PERSECUTION OF JEWS IN GERMANY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3044, 29 March 1881, Page 2

PERSECUTION OF JEWS IN GERMANY.

[To thb Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sir,— Iq your issue of the 26th instant Mr Weber again comes forward as an apologist for the movement for tbe persecution of Jews in Germany. As a German, I must confess that I feel thoroughly ashamed of ray Fatherland in this respect, and in defence of it can only say that it emanates from a very few bigotted fanatics, and is not shared in by the nation at large, as the actions of Parliament, municipal, or other public bodies, the clergy, and the great majority of the press prove. Still, that such a movement should find support of even a small section is a stain on the nation, few Englishmen and I trust few Germans will deny. Allow me now to analyse to the best of my ability the arguments Mr Weber puts forward in his letters of the 19th ultimo and 26th instant. He starts with the premises that the Jews are more eminent in intellectual rapacity, and have less willingness for manual labor than their Christian countrymen, For argument's sake we will admit this, though I doubt if Mr Weber could prove it by statistics, as he was certainly in error in bis statement of the .mall number of Jews in the army at the late war in proportion to population, as this could hardly happen in a country where every one of the age of twenty has to serve. Mr Weber then reasons that it behoves the majority of the less intellectual to take steps for self-preservation, to prevent the minority (Jews) to rise to too great an eminence at tbe cost of the mass of the population. Now, as we cannot very well (tbe more the pity) burn them at the stake or slaughter them at the sword's edge in this nineteenth century, nor exile them, we must take such steps as are more in accordance with present civilisation. Let us put them then out of the pale of society, refuse to deal with them, to employ them hb servants, statesmen, doctors, lawyers, &c.; if they compose music we will not listen to it; if they write books or edit papers, we will not read them, in one word, Boycott them. A persecution more severe than any in tbe middle ages, and which would eventually get rid of them by breaking their hoards, starvation, or emigration. Now, if this argument of self-preservation has any foundation, and is based on the inherent right of the majority, the logical consequence must be that the proletariate of any country has „ perfect right to say to the more aristocratic classes, who by birth, race, and education, and no doubt the more intellectual, and are also in the minority.—it is our burden duty for seltpreservation to exterminate you. Even Nihilists, Communists, Red Republicans, et hoc genus omne, would not go that far, and lam sure Mr "V\ eber—whom I respect as a just, benevolent, and liberalminded man, but whom I consider and have tried to prove mistaken in this oase —would advocate.—l am, &c, German. Napier, March 28th, 1881.