ON AN ANCIENT PEOPLE
Among my letters this morning was one requesting that if I were in favour of “the reconstitution of Palestine as a National Home for the Jewish people,” I should sign the enclosed declaration and return it in the envelope (unstamped), also enclosed. I dislike unstamped envelopes. I also dislike stamped envelopes. You can ignore an unstamped enveloped but a stamped envelope compels you to write a letter, when perhaps you don't want to write a letter. My objection to unstamped envelopes is that they show a meagre spirit and a lack of confidence in you. They suggest that you are regarded with suspicion as a person who will probably steam off the stamp and use it to receipt a bill.
But I waived the objection, signed the declaration, stamped the envelope and put it in the post. I did all this because I am a Zionist. I am so keen a Zionist that I would use a whole bookful of stamps in the cause. I am a Zionist, not on sentimental grounds, but on very practical grounds. I want the Jews to have Palestine, so that the English may have England and the Germans Germany and the Russians Russia. I want them to have a home of their own so that the rest of us can have a home of our own. By this I do not mean that I am an anti-Semite. I loathe Jew-baiting, and regard the Jew-baiter as a very unlovely person. But I want the Jew to be able to decide whether he is an alien or a citizen. I want him to shed the dualism that makes him such an affliction to himself and to other people. I want him to possess Palestine so that he may cease to want to possess the earth.
I am therefore fiercely on the side of the Zionist Jews, and fiercely against their opponents. These people want to be Jews, but they do not want Jewry. They do not want to be compelled to make a choice between being Jews and being Englishmen or Americans, Germans or French. They want the best of both worlds. We are not a nation, they say; we are Englishmen, or Scotsmen, or Welshmen, or Frenchmen, or Germans, or Russians, or Japanese “of the Jewish persuasion.” We are a religious community like the Catholics, or the Presbyterians, or the Unitarians, or the Plymouth Brethren. Indeed! And what is your religion, pray? It is the religion of the Chosen People. Great heavens! You deny that you are a nation, and in the same breath claim that you are the Chosen Nation. The very foundation of your religion is that Jehovah has picked you out from all the races of men as his own. Over you his hand is spread in everlasting protection. For you the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night; for the rest of us the utter darkness of the breeds that have not the signature of Jehovah. We cannot enter your kingdom by praying or fasting, by bribe or entreaty. Every other nation is accessible to us on its own conditions; every other religion is eager to welcome us, sends its missionaries to us to implore us to come in. But you, the rejected of nations, yourself reject all nations and forbid your sacraments to those who are not bom of your household. You are the Chosen People, whose religion is the nation and whose nationhood is religion.
Why, my dear sir, history offers no parallel to your astounding claim to nationality—the claim that has held your race together through nearly two thousand years of dispersion and wandering, of persecution and pride, of servitude and supremacy—
Slaves in eternal Egypts, baking your strawless bricks;
At ease in successive Zions, prating your politics.
All nations are afflicted with egoism. It is the national egoism of Prussia that has just brought it to such catastrophic ruin. The Frenchman entertains the firm conviction that civilisation ends at the French frontier. Being a polite person, he does his best not to betray the conviction to us, and sometimes almost succeeds. The Englishman, being less sophisticated, does not try to conceal the fact that he has a similar conviction. It does not occur to him that anyone can doubt his claim. He knows that every foreigner would like to be an Englishman if he knew how. The pride of the Spaniard is a legend, and you have only to see Arab salute Arab to understand what a low person the European must seem in their eyes. In short, national egoism is a folly which is pretty equally distributed among all of us. But your national egoism is unlike any other brand on earth. In the humility of Shylock is the pride of the most arrogant racial aristocracy the world has ever seen. God appeared to you in the burning bush and spoke to you in the thunders of Sinai, and set you apart as his own exclusive household. And when one of your prophets declared that all nations were one in the sight of God, you rejected his gospel and slew the prophet. By comparison with you we are a humble people. We know we are a mixed race and that we have no more divine origin—and no less—than anybody else. Mr Kipling, it is true, has caught your arrogant note: