ersonal autobiography, I do not happen to be a man who dislikes Jews;
though I believe that some men do. I have had Jews among my most
intimate and faithful friends since my boyhood, and I hope to have them
till I die. But even if I did have a dislike of Jews, it would be
illogical to call that dislike a prejudice. Prejudice is a very lucid
Latin word meaning the bias which a man has before he considers a case.
I might be said to be prejudiced against a Hairy Ainu because of his
name, for I have never been on terms of such intimacy with him as to
correct my preconceptions. But if after moving about in the modern world
and meeting Jews, knowing Jews, doing business with Jews, and reading
and hearing about Jews, I came to the conclusion that I did not like
Jews, my conclusion certainly would not be a prejudice. It would simply
be an opinion; and one I should be perfectly entitled to hold; though as
a matter of fact I do not hold it. No extravagance of hatred merely
following on _experience_ of Jews can properly be called a prejudice.

Now the point is that this new American Anti-Semitism springs from
experience and nothing but experience. There is no prejudice for it to
spring from. Or rather the prejudice is all the other way. All the
traditions of that democracy, and very creditable traditions too, are in
favour of toleration and a sort of idealistic indifference. The
sympathies in which these nineteenth-century people were reared were all
against Front-de-Boeuf and in favour of Rebecca. They inherited a
prejudice against Anti-Semitism; a prejudice of Anti-Anti-Semitism.
These people of the plains have found the Jewish problem exactly as they
might have struck oil; because it is _there_, and not even because they
were looking for it. Their view of the problem, like their use of the
oil, is not always satisfactory; and with parts of it I entirely
disagree. But the point is that the thing which I call a problem, and
others call a prejudice, has now appeared in broad daylight in a new
country where there is no priestcraft, no feudalism, no ancient
superstition to explain it. It has appeared because it _is_ a problem;
and those are the best friends of the Jews, including many of the Jews
themselves, who are trying to find a solution. That is the meaning of
the incident of Mr. Henry Ford of Detroit; and you will hardly hear an
intelligible word about it in England.

The talk of prejudice against the Japs is not unlike the ta