It
is possible to adduce arguments in favour of the view that the
practically complete immunity of their parenthood from alcohol is one of
the great factors that explain the all but unexampled persistence of
the Jews and their present status in the van of the world's thought and
work. For history it is the parents that matter as against the
non-parents, and of the parents it is the mothers even more than the
fathers. The freedom of the Jews as a whole from alcoholism is more
marked than ever in the case of their women; that is to say, in the case
of their mothers.
We see the part-results of this in our own time when we compare the
infant mortality amongst the Jews with that of their Gentile neighbours
in a great city such as London or Leeds. As everyone should know, there
is a huge disparity between the figures in the two cases, and in some
records it has been found that under equal conditions two Gentile babies
will die for each Jewish baby. The conditions are of course not equal,
because the Jewish babies have Jewish motherhood, splendidly backed up
as it usually is by Jewish fatherhood; whereas the Gentile babies have a
very inferior parental care. Now if it were that infant mortality, as
most people suppose, simply meant the death of a certain number of
babies, the foregoing facts would have no particular bearing upon the
questions of racial survival, except in so far as those questions depend
upon mere numbers.
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