The Author’s statement ran as follows:—
The Zionist Organization in the Entente countries which I have the honour of representing is filled with feelings of the deepest and keenest satisfaction caused by the Declaration of His Majesty’s Government of November 2nd. The Zionist masses are grateful to His Majesty’s Government for their official and formal statement of their intentions in clear and unmistakable terms. Posterity will praise the qualities which are revealed by this historic document; the strength of will, the sentiment of uprightness, the unshakable fidelity to the spirit of Justice, and the beneficent and generous sympathy for the oppressed.
But the feeling of joy evoked by the Declaration is much more than the legitimate satisfaction aroused by the successful result of our representations to the British Government. Quite apart from and above all written conventions, we realize that the Declaration symbolizes that harmonious union of spiritual ideals and political considerations which have made and will make of the Zionist Movement a precious instrument working for civilization and for the brotherhood and emancipation of all oppressed peoples and for their final deliverance from the sad heritage of age-long hatreds and misunderstandings, which have dismembered them and subjected them to the forces of oppression.
Three problems confront the world at this hour: the problem of nationality, the problem of territory, and the problem of liberty. Nationalities are being reconstituted; peoples are seeking one another, joining together, or separating from one another; territories are being redistributed; the spirit of freedom is spreading, seeking incarnation in new forms, and giving a new lease of life to ancient peoples. Everywhere is instability, ferment, movement; from all sides are heard complaints, demands, claims; all things are being recast in new moulds; everywhere new groupings are forming round new interests. The world is fighting for the untrammelled self-expression of nations and races, for an unaggressive international order; the hundreds or thousands of years’ old aspirations, purposes, and aims of nations have become the demands of the moment and the programmes for the future. He only would be certain of harvesting nothing who had not sown during the present world storm. In this noise, in this welter, in this struggle, ancient Judea awakes, claiming her right to live again. This right is inalienable and unalterable. All the force of the indestructible Jewish race is in it. All the sadness of the two thousand years of Jewish martyrdom is in it. Is this right to be denied because of its being so old? Humanity, real humanity, will not extinguish old rights. It has not extinguished it in the case of Greece; neither will it extinguish it in the case of Judea.
History has demonstrated that a nation deprived of its heritage and liberty, which is determined to live and regain her lost country, no matter how long she suffers, cannot be exterminated by any conceivable means employed by her persecutors. And the Jewish people is determined to live and to work for all that is good and ennobling, believing firmly that justice would be but a word of mockery if the sun of liberty could not shine over it again.
In the midst of universal war, amid grief and desolation which go beyond the most tragic imaginings, Great Britain has proclaimed the idea of creating a centre of the arts of peace, and a model of justice. The idea is not only extremely practical, it is profoundly poetical. We are living in the most critical time in history. It is our fate to be spectators of and actors in the greatest drama ever known to humanity. The present war will take its place in history as one of the events which irrevocably divide two epochs. The Jewish people is fortunate in being able to consider itself one of the models which have inspired the noble initiative of Great Britain and her Allies. It is still more fortunate in having been found worthy of the generous protection of His Majesty’s Government, manifested in so striking a manner by the recent Declaration. And what glory awaits, on the other hand, Great Britain and her Allies, if they will be instrumental in the creation of a Jewish National Home in Palestine!
What is it that we wish to preserve in our National Home? Our own precious heritage. You all know it. The sacred Jewish home-life, the intimately personal sentiment of our qualities and of our inner freedom. That is our heritage which we have been able to preserve intact during the eighteen centuries of our Dispersion, untouched by the ambition and hatred which sought to undermine them. We wish to live and to live by our labour and untiring efforts. We want to be invigorated by that force which the children of the soil absorb from contact with it. We want to give form and visibility to our mental conceptions. We desire to perform Israel’s allotted part in the purpose of the eternal progress of humanity in all branches of life, in all human activities. The Jewish National Home will stand out in the world as an inspiring symbol of the triumph of justice over tyranny, as a proof of the right of nationality to be itself. It will be a priceless monument to the future at a time when ruins of the past are everywhere, and the whole world stands in need of rebuilding.
Our object in establishing the Jewish National Home on the sacred soil of our fathers is to carry on the noblest traditions of our race in all their beauty and plenitude. Judea it was which revealed to humanity the path of progress, it was Judea which taught the greatest and noblest lessons in the life of nations—the lessons of Freedom and Right—and it is Judea which will become a centre of liberty and a blessing for the nations. Palestine is not to be weighed down by military powers. She is a home for a small and free nation, and not for a troop of subjects. The glory of invaders is to be conquered by humanity. The glory of tyrants is to yield to civilization. The glory of the land of shadows is to receive the lamp of light. The cloud passed and the star reappeared. And this star is not one of wrath. Nor is it one of hatred, or fanaticism. Christendom has its great sanctuaries in Palestine. Islam has there some of its important sanctuaries. All our glorious holy places are there. They will be respected and safeguarded with reverence and devotion, in peace and mutual love. But around the places of worship life will spring—honest, simple, pure life. We are a peaceful people. We are going to cultivate the soil; we are going to cultivate our ideas. Our future is the ploughshare, and not the sword; the book, and not the bullet. The beneficent spiritual influence of a regenerated Palestine is undoubted; its future, which is boundless, belongs to you; each of you already possesses a portion within himself. Let us but work together so that our people may preserve and improve its title to be considered the conscience of the human race.
We realize, however, that our position needs to be clearly defined. We must be fully conversant with every side of the problem. Vague complaints or expressions of yearning are not enough. There is, first of all, the problem of Emancipation. We have been accused of endangering by our aspirations towards a National Home the position of the Jews in the various countries of the world. We have racked our brains in trying to discover how the establishment of a National Home in Palestine could possibly harm the emancipation of Jews in the world. We have failed to solve this mystery. The British Government in their Declaration have put to flight this fear, which is a pure figment of the imagination without foundation in theory or fact. It would undoubtedly be a great elevation of the Jewish character in the eyes of the world at large, could the Jews prove themselves capable of conducting a Commonwealth harmoniously and successfully; and we are sure they will be able to do so. This is our belief, our ambition, our Jewish optimism. It is because we believe in Israel’s genius that we are Zionists. This will help emancipation. The Jews of the various countries who do not wish to participate actively in the work, who do not desire to take advantage of the right to settle in Palestine, can remain where they are at the present time. We are not emigration agents. We are apostles of a historic ideal, and we want the Jewish people to help in its realization.
It would be a crime at a stage of Jewish history like the present to paralyse by internal dissension a movement which may be productive of so much good. This should not be. Unity of Judaism before all, above all! The majority will support the efforts of their fellow-Jews with great enthusiasm for Judaism, and those who refuse to take any part (a type which is doomed to disappear, like the mammoth, from the face of the earth) must keep the peace. The least we can demand of them is not to disturb us or hinder us in our efforts. Where is the Jew who could neglect this duty which is inspired no less by reason and well-understood interest than by conscience and honour? Where is the Jew who would fail to offer the tribute of his humble share of effort, of help, and of faith to the old land of Israel, now so downtrodden, but all the greater and more beautiful, as its sufferings and trials—so heroically endured—are approaching their end and leading to its renascence which, far from being a mere satisfaction of national egoism, is an exaltation of the noblest Jewish and human ideal?