The Root of Bitterness

Christians have, during the last nineteen centuries, talked and written a vast deal about the Jews and Jews have talked and written a fair amount about Christians : in both cases the percentage of rubbish has been considerable. It is comforting to think that in this special number of Blackfriars the usual proportion will be reversed and sense will predominate greatly over nonsense. Indeed, the nonsense will probably be, if at all, in a very mild and inoffensive form. Naturally the present contribution is not included in the last remark.For thirty years at least I have been a frequent talker and writer on this subject. Few have pronounced or written the word 'Jew' as often as myself. That word, lovely in itself and in its meaning- it derives from 'Judah' (the 'praise of Jehovah')-has at times, as the result of repeated use, lost something of its sweet aroma.In the early months of what the blurb of a recent modest publication kindly calls my 'campaigning,' my conscience accuses me of having made several silly utterances on the subject, for which there lingers in my sub-consciousness a smouldering sense of shame. Some extenuation of guilt may be found in the fact that Judeology-to give it a high-sounding name-is a difficult science, presenting problems comparable almost to those that beset the hapless wight who tries to understand Predestination or Bimetahsm. Anyone who would expound its mysteries must qualify for the task by a course of what Virgil, ni fallor, styles 'labor improbus.' As a preliminary, he must, as far as may be, purge his soul of prejudice-a most insidious and deep-rooted disease-and beware also of every form of sentiment that savours of sentimentality. He must endeavour to be objective, concrete and scientific. Let him make sure of his facts and rigorously test his conclusion

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