The Jews in the Defence of Britain

There is a widespread impression that, in the centuries-long interval between the fall of Jerusalem and (shall I say?) the Balfour Declara? tion, the Jews entirely lost the martial qualities that had once distinguished them. Some Rabbis regarded the fact with resignation, some philo-Semites with regret (for instance Macaulay, with his stirring plea : ” Let us do justice to them. . . . Till we have done this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees “), and some critics with obvious gloating. It is little more than a century and a quarter since the poet Crabbe wrote in The Borough (1810)

Nor war nor wisdom yields our Jews delight. They will not study, and they dare not fight.

It was in a deliberate attempt to falsify the first part of this stricture

Written by

Cecil Roth

Published in

Volume 15

1939

Other articles within the volume

• JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND
• Philip Guedalla (1889-1944)
• The Rev. Michael Adler, D.S.O., S.C.F.,
• Gustave Tuck (1857-1942)1
• The Jubilee Meeting, 3rd June, 1943
• The Northampton Jewry and its Cemetery in the Thirteenth Century
• Stanislaus Hoga?Apostate and Penitent
• Anglo-Jewish Causes Celebres:
• Daniel Mendoza
• An Early Stuart Judaising Sect1
• Elijah of London
• The Jews in the Defence of Britain
• PREFACE