In a few words the author can give the essence of the personal impressions which he received during the course of his three months’ stay in Palestine, in 1913, before the war: a model factory of modern Jewish national life; a nursery for rearing the fruitful parent-stems for the blossoming tree of a living Hebraism; a laboratory for sociological experiments in self-help and self-government in Jewish economic life; a compendium of elements and corner-stones for the erection of the Home; a systematic, laborious, slow preparation of the preliminary conditions for a great, healthy, original Jewish province; the genesis of a new world, naturally with many defects, with many premature and unripe attempts, but that was just most beautiful and most natural in people who search and strive and venture. And all this was enlightened by a clear understanding, and glowed with a youthful national enthusiasm. That is what Jewish colonization in Palestine is.
Do not try and count it over! The wisdom of the multiplication table is too dull to be able to estimate it. Do not try and weigh it! On the great scales of history a single unit sometimes weighs down a hundred thousand! Enjoy it, as one enjoys art, or as the free soul becomes intoxicated with and rejoices in freedom. As musical natures become enraptured with music, so national natures become enraptured with national life.
And if you will have net results, then do not forget one thing, namely, that all this has been done, not by the entire Jewish people, but by a small handful of Jews. When this small handful has become the entire people, then this edifice will grow even grander. Palestine is a land that stretches forth its hands to the future. For two thousand years it has been ravaged by war and by misgovernment, until a country that was once famous throughout the world for its fertility, has become a desert land, degenerate from lack of cultivation. According to the statistics of the Ottoman Board of Trade less than 9 per cent of the area of European Turkey has been brought under cultivation, and still less of Turkey in Asia. There are in Palestine twenty-seven inhabitants to the square kilometre, and in the valley of the Jordan four; while in the irrigated districts of neighbouring Egypt ten thousand are concentrated within the same area. Why should not Palestine be resettled like Egypt? Why should it not be made a happy home for an unfortunate people?
Now the Zionists, after twenty years of work, plead their case again. They have not succeeded in putting an end to the “Galuth.” Their opponents maintain that they had overestimated their strength. Perhaps so, but this does not prove that their labours have been to no purpose. They have laid a few foundation stones, they have shown the way.
They defend their cause in the midst of a hell-fire. Our ancient people that has lived so long, has now experienced the greatest of wars, such as has never been in the world before. We live to-day in the most critical period of the world’s history. It has been our lot to share in the greatest drama which humanity has as yet lived through, not only as spectators, but also as actors. The history of this world war is written in letters of blood on the ancient and holy parchment, on the brow of the Jew. No seismograph has indicated beforehand the coming of this earthquake, of this outburst of the volcano of the nations. But one thing the Zionists have foreseen: the force of national consciousness; the flood of hate, our pitiful situation, which cause every storm to tear away the ground from under our feet.
Herzl had written his first pamphlet under the influence of the Dreyfus affair. That cry of twenty years ago thunders now in unison with the cries of mothers, wives, orphans, from underneath the pyres and ruins which in their brutal reality leave the worst imaginings of a Jeremiah far behind. The dead arise from their graves, covered with blood, trampled in the dust, with the fiery name of God, the “Shaddai,” on their pale foreheads, and they demand to be heard. They lament, and say:
“Vainly we strove to secure a little life—we could not grasp it. Withered with sufferings, with pain and injury, shivering and frozen with cold, we used to hug the earth closely, but it would not give us warmth. We were teachers of the most ancient peoples, but death and insult were the recompense paid us by our pupils. We shone like the stars, but we were treated like silkworms, which have to die, so soon as they have spun the fine web of their threads, so soon as they have drawn forth and sacrificed their life-blood—they have fulfilled their duty, and farewell!
“On our shoulders we bore the burdens of our masters’ interests, just as the sea bears the little fishing-boats on its waves. We were more faithful in guarding their property than dogs are. For the labour which we performed, for our hard and humble services, for the sacrifice of all our strength on their altars, for the resigned and patient suffering of all the tortures of exile, we did not receive even the reward of protection extended to the beast of burden, to the cow, or to the sheep for its wool. Deprived of all human rights, even stripped of the scantiest rags of toleration, we wandered and fell under the iron yoke of serfdom, like a weary and impotent herd of cattle driven over rocks and brambles. They felled us as a forest is felled, and we went down without the slightest possibility of suitable self-protection, with the dull thud of an old oak prostrated by a storm, yet with the pain of bereaved, insulted and humbled human beings. We are the victims not of the war, but of the ‘Galuth.’ Let no one talk to us about Belgium, Serbia. Theirs is the well-known scourge of mankind taking the shape of tyranny, militarism, war. Had we suffered only from these things, then we should have suffered but in common with others. Our misery, however, is of a peculiar kind. It is a double misery: we suffer with the rest, and in addition we suffer specially as a people without a country. Belgium and Serbia and Montenegro are nations with countries of their own; they cannot be annihilated, they must be restored. We envy Belgium in her misfortune, and sorely assailed Serbia; we behold the strength and health of the Polish peasant. Truly, he has been ruined for the time being, but he has his country, and though he has been driven away ten times by the fury of war he will return, and once again plant himself on his native soil, where his golden corn will grow again. Not only could he not be uprooted, but he will regain more than he had lost: a new, free, independent Poland!
“Everywhere the rights of nations are triumphant. Let it not be said that only countries that had been stolen fifty or a hundred years ago shall be returned to their former lawful owners. Whoever says so, falsifies history, either intentionally or unintentionally. The right of the Greeks to Greece is also a right which has remained through thousands of years. The right of the Armenians to Armenia has also been suppressed by force throughout the centuries. And yet these rights will be granted. Let it not be said either, that a nation robbed of the country must have remained on its native soil, or otherwise it will have lost its rights. That is not true. More Greeks live outside Greece than in Greece, and there are still other nations, the majority of whose citizens dwell outside the frontiers of their old home. Nor let it be said that it is sufficient to grant equal rights to mankind. Were not equal rights given to the Greeks—and yet the problem was not solved till Greece redeemed herself!
“We, the orphans, the disinherited, the playthings in history’s sports, the step-children of a world founded on nationalities—we summon the world before the high court of history.