'Why are they traitors?' David asked.
'All Territorialists are traitors. We Poali Zion must jealously guard the sacred flame of Socialism and Nationality, since only in Palestine can our social problem be solved.'
'Why only in Palestine?' inquired David mildly.
The P.Z. glared. 'Palestine is an unconditional historic necessity. The attempt to form a Jewish State elsewhere can only result in failure and disappointment. Do you not see how the folk-instinct leads them to Palestine? No less than four thousand have gone there this year.'
'And a hundred and fifty thousand to America. How about that folk-instinct?'
'Oh, these are the mere bourgeois. I see you are an Americanist Assimilator.'
'I am no more an A.A. than I am a Z.Z.,' said David tartly, adding with a smile, 'if there is such a thing as a Z.Z.'
'Would to Heaven there were not!' said Lerkoff fervently. 'It is these miserable Zioni-Zionists, with their incapacity for political concepts, who——'
Milovka, amid all its medievalism, possessed a few incongruous telephones, and one of these now started ringing violently in Dr. Lerkoff's study.
'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'talk of the devil. There is a man who combines all the worst qualities of the Z.Z.'s and the Mizrachi. He also imagines he has a throat disease due to swallowing flecks of the furs he deals in.' After which harangue he collogued amiably with his patient, and said he would come instantly.