“But we all know how the Declaration was interpreted at the time of its publication, and how much exaggeration many of our workers and writers have tried to introduce into it from that day to this. The Jewish people listened, and believed that the end of the galuth had indeed come, and that in a short time Palestine would be a ‘Jewish State.’ The Arab people too, which we have always ignored from the very beginning of the colonisation movement, listened, and believed that the Jews were coming to expropriate its land and to do with it what they liked. All this inevitably led to friction and bitterness on both sides, and contributed much to the state of things which was revealed in all its ugliness in the events at Jerusalem last April.[[3]] Those events, in conjunction with others which preceded them, might have taught us how long is the way from a written promise to its practical realisation, and how many are the obstacles, not easily to be removed, which beset our path. But apparently we learned nothing; and only a short time after the events at Jerusalem, when the British promise was confirmed at San Remo, we began once more to blow the Messianic trumpet, to announce the ‘redemption,’ and so forth. The confirmation of the promise, as I said above, raised it to the level of an international obligation, and from that point of view it is undoubtedly of great value. But essentially it added nothing, and the text of the earlier promise remains absolutely unaltered. What the real meaning of that text is, we have seen above; but its brevity and vagueness allow those who so wish—as experience in Palestine has shown—to restrict its meaning much more—indeed, almost to nothing. Everything, therefore, depends on the good will of the ‘guardian,’ on whom was placed at San Remo the duty of giving the promise practical effect. Had we paid attention to realities, we should have restrained our feelings, and have waited a little to see how the written word would be interpreted in practice.
“I have dwelt perhaps at undue length on this point, because it is the fundamental one. But in truth we are now confronted with other questions, internal questions, which demand a solution without delay; and the solutions which we hear from time to time are as far from realities as are the poles asunder. It will not be long, however, before these visionary proposals, which are so attractive, have to make way for actual work, and we have to show in practice how far we have the material and moral strength to establish the national home which we have been given permission to establish in Palestine.
“And at this great and difficult moment I appear before my readers—perhaps for the last time—on the threshold of this book, and repeat once more my old warning, on which most of the essays in this book are but a commentary:
“Do not press on too quickly to the goal, so long as the actual conditions without which it cannot be reached have not been created; and do not disparage the work which is possible at any given time, having regard to actual conditions, even if it will not bring the Messiah to-day or to-morrow.”
It is because Achad Ha-Am has consistently driven home the lesson reiterated in these last words, and because that lesson is so strikingly apt at the present time, that one feels justified to-day in producing a translation of some of his essays which, as regards their actual subject-matter, are somewhat out of date. The point of view from which he approaches Zionist questions—that of an idealism guided but not subdued by a sternly objective apprehension of realities—is not out of date, and never will be until either human beings or external realities change very much. And that point of view is capable of a wider application than is expressly given to it by the Lover of Zion, concerned primarily with the problems and the destiny of his own people: for it is true of any other ideal movement no less than of Zionism that it is endangered not alone by those who oppose it, but also by those who adhere to it only because they expect it to work miracles.
The translations in this volume, like those in its predecessor, have had the advantage of revision by Achad Ha-Am. The few foot-notes which the translator has added are enclosed in square brackets.
I am much indebted to Mr. Fisher Unwin and to Messrs. Paul Goodman and Arthur D. Lewis for permission to include in this volume the translation of “A Spiritual Centre,” which first appeared in Zionism: Problems and Views, and to the Union of Jewish Literary Societies for permission to reprint that part of “The Time has Come” which appeared in the Jewish Literary Annual for 1907. My best thanks are due to the Editors of the Jewish Review, Messrs. Norman Bentwich and Joseph Hockman, who have kindly allowed me to include “Judaism and the Gospels” and “Summa Summarum” from the Jewish Review. I have also to thank the Jüdischer Verlag, which now owns the copyright of the Hebrew original, for consenting to the publication of this volume of translations.
LEON SIMON.