'Merely as a centre of Cultur. Merely as a University where Herbert Spencer may be studied in the tongue of the Psalmist. All the rest is bourgeois Zionism. Political Zionism? Economic Zionism? Pah! Mere tawdry imitations of heathen politics!'
'Then you agree with the Chovevi Zionists!'
'Not at all. Zion is less a place than a state of mind. We want Culture—not Agriculture; we want the evolutionary efflorescence of Israel's inner personality——'
David fled, only to stumble upon a Nationalist who declared that Zionism was a caricature of true Nationalism, and Territorialism a cheap philanthropic substitute for it.
'Then why not join in the Self-Defence of our nation?' David asked.
'I will—when we are on our own soil. Your corps is a mere mockery of the military concept.'
David found no more comfort in his interview with the member of the L.A.E.R., who was convinced that only in the League for the Advancement of Equal Rights lay the Jew's true security. It was the one party whose success was sure, the only one based upon an unconditional historic necessity.
David's morning was not, however, to pass without the discovery of a man of no Party. And, strangely enough, he owed his find to the headache these innumerable Parties caused him. For, going into a chemist's shop for a powder, he was served by a red-bearded Jew whose genial face emboldened him to solicit a stock of bandages and antiseptics—in view of a possible pogrom.
'But the pogroms are over,' cried the chemist. 'They were but the expiring agonies of the old order. The reign of love is at hand, the brotherhood of man is beginning, and all races and creeds will henceforth live at peace under the new religion of science.'
David's headache rose again triumphant over the powder. Even a partisan would be easier to convince than this sort of seer.