“But there is no such nation,” Moïse objected.
“Isn’t there!” said the Spook. “Are you quite sure? Has there not been for a thousand years and more, is there not now, a nation without territory but with a great national spirit, a nation whose sons have been scattered for centuries over the earth and yet have maintained their unity of blood, and won their places in the council chamber as leaders of men, wherever they have gone? And this they have done, not by strength of arm and weight of armament—these are the weapons of the dying present which will be discarded in the new era—but by the moral and intellectual supremacy which is theirs. Intellectual, moral and religious strength is to take the place of guns and ships and physical force, and in these weapons of tomorrow, this nation—the landless nation—of which I speak is supreme. Moïse! can you name the future leaders of humanity?”
“The Jews,” he said, and I noticed his eyes were blazing.
“Of whom,” said the Spook, “you are one, and if you will hearken unto me, and do that which I say, there is that in you which will make you leader of your kind.”
The Spook began to flatter Moïse. The fellow really was an excellent linguist. The Spook made the most of it, and magnified his quite reasonably acute intelligence into a gift of phenomenal brain power. It made out that Moïse was more richly endowed with the potentialities of greatness than any of the great leaders the world has ever seen. It insisted that moral force is infinitely more effective than physical. Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, each in his own way had had an influence more powerful and lasting and more widespread than any of the great soldiers in history; yet in no case had the influence of any one of them been world-wide or supreme, for each had taught only his own aspect of the universal truth. The old faiths, the old beliefs, the old social theories were worn out and obsolete. Mohammedism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism—all these were only partial expressions of the truth. But now the time was ripe and men were ready for the complete expression of the universal. The world was waiting for a new leader and a new teacher who would heal its sores, weld it into one vast brotherhood of men, and guide it through an era of universal prosperity, happiness and well-doing to the millennium. And the finger of destiny pointed to the Jews as the chosen people, and to Moïse as the chosen leader of the Jews. He had the personality, the brain-power, the intellectual force—all the potentialities for the making of the greatest man the world has ever seen. But he must not lessen his own power for good by descending, as he had done at Yozgad, to acts that were mean or low or dishonest, acts that if persisted in would undermine and finally destroy the moral force of character on which his leadership would depend. The Spook lashed him for his past sins and then concluded: “Henceforth, if you wish to lead the world, you must walk humbly and do justly. You must live a righteous and austere life, so that at the appointed time you may join the mediums in Egypt. I shall then, if my precepts have been obeyed, reveal unto you how you may attain the goal of all the human race. Good-bye.”
Youth in general, and Jewish youth in particular, is blessed with a profound belief in its own capacity. Every young man in his inmost heart thinks that he is fitted for extraordinary greatness if he only had the luck, or the energy, or the knowledge necessary to develop the potentialities that lie dormant within him. The Pimple was no exception to the rule. He was not, I suppose, any more or any less ambitious than the average young Jew, but he undoubtedly had a very high opinion of himself. When that opinion was more than confirmed by the mysterious and infallible being in whom he placed all his faith; when possibilities were shown him of which he had never dreamt; and the vista of a glorious future was spread before his excited imagination, he was stirred to the depths of his shallow soul. I have never seen a man more moved. Long before the end of the Spook’s speech he had burst into tears, and his suppressed sobbing shook him so that he dared not speak. For some time after the Spook had finished talking he sat with head bowed and averted, lest the sentries should see his face. Then he furtively dried his tears and implored us to promise to meet him in Egypt some day in the near future. We gave the promise and hoped it might be soon.
We reached Constantinople about 3 o’clock that afternoon, and Moïse left us on the station platform in charge of the sentries while he went off with his papers to arrange for our admission to hospital. We waited patiently, hour after hour. About 7 o’clock Hill turned to me—the sentries were some way off.
“There’s one thing worrying me,” he whispered.
“What is it, old chap?”
“If the Pimple takes as long as this to get two lunatics into hospital, what sort of a job will he make of running the world?”