On the Eve of Redemption

Transcriber's Notes: Blank pages have been eliminated. Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. A few typographical errors have been corrected. The cover page was created by the transcriber and can be considered public domain.
S. M. Melamed, Ph. D.
Alpha Omega Publishing Company, New York
Copyright, 1918
Alpha Omega Publishing Co., Inc.
The following pages comprise a number of editorial leaders discussing questions and problems pertaining to Jewish nationalism and Zionism which were published in the American Jewish Chronicle in the years 1916-17-18.

The war has caused an upheaval of the whole world; vast changes have been wrought in many peoples. Destruction of life and treasure has brought about a revolution of national assets and resources, and there has been stock taking of the spiritual no less than of the material possessions. We have confident hope that the material losses will be balanced by the moral progress of the peoples of the world, great and small.
No people has felt the upheaval more than have the Jews. None has had a greater share in its sorrows. None has had more reason to examine carefully its past and its present and to define its future plans; and none can look with clearer purpose or with firmer courage into the future. For none has better ground than have the Jews for confident hope in the moral progress of the world,—that people which has been the constant witness of the course of civilization throughout the ages and has never lost its faith in the ultimate victory of Justice and Right.
We need not speak in generalities. The smaller nations are assured that their rights will be safeguarded in the future, and that these rights will embrace not only protection from attack and aggression, but equally the right of development along the lines of their own national bent, the right of self-government, the right to cultivate their own spiritual possessions. There is no other people to whom this is so full of deep meaning as to the Jews. During the many centuries of the Dispersion our people has ever looked forward to its Restoration in its ancestral home. During these many centuries there has never been a day that the prayers for the Return have not ascended in every country of the world in which the Children of Israel have been dispersed. This undying hope has been the factor in the unique, the miraculous preservation of a small people scattered among all the peoples of the globe.