these qualities
constituted a vocation to empire. There was much harshness and injustice
in Roman imperialism; but what nobler epitaph could even the British
empire desire than the tribute of Claudian, when the weary Titan was at
last stricken and dying:

Haec est, in gremium victos quae sola recepit,
humanumque genus communi nomine fovit
matris non dominae ritu, civesque vocavit
quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit?

Jewish patriotism was of a different kind. A federation of fierce
Bedouin tribes, encamped amid hostile populations, and set in the
cockpit of rival empires against which it was impossible to stand, the
Israelites were hammered by misfortune into the most indestructible of
all organisms, a theocracy. Their religion was to them what, in a minor
degree, Roman Catholicism has been to Ireland and Poland, a consecration
of patriotic faith and hope. Westphal says the Jews failed because they
hated foreigners more than they loved God. They have had good reason to
hate foreigners. But undoubtedly the effect of their hatred has been
that the great gifts which their nation had to give to humanity have
come through other hands, and so have evoked no gratitude. In the first
century of our era they were called to an almost superhuman abnegation
of their inveterate nationalism, and they could not rise to it. As
almost every other nation would have done, they chose the lower
patriotism instead of the higher; and it was against their will that the
religion of civilised humanity grew out of Hebrew soil. But they gained
this by their choice, tragic though it was, that they have stood by the
graves of all the empires that oppressed them, and have preserved their
racial integrity and traditions in the most adverse circumstances. The
history of the Jews also shows that oppression and persecution are far
more efficacious in binding a nation together than community of interest
and national prosperity. Increase of wealth divides rather than unites a
people; but suffering shared in common binds it together with hoops of
steel.

The Jews were the only race whose spiritual independence was not crushed
by the Roman steam-roller. It would be unfair to say that Rome destroyed
nations; for her subjects in the West were barbarous tribes, and in the
East she displaced monarchies no less alien to their subjects than her
own rule. But she prevented the growth of nationalities, as it is to be
feared we have done i