Jew, evident in much of the material he has surveyed,
originate in experience or in literary convention? Does art
imitate nature, or does nature, as Oscar Wilde hinted, imi-
tate art? Confronted by the practical problem of the Jew
in a hostile world, we discover to our amazement that what
we thought were idle questions of aesthetic paradox have
become practical problems influencing the conduct of men.

It has been remarked that the villain in English (and
American) literature is seldom or never a blond. Custom-
arily he has the dark complexion, the exotic moustache, the
cruel smile, and the dapper manner which the Anglo-
Saxons have conventionally associated with the Latin, or
at any rate the Mediterranean, peoples. Blond villains do
occur, as in the memorable case of Uriah Heap or the horrid
red-head whom Mr. Hugh Walpole invented not long ago,
but perhaps the very creepiness of these fictions is due to
the fact that we are trained to regard blond villainy as
almost impossible, so that, when it appears, it seems the
more sinister. Our normal villains are swarthy, foreign-
looking men.

Does the expectancy that a villainous character shall be
dark reflect a Northern terror of the South? Is it simply a
literary convention established so long ago that the memory
of man runneth not to the contrary? Shall we suppose that
the Italians who lurk in the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe are
wholly false, and that the Italians who live in the novels of
F. Marion Crawford are not artificial? If the picture of
the Jew or of the Italian or of the Spaniard which one gets
in English literature is no truer to fact than the picture of
the American that one gets in English literature, what
happens to the supposed usefulness of literature in break-
ing down the barriers of race and nation? Shall we refuse

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