The Jewish Question. (Gay and Bird.)—" Is there a Jewish
question at all ? " asks the unknown author of this book. "I maintain there is not," he goes on to answer, "in the sense in which we speak of a Labour question, or the Eastern question, or the Home-rule question." Anti-Semite movements he regards as unimportant, though they may muse inconvenience to individuals. The action of Russia he accounts for by the explanation that it is the outcome of the " Russia for the Russians " idea. As a matter of fact, the Russians hate the Germans worse than they hate the Jews, and would expel them to-morrow were they not deterred by the consideration that they would have a powerful government to reckon with. The author passes on to consider the "Mission of the Jews." It was by "the wondrous design of Providence that the people of Israel were dispersed over the world in order that it might penetrate with its spirit the whole of humanity." This is the text on which he enlarges, and which he proceeds in subsequent chapters to illustrate by references bOth to the past and to the present. He makes out a very strong case for his people, and has some criticisms which are not less true than keen on some of those who affect to despise them. " What manners," he asks, "or grace of bearing have many of the jeunesse dorJe of London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or Newport F Awkward and stupidly shy, if not coarse and swaggering, illiterate and poor in taste, selling libraries and works of art which their ancestors have collected, and looking upon the refined Jew or merchant who buys them for his house as a parvenu or outsider."
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