[The New Jerusalem by G. K. Chesterton]@TWC D-Link book
The New Jerusalem

CHAPTER XIII
20/51

It is dying with the nation.

It is regarding the fatherland not merely as a real resting-place like an inn, but as a final resting-place, like a house or even a grave.

Even the most Jingo of the Jews do not feel like this about their adopted country; and I doubt if the most intelligent of the Jews would pretend that they did.
Even if we can bring ourselves to believe that Disraeli lived for England, we cannot think that he would have died with her.
If England had sunk in the Atlantic he would not have sunk with her, but easily floated over to America to stand for the Presidency.
Even if we are profoundly convinced that Mr.Beit or Mr.Eckstein had patriotic tears in his eyes when he obtained a gold concession from Queen Victoria, we cannot believe that in her absence he would have refused a similar concession from the German Emperor.
When the Jew in France or in England says he is a good patriot he only means that he is a good citizen, and he would put it more truly if he said he was a good exile.

Sometimes indeed he is an abominably bad citizen, and a most exasperating and execrable exile, but I am not talking of that side of the case.
I am assuming that a man like Disraeli did really make a romance of England, that a man like Dernburg did really make a romance of Germany, and it is still true that though it was a romance, they would not have allowed it to be a tragedy.

They would have seen that the story had a happy ending, especially for themselves.
These Jews would not have died with any Christian nation.
But the Jews did die with Jerusalem.


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