Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/184

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168
GREAT RUSSIA

apart, and their infamous but necessary trade must be regulated. Similarly, moneylending is an inevitable evil; therefore some people the Jews must be allowed to practise it. But their odious business must be strictly controlled, and they must be periodically deprived of part of their spoils.


IX

Mediæval intolerance has gone. Religious persecution and religious wars have ceased. Yet the Jewish problem remains as acute as ever. Politically, it remains as acute because the national exclusivism of the circumsized people still survives. The Jews still consider themselves as exiles in the land where they choose to settle. Economically, the Jewish problem is even more acute than ever, because the enormous development of national and international finance has given to the Jewish people opportunities which they never had before.

National exclusivism and international finance, and not religious intolerance, are the root causes of anti-Semitism, and as long as those causes are operative the effect will remain. As long as the Jews constitute distinct colonies