Palestine and the Jewish Colonists
Palestine is still the frontier. She needs men and women, strong and sturdy, upheld with ideals and filled with the pioneer spirit. The outward glory of Palestine belongs to the past and the future. The present can only contribute the glory of a strong, brave, and independent spirit, ready to turn potentialities into actualities. Men and women lacking this spirit would be a burden on the country. Miss Cohn's article is illuminating and must appeal to American Jews.
Tourist and Colonist
All those who have come to Palestine in the last few years in order to settle there and become members of the young Jewish community have discovered all their previous ideas in regard to the country and its people to be entirely wrong. We all make the same mistake, we want to see our dreams of Palestine's great future immediately realized. We mistake that Palestine of the future with its potential fine cities, flourishing villages and population free in body and spirit, for the Palestine of to-day. The tourist who travels through the country in the time of a few weeks, rushing from one place to the other, seeing his brethren in hitherto unwonted surroundings and occupations, and and finding everywhere promising beginnings of a new life and new works, may not realize his mistake, but may take back with him the same wrong ideas with which he came.
To him who settles in Palestine, things look very different. His eyes are opened in the first few hours, and he begins to realize a fact of which the tourist may never become aware: that the life in Palestine still has its difficulties and still means, for most people, sacrifice.
The Spirit of the Pioneer Needed
There is no reason why we should suppress this view. However great the sacrifice there are many thousands ready to make it, and the effect which the Zionist idea produces everywhere will be no smaller if one realizes that to live in Pal-
estine to-day is in many respects as difficult as was the life of the first German settlers 300 years ago. On the other hand, it will be useful especially for radical young men and women who are full of indefinite ileas and are driven to Palestine by their desire to put their theories into action, to be made to realize that Palestine demands only people with healthy bodies and sane minds. They should know that only if they possess both will they be able to bear the life in Palestine and become useful to the country.
Concerning the Soil
We should not forget the fact that Palestine is still to a great part a desert and that the brave tillers of the soil have not only to work hard, but their work is accompanied with a thousand worries and vexations: bad food, an uncomfortable couch not free from insects, the burning sun and the dirt, in many places a lack of water for drinking and washing purposes, a perfect isolation from the outside world, a life amongst people who, although they belong to the same nation , are often hard to know and understand—all these are but small troubles and yet grave enough to make people feel unhappy.
The life in the towns, for instance in the Jewish town, Tel Aviv, is no easier. Tel Aviv is situated in the midst of a desert, the notions of cleanliness in most houses are very different from most of those in Western Europe or America; there is an impossibility of wandering about, except in the few little streets on