MR. MONTAGU.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—As a co-religionist of Mr. Edwin Montagu, may I take exception to your description of him in "National mismanage- ment—IV., The New Indian Constitution" (December 6th) as a politician "of Asiatic race" ? No doubt, if we go back to the Garden of Eden, we are all of " Asiatic race," but it is surely rather absurd still to call Asiatic a people who have lived in Europe for two thousand years. It may even be doubted whether the Jewish Englishman came later out of Asia than the non-Jewish Englishman (who also is usually of an Asiatic religion, Christianity, and is rarely of pure race). We know nothing of the date when the Angles and Saxons migrated into Germany; but the great bulk of European Jews must have been in Europe in Roman times. Only, whereas the Jews have preserved the records of their Eastern origin, the other Western peoples have not. Ethnologists no longer even accept a Semitic race, but divide the old "Caucasian" into Mediter- ranean (including the Jews and South Europeans), Alpine, and Nordic. Even the last two branches are scarcely likely to have originated in the cold West. Various theories trace the whole
Caucasian" race to Central Asia or Mesopotamia. So that to single out a Jewish Englishman for his Asiatic race savours, to my thinking at least, of prejudice.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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