMANY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3042, 26 March 1881, Page 3

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS IN GERMANY.

[To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sir, —Since my letter of tbe 19th ultimo on this subject you have reprinted several extracts from the Jewish Chronicle and other English and American papers, all denouncing the attitude of the antiJewish party in Germany, and attributing it to the fact that the Germans have come to the conviction that the remarkable success in tbe race for wealth obtained by the Jews is due to their superior natural abilities, and that the Germans, feeling themselves unable to hold their own in the open field, hare raised a cry of commercial dishonesty and conspiracy against them as affording a palpable pretext for placing the Jews under certain disabilities so as to drive them out of the country. The Jewish Chronicle pats it, the Germans have found out that " the Jews are too clever for them." The fact that some of the Jewish papers in Germany have made similar assertions has led to very considerable discussion, and ethnologists, phrenologists, and historians, have all had their say upon that subject. As the question, whether the Semitic type is superior to

the Teutonic, cannot be without interest to many of your readers, I will, with your kind leave, submit a synopsis of theargumeuts, incurring of course the risk of being again called narro.v-minded by my friend Mr Levi. Tbe anti-Semitic party maintain that the Teutonic branch of the human family is superior to the Semitic ; both physically and mentally, and that the ascendency gained by the Jews recently is due principally to the advantages derived for commercial and political purposes from the organization of the Jewish associations, to the fact that modern society is so constituted that the Jews have now ample scope for employment in those walks of life for which they have a superior aptitude, that is, trade and commerce, while none of them are forced into handicrafts, agriculture, or manual labor, for which, it is said, they are physically not adapted. Phrenologists assert that the Semitic type is superior in some of the intellectual facalties, such as time, tune, comparison, casuistry, etc., but that it is remarkably deficient in constructiveness, imitation, etc. In support of this theory it is shown that the Jews have produced a very large number of musicians ; that tbey excel as financiers, lawyers, and mathematicians, while hardly a Jew has left bis mark as architect, engineer, or mechanic, and that I scarcely a single invention can be traced | to the Jews. A writer not at all unfriendly to them, says tbat he never knew a Jew who could drive a nail straight into a board, or could hold a plough, and that if the Jews were to return to Palestine, they would require Gentiles to build their houses and plough their fiields. These typical characteristics are traced in the career of the Jews back to Palestine. The archaeologist does not find in Palestine, as proved of former high civilization, the remains of magnificent buildings, of aqueducts and irrigation works, such as he meets with almost everywhere in the East. The Jews have traded with China and India; they have brought thence gold and rich material, but tbey were unable to learn tbe arts of these countries and to transplant them to Palestine, having no constructive talent. After their dispersion from Palestine, they brought no arts and sciences from the cultivated East to their new homes; they arrived there with unskilled and empty hands, and had therefore to take the lowest places, from which they never rose. In those countries where they are most numerous, in Morocco, Tunis, Bulgaria, Wallaehia, Volhinia, Lithuania, and Poland, the Jews have never been able to raise themselves above the lowest positions, merely because they were unable to exercise handicrafts and such useful bat laborious occupations as are required in less advanced societies. The Jewish population amongst the Moors in Spain was very large, and although the Moors have treated the Jews with kind consideration, they never advanced higher than hodmen to the masons who built the Alhambra. Nevertheless they have done better in Spain than anywhere else, and they have left there behind them a few respectable Synagogues. After the expulsion of the Moors, tbe Jews who accompanied them to Africa descended as rapidly as the Moors, but keeping always a lower level than their patrons Since the beginning of this century the Jews in Central and Western Europe have made rapid strides towards influence and wealth, as the organisation of modern society gives them ample scope for fol- ' lowing the walks of life suitable for their taste, tbat is, business, music, light literature, law, etc., while very few have to take to handicraft, agriculture, and manual labor. A clever writer sums up that history proves that tbe Jews can never make a great nation, but that dispersed among other nationalities, where they have scope to follow their tastes and talents, they are successful. Whether a section of the community that will not or cannot take to manual labor is beneficial to tbe State is one of the points now at issue in Germany.—l am, &c, Chaei.es Weber. Napier March, 26, 1881.