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The fiery message of hate swept through the peoples at a time when the Church was the most powerful institution in Western civilization, and owned about one-third of the land of Europe. Then it was considered righteous to slaughter Jews, to burn their communities wholesale in their synagogues. And when the persecutors were tired of slaying with steel, great armed masses drove their tiny, unarmed minorities into swamps and marshes, and watched them drown while the Hebrew voices cried out, “Hear, O Israel, there is but one CiOD. So it had gone on. The Ghettos were created as a privilege—as a refuge for a tormented people. They became their prisons. The populations grew, but the area of the (ihettos did not. The slum became the only legal dwelling-place of Jewry for generations, until it became their habit. Po groms followed right up to the present day. flow did Jewry survive? Why did they not abandon their race, their religion, life itself, rather than suffer such everlasting torment? The an swer is the Spark in them. That Spark of vital | inspiration, of profound understanding, of passion ate faith, fostered and developed by their cen turies of suffering and their lack of mundane glory, produced the great religions of the world, and that same Spark kept life in them—kept them together. Their history is not a history of conquest; it is the history of their religion. Their national heroes are not conquerors but martyrs. However battered, however twisted, however distorted their minds, their souls, their bodies, their very faith might become, the Spark has remained. They know that great things are not easy, but difficult. Great inspirations, great understanding, great insight, which is theirs, are not easily to be realized or appreciated by the world. The Spirit in them is obscure and secret and reaches to the Absolute. Their messages are traditionally in parables are hard to understand. That is why they go on and will go on. It is hard to belong to the despised people whose name is associated with shame—to look back up the long line of ancestors and forward down the long line of posterity, to accept from the fathers and pass on to the children the badge of suffering which is the badge of Israel, to un derstand the averted eye, the dropped voice, the limp hand. But we should not complain. We are strangers in every land, but we can also be proud of our lesser, our more readily accepted, contributions. There is no branch of human activity in art, in science, in literature, in philosophy, even in ath letics, in which Jews in every country have not played a leading part. Even in war, a people who have not fought as a nation for 2,000 years are distinguished. They were the classic warriors of the past, but they have lost the aptitude for hitting back from always being an utterly hopeless minority, a mere handful against a nation. Joshua, Samson and David, and Judas Maccabeus, the heroes of our early history, are household words. (Please turn to page 16) I HAVE been asked to w rite about the contribu tion that Jew T ry has made to humanity. The answer is simple. It is monosyllabic. In the true comprehension of it lies the solution of the eternal Jewish question and it the great human question. What have the Jews given to the world? The answer is—GOD. There is nothing either hla>phemous or irreverent in this statement. If it bring a sh(K'k to some people it only show’s how far they have departed from the straight and narrow path of truth and reality into the by- wav > of pleasant fiction. The most devout, the most faithful, the most orthodox, must agree that either God chose to manifest himself through the Jewish people or that it is the tragic fate of Israel to have had the power <>t interpreting God to the world. I he sceptic and the atheist cannot fail to observe that the openings of two of the (jospels are occupied by a careful record of the Jewish descent of the Saviour; and that He spoke principally as a Jew to Jews. I hey w’ill also observe the extent to w'hich Mohammed w r as indebted to Israel. He accepts not only the Old Testament and the Prophets, hut much of the New. The scribes who set down the Koran for him were Jewish rabbis. So one observes the great spiritual developments °f mankind: the Hebraic root the great branch °i ‘he West, Christianity; the great branch of the Last, Mohammedanism. Through these the f er part of the human race and almost all of c'ivi ized humanity approach God. l or twenty centuries the Jews have been per- s ev ted for denying Christ. But it can be fairly d whether the Christians have ever accepted teachings. Hs Church divided into warring fragments ac the face of the earth, the pages of its his- blotted with the accounts of the most ap- Pa ng w’ars and persecutions—can they truly 0 n to have accepted His teachings? an one today turn to a single Christian country •n say here the teachings of Christ predominate? t true to say that His pure and simple w T ords Opinion Magazine. LORD MELCHETT "Then it was considered righteous to slaughter Jews.’ have been clarified in the past two thousand years, or have they been obscured ? But what of Israel? What of this tiny people whose task it has been to be the vehicle of such great spiritual experiences—whose moral laws have been adopted by the world, and whose litera ture was Holy before the civilized peoples of to day could read or write? How came it that they should be cast for this tragic role in the human story—that they, giving so much, should suffer most of all the peoples? The persecution of the Jewish people is age long. It is one of the most terrible stories in the world. There are some who imagine that it com menced after the Crucifixion. It is far older. It begins under Pharaoh before the days of Moses. Moses was forced to fly from Egypt because he killed an Egyptian overseer who was lashing a slave, for the Jews were slaves in Israel. It con tinues with the Exile in Babylon: “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we re membered Thee, O Zion.” Then the great ex pulsion by the Romans, followed by comparative peace in Exile, until the Crusades. T>E SOUTHERN ISRAELITE * By Lord Melchett Itrd Melchett, son of the late Alfred Mond, England's hg industrialist, is looming as the most significant igurc world Jewish leadership. This article published here through the courtesy of the Manchester Sunday Chronide, presents young Lord Melchett’s outlook on Judaism- Victorious ? What Has the Jew Given to the World ?