[50]. Autoem. p. 27 [25-26]. Elsewhere (p. 34 [30]) Pinsker insists that the home of refuge must be secured by political means (“politisch gesichert.”)
[51]. Herzl also, in his pamphlet, does not decide on a territory; but he also looks to America and Turkey, and suggests the Argentine or Palestine (Judenstaat, p. 29).
[52]. Autoem. p. 30 [28].
[53]. ib. p. 35 [31].
[54]. “Eilig und doch ohne Erschütterung” (Judenstaat, p. 85). In one place Herzl says that the emigration of the whole people from the various countries to its own State will take “some decades” (p. 27), but does not say how many. Elsewhere he is more definite; the emigration will last “perhaps twenty years or perhaps more” (p. 79).
[55]. It is worth pointing out that Pinsker, too, hints that the company of capitalists, which is to co-operate with his Directorium, may expect a good profit. But as soon as he has mentioned this expectation he adds: “Whether, however, this act of national redemption will be more or less good business or not—that question is not of great moment in comparison with the importance of the undertaking for the future of our people.” (pp. 32-33 [30].)
[56]. Even in his lifetime Pinsker was not understood, and his pamphlet was not appreciated at its full value. Smolenskin, in his critique, saw nothing in the pamphlet beyond the superficial Chibbath Zion which had then a wide vogue in Hebrew literature, and could find nothing to say in its praise except that it was written in German—a language in which “such ideas ... have never been expressed before.”
[57]. [A letter to the editors of Ha-Omer, a Hebrew miscellany which began to appear in 1907—the first of its kind in Palestine.]
[58]. [From the preliminary announcement of Ha-Omer.]
[59]. This Essay was written at the end of the period of the movement for freedom in Russia, which attracted almost all the educated Russian Jews, with the result that our national work and Hebrew literature were greatly impoverished. [Footnote added in 1913.]