The Maccabæan
EDITORIAL PAGES
J. DE HAAS, EDITOR
OVER THE BREAKERS
WITHIN a few weeks the modern Zionist movement will attain to its eighth birthday, the anniversary of the issue of Dr. Herzl's "Jewish State." It is a long way from the speculative politics of this brochure to the sociological dreams of "Old-Newland," though the road is traceable, but it is still further from the inertia of the spring of 1896 to the storm and turmoil of this winter, 1903-4. Then Zionism had still to be born, now the doctrine has not only passed through the storm of popular abuse, but the Zionist ship has been laboring in the trough of the sea, and is guiding itself through the curling and dangerous breakers. To drop metaphor, the Zionist movement has gone through some trying moments; we are writing while the crisis, the dangerous moment of internal struggle, is still upon us, but it is almost past and we shall come out of it, safe, sound and buoyant as to the future.
The inward peace of our movement was first broken by Achad Haam and his followers whose culture did not teach them that discipline is the first and the most necessary quality of a movement such as ours. But the tributes we would pay our Russo-Jewish philosopher is that his theories, subtle as they are, belong to an unreal world and an unreal age. It is a pity that the attention of the Jewish people is diverted in
Russia from simple to complex issues, but the sanity of Israel, which is its real abiding quality, will not permit the Jewish mind to stray far from practical teachings.. Achad Haam will then do no harm, if we frankly doubt that he can do much real good—we need such elements to keep our ideas in a state of useful ferment
This, however, produced no real crisis—only now and then a spectacular effect in our congresses and an abundance of articles in newspapers. The real crisis was produced by the introduction in the business of the Sixth Congress of the British offer of a tract of land in British East Africa. It was a noble offer, but it failed to capture the vision, because it neither answered to the logic of Zionist teachings, nor sounded the note which moved the Zionist imagination. Mau and the Victoria Nyanza are not written in the book of our life, neither harp nor heart were ever attuned to these names; nor yet had those who sought a solution to the Jewish problem thought to content themselves with a "night refuge." On this there was no real difference in the congress, the fight ranged round another and a more subtle problem—how to deal with the "strange fruit" of our labor. On this there was no agreement. Worse than that, the emotional Chauvinist began to suspect his patriotic but phlegmatic brother who saw real utility in this offer whether it came within or remained without the lines of our programme. The movement and the whole of Jewry was shaken by the projection of this new issue; it did immense good, and great harm at one and the same moment.