have been the recipient of the esteem of those who have asked for my advice and who have consulted me."
Professor Vambéry's recollections of Disraeli are particularly keen, as Lord Beaconsfield was one of his great personal friends. "Some twenty years ago," said the Professor, "I was dining with Disraeli and his wife alone, and after dinner I was seated in an armchair and Disraeli was walking up and down the room. Suddenly he stopped and said to me, 'Vambéry, where were you born?' I said, 'Budapest.' 'But you are not a Hungarian?' he said. 'No,' I replied, 'I am a Jew.' Disraeli excitedly banged his fist on the table and said, 'I knew it! No one but a Jew could have the persistence in forcing his views over and over again upon this country till he had compelled us to follow them.' Those whose memories go back to 1885 will remember the campaign which I undertook from Aberdeen to Brighton, telling Englishmen what their duty was. This was not always a pleasant thing to do, as I was a foreigner, and Englishmen do not like their course of action to be dictated by a foreigner. But India and Egypt were in danger at that time, and Gordon's life was at stake. I knew that if England lost control over these countries and other powers that have not the understanding for dealing with Eastern peoples that England has were to take her place, the whole peace of the world might have been shattered."
I asked the Professor what he thought of the Sultan.
"He is an extremely clever man, although a little narrow-minded on some things. He has, for instance, never sat to be photographed in his life."
I asked the Professor for his views on the Jewish question.
"I repeat to you," he replied, "that I am not a Jew in religion, but I am a national Jew, and I have no feeling of despair whatever for my race. Their treatment in many countries is deplorable. Here in Hungary we suffer
from anti-Semitism. Budapest is even more anti-Semitic than Vienna. That is, perhaps, to be explained by the fact that so many Jews have shown no proper pride in themselves. For the sake of filling official posts, they have become baptized, or they conceal their origin; and you can take it from me that two-thirds of everything here in art, science, industry, and official places is in Jewish hands! And I see in your Aliens Act a sign of the same thing. It is unnecessary to speak of most of the other countries of Europe. But there is no fear of anything serious happening to Jewry. I think religion will die out of the world, and as religion dies out so will the tendency to persecute the Jew die out. There are great developments towards Socialism in many countries. Socialists are not anti-Semites. They have no feeling one way or the other on the subject."
But, I interposed, if religion died out, would not Judaism also die out?
“No, never; because there is such a thing as pride of race, pride in the great men of the past. That is the kind of feeling that I have about Jewish things, and that will never die out. Those of us who have this pride of race —and there will be more of us in the future than there are to-day, because I notice a great renascence of Jewish feeling which is not a- ways to be connoted with Jewish religious feeling—those of us, I say, who have this pride will always continue to be glad to call ourselves Jews, and therefore those things for which Jews stand—the simple life, high thinging and fine ethics—will be more dominant than they are to-day. It is true we are to-day in face of great difficulties, and I have always been ready to help my race to the best of my ability. Herzl asked me to help him with the Sultan, and I did what I could. Wolffsohm asked, and I am helping him as much as I can. Zangwill has also asked me, and I shall do what I can for him, too. I am neither Zionist nor Itoist, but whatever I can do to help my brethren that I shall do.”