Israel Zangwill

“ Now the whilom Gabbai and Town Councillor found himself almost patronised—as a poor provincial—by this mincing, genteel, clerical couple. He retorted by animadverting upon the preacher's heterodoxy.
An urban unconcern met the profound views so often impressed on Simon with a strap. "We are not in Poland now," said the preacher, shrugging his shoulders.
"In Poland!" S. Cohn's blood boiled. To be twitted with Poland, after decades of Anglicisation. He, who employed a host of Anglo-Saxon clerks, counter-jumpers and packers! "And where did your father come from?" he retorted hotly. ”

“ S. Cohn was indeed a personage in the town, and his name had been printed on voting papers, and, what is more, he had at last become a Town Councillor. Really the citizens liked his staunch adherence to his ancient faith, evidenced so tangibly by his Sabbath shutters: even the rival clothiers bore him goodwill, not suspecting that S. Cohn's Saturday losses were more than counterbalanced by the general impression that a man who sacrificed business to religion would deal more fairly by you than his fellows. ”

“ But there came a day when S. Cohn seized those letters and read them first. He began to speak of his boy at the war—nay, to read the letters to enthralled groups in the synagogue lobby—groups that swallowed without reproach the meat cooked in Simon's mess-tin.
It was like being Gabbai over again.
Moreover, Simon's view of the Boer was so strictly orthodox as to give almost religious satisfaction to the proud parent. "A canting hypocrite, a psalm-singer and devil-dodger, he has no civilisation worth the name, and his customs are filthy. ”

“ EVEN in his provincial days Solomon Cohen had distinguished himself by his Anglican mispronunciation of Hebrew and his insistence on a minister who spoke English and looked like a Christian clergyman; and he had set a precedent in the congregation by docking the "e" of his patronymic. There are many ways of concealing from the Briton your shame in being related through a pedigree of three thousand years to Aaron, the High Priest of Israel, and Cohn is one of the simplest and most effective. Once, taken to task by a pietist, Solomon defended himself by the quibble that Hebrew has no vowels. ”

“ Simon's education consisted of the knowledge conveyed in seaport schools for the sons of tradesmen, while a long course of Penny Dreadfuls had given him a peculiar and extensive acquaintance with the ways of the world. Carefully curtained away in a secret compartment, lay his elementary Hebrew lore. It did not enter into his conception of the perfect Englishman. Ah, how he rejoiced in this wider horizon of London, so thickly starred with music-halls, billiard-rooms, and restaurants! "We are emancipated now," was his cry: "we have too much intellect" ”

“ This wonderful letter, of which S. Cohn distributed printed copies to the staff of the Emporium with a bean-feast air, ran:
"We go out every day—I am speaking of my own squadron—each officer taking his turn with twenty to fifty men, and sweep round the farms a few miles out; and we seldom come back without seeing Boers hanging round on the chance of a snipe at our flanks, or waiting to put up a trap if we go too far. ”

“ It is difficult to combine the offices of Gabbai and Town Councillor without a self-satisfaction that may easily degenerate into dissatisfaction with others. Least endurable was S. Cohn in his religious rigidity, and he could never understand that pietistic exercises in which he found pleasure did not inevitably produce ecstasy in his son and heir. And when Simon was discovered reading the "Pirates of Pecheli," dexterously concealed in his prayer-book, the boy received a strapping that made his mother wince. Simon's breakfast lay only at the end of a long volume of prayers ”

“ Cohn, anxiously following the courtship through Sim's love-smitten eyes, her suggestion that the girl be brought to see her received with equal postponement, began to fret for the great thing to come to pass. One cannot be always heroically stiffened to receive the cavalry of communal criticism. Waiting weakens the backbone. ”

“ Simon wrote back. "The worst individuals we have to deal with come from a Boer mother and an English father, deposited here by the first Transvaal war."
S. Cohn snorted angrily at the message. "That was because there were two Governments,—he forgets there will be only one United Empire now."
He was not appeased till Private Cohn was promoted, and sent home a thrilling adventure, which the proud reader was persuaded by the lobby to forward to the communal organ. The organ asked for a photograph to boot. Then S. Cohn was not only Gabbai but Town Councillor. ”

“ The reader chuckled, and a broad smile overspread the synagogue lobby. "They are brave—oh yes, but it is not 'what we mean by it—they are good fighters because they have Dutch blood at the back of them, and a profound contempt for us. Their whole life has been spent on the open veldt (we are always fighting them on somebody's farm, who knows every inch of the ground) , and they never risk anything except in the Trap sort of manœuvres. The brave rush of our Tommies is unknown to them, and their slim nature would only see the idiocy of walking into a death-trap, cool as in a play. ”

“ But S. Cohn had taken off his gold spectacles and was polishing them with his serviette—always a sign of a stormy meal.
"It seems to me something has been going on behind my back,' he said, looking from mother to son.
"Well, I didn't want to annoy you with Simon's madcap ideas," Hannah murmured "But it's all over now, thank God!"
"Oh, he'd better know," said Simon sulkily,—"especially as I am not going to be choked off. It's all stuff what the doctor says. I'm as strong as a horse. And what's more, I'm one of the few applicants who can ride one." ”

“ She moved in a delicate world of symphonies and silver-point drawings of whose very existence he had been unaware, and reverence quickened the sense of romance which their secret meetings had already enhanced.
Once or twice he spoke of resuming his visits to Harrow, but the longer he delayed the more difficult the conciliatory visit grew.
"Father is now deeper in the League than ever," she told him. "He has joined the Committee, and the Prospectus has gone forth in all its glorious contradiction."
"But, considering I am the son of an alien, and I have fought for——"
"There! there! ”

“ Winstay, he said, was of good English family, with an old house in Harrow—fortunately on the London and North-Western Railway, so that he could easily get a breath of country air on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. He seemed to have forgotten (although the Emporium was still closed on Saturdays) that riding was forbidden, and his mother did not remind him of it. The life that had been risked for the larger cause she vaguely felt as enfranchised from the limitations of the smaller. ”

“ Cohn gloomily. Although her spouse still set his face against the Christmas pudding which had invaded so many Anglo-Jewish homes, the festival entered far more vividly into his consciousness than the Jewish holidays, which produced no impression on the life of the streets.
The darkness grew denser. Young men began to enlist for the front: the City formed a new regiment of Imperial Volunteers. S. Cohn gave his foreign houses large orders for khaki trouserings. ”

“ Read your paper."
"But not rich Jews."
"Oh, yes. I saw several chaps from Bayswater."
"We Jews of this favoured country," put in Hannah eagerly, "grateful to the noble people who have given us every right, every liberty, must——"
S. Cohn was taken aback by this half-unconscious quotation from the war-sermon of the morning. "Yes, we must subscribe and all that," he interrupted.
"We must fight," said Simon.
"You fight!" His father laughed half hysterically. "Why, you'd shoot yourself with your own gun!" ”

“ The parish had older inhabitants, the local synagogue richer members. The cry for Anglicisation was common property. From pioneer, S. Cohn found himself out-moded. The minister, indeed, was only too English—and especially his wife. One would almost have thought from their deportment that they considered themselves the superiors instead of the slaves of the congregation. ”

“ About Jews?"
"Well, old Winstay has got it into his noddle that the Jews are responsible for the war—and that they leave the fighting to the English. It's rather sickening: even in South Africa we are not treated as we should be, considering——"
Her dark eye lost its pathetic humility. ”

“ There were tales, too, of quarter-rations; but these she did not read to her husband, lest the mention of "bully-beef" should remind him of how his son must be eating forbidden food. Once even, two fat pigs were captured at a hungry moment for the battalion. ”

“ I don't know what my life would have been without the little darling. But listen, mother." And he drew out a portentous prospectus. "They say aliens should not be admitted unless they produce a certificate of industrial capacity, and in the same breath they accuse them of taking the work away from the British workman. Now, this isn't a Jewish question, and I didn't raise it as such—just a piece of muddle—and even as an Englishman I can't see how we can exclude Outlanders here after fighting for——"
"But Lucy——" his mother interrupted. ”