of the majority. They are pure idealists, a fearless minority, strong natures hewn from the national rock. They are survivors in a sharp moral struggle for existence, in which the weaker have perished, nationally speaking. They are individuals in whom the hidden, inherited foundations, national and racial, have been built exceptionally strong and sure. Such must be the constitution of those who will lead the Zionist masses of the East on their way and in their struggles. .
Whoever has read between the lines of my remarks that I consider all of Western Jewry renegades, has not understood me correctly. Certain it is that they are on the road to defection,and the defection will be irrevocable, if no national revival leads the wanderers back to theirrace. The vita nuova of Zionism can save themto Judaism, and will surely save them when itgives signs of effectual realization.
We must be just: we may not expect of the average man, no more may we expect of the average Jew, either heroism or a visionary's imagination. Both are exceptional gifts. The ordinary Jew in lands where he is assured at least a fair amount of safety to person and property, can have no conception of circumstances other than those in which he lives. The law
classes him among German citizens. He has a fatherland. He has a nation. He has a language. He possesses a culture. That all this is not his, he considers a slanderous invention, and the persons that tell him so, his mortal enemies. He suffers from anti-Semitism, but he struggles against it according to the law of the least expenditure of energy. In the Occident, adaptation and assimilation surely call forth less expenditure of energy than the emphasizing of national peculiarities, than segregation, than national organization, than the extreme measure of emigration.
lization, But let a Jewish state arise, legally secured, let thousands, nay millions of Jews, again live and prosper as a nation on their own territory, and the same law of the least expenditure of energy will make out of most of the devotees of assimilation, professors of Jewish nationalism, yes, even settlers in Zion.
The devotees of assimilation will be astonished to find how easily they will rediscover their Jewish hearts as soon as Jewish national life is firmly established. I am not speaking ironically, but in the warm, joyful expectation of finding lost brethren again.
MAX NORDAU.
[Translated from the German by Miss Adele Szold.]
Organization
I HAVE always been struck by the expression, “The scattered forces of Israel,” by which we are often wont to designate the Jewish people. I have even seen in some quarters the idea broached that this scattered condition is one of the chief elements of strength among the Jews. Those who hold this view think they see in the ubiquity of the Jew the working of Providence toward his conservation. Being everywhere and divided up into groups which are scattered in every corner of the globe, a general attack all along the line is next to impossible and the Jews are thus preserved against total extinction.
Such a view is one which naturally finds favor in certain quarters. It indicates a policy of laisser aller, and can be carried out with the hands comfortably resting in one's pockets. Indeed, one would rather not use the word "policy" at all in speaking of it, for it is an at-
tempt to make the best of a bad bargain, and is largely responsible for the fact that so little has been done in past ages by the Jews themselves towards the solution of the Jewish question. Such a course may at times be taken with profit by a body which is internally strong; for it can, at any given moment, step in and shape events into a course which is to its own advantage. But with a body that is internally weak such a course carries with it inherent danger of the gravest kind; for it necessarily leads to a general weakening and to a further disintegration.
Since the beginning of the great diaspora the Jews have practically followed this course of laisser aller. The few exceptions which one might cite merely prove the truth of the statement. That such a course has had no worse effect is perhaps one of the marvels of history. The strong internal and religious force inherent