But it is the truth about the Jews.
It is only half the truth, and one which by itself would be very unjust to the Jews.

But it is the truth, and we must realise it as sharply and clearly as we can.

The truth is that it is rather strange that the Jews should be so anxious for international agreements.
For one of the few really international agreements is a suspicion of the Jews.
A more practical comparison would be one between the Jews and gipsies; for the latter at least cover several countries, and can be tested by the impressions of very different districts.
And in some preliminary respects the comparison is really useful.
Both races are in different ways landless, and therefore in different ways lawless.

For the fundamental laws are land laws.
In both cases a reasonable man will see reasons for unpopularity, without wishing to indulge any task for persecution.
In both cases he will probably recognise the reality of a racial fault, while admitting that it may be largely a racial misfortune.
That is to say, the drifting and detached condition may be largely the cause of Jewish usury or gipsy pilfering; but it is not common sense to contradict the general experience of gipsy pilfering or Jewish usury.
The comparison helps us to clear away some of the cloudy evasions by which modern men have tried to escape from that experience.
It is absurd to say that people are only prejudiced against the money methods of the Jews because the medieval church has left behind a hatred of their religion.

We might as well say that people only protect the chickens from the gipsies because the medieval church undoubtedly condemned fortune-telling.