“The time will come—when, we do not know; it depends on you— when man will become more human, and later, much later, he will become a real man. Then will I converse with my master. I have maintained continuous relations with him because a portion of his spirit he infused in me, and I will address my great master in the following terms:
"Great master! What am I in reality? Canvas and paint! But you have infused in me a soul. I have hung in the midst of my brothers and sisters, and innumerable people, from generation to generation, have stood before me. At all times I have felt for the
children of men and I have endeavored to preserve the soul which you gave me. But now a new generation has arisen. A new man wears the crown. There are no bonds between me and the new man. But I know, great master, that you believe in the restoration of the soul. I believe, too, that the time has come when I shall be restored. My strength will not be lost, it will merely be utilized for other purposes."
"And it shall come to pass at the end of days that God's house shall be established above all the mountains, and will be lifted up above all the tops of the mountains."
The Need In Zion
SOME time since, influenced by certain information in my possession as to the suffering in Palestine, I ventured to send a letter to the New York Times, concerning the matter. This letter has been amiably received by my Jewish friends, and I have been asked to say a word to them through "The Maccabaean."
To go far from the text of my first letter would be to expose my own ignorance. It is faith in the principle rather than knowledge of details which has interested me in the Zionist movement.
On the one hand we recognize in Palestine, the cradle of Christianity, a doctrine of fraternity and charity, terribly mutilated when it became the religion of the Roman Empire—or of any other empire. To the people of Palestine the world owes its first emancipation from the belief in a multitude of gods, most of them worse than human, the rest superman only by virtue of being deathless. From a Jewish Ethical teacher came to us the conception of good will among men, of fundamental equal right to opportunity under the love of a Divine Father, who counts all men as his children and therefore as brothers. To him and to other prophets of Palestine we owe the first conception of human democracy—the ethical principles which are the same for prince and peasant, for communities and for empires.
With the rest of the world the Jews fell under the domain of the Romans. Other subject races lost their identity through their own suicidal wars. The Jews were driven bodily and living from their homes to be scattered over the face of the world. Since the time of Titus, the Jew has been a stranger in his own land, despised and restrained in many regions, driven into pauperism by lack of opportunity, or driven into wealth by the need of opposing his superior keenness to the dull brutality of his oppressors. Only in the democratic lands of Western Europe and America, and in the freer air of the later centuries, has the Jew stood with other men on his rights as a human beine.
The conditions of existence have had their racial effects. Persecution alternating with supplication for financial help has divided the race into the very poor and the very rich. The latter, relatively few in number, have been counted on to tide over the follies of wasteful and quarrelsome rulers of nations. Natural initiative, with a degree of opportunity, have given to the Jewish race more than their share of scholars and of artists as well
as of financiers and administrators. Persecution has helped to keep the race relatively pure and when, with the others it enters the "melting pot," its long heredity tends to render its traits prepotent over those of its non-Jewish ancestry.
Many high minded Jews have long believed that no people can reach its best estate without a home of its own, some part in the Geography of the world. In a native land, Jewish civilization could express itself, a thing impossible when it exists in fragments blended with other civilizations.
Thus arose the movement called Zionism. Zion is the home where Jews express themselves as Jews, with no outside or other allegiance. To this end, Theodor Herzl gave his life, and to this end his colleagues and followers have faithfully labored.
Among possible homes for Jewish people but one region could stand before the imagination as Zion. This isthe home of his forefathers. Palestine is the home of theJew and Jerusalem must be his Holy City.
In all these nineteen hundred years of varied—mostly sad—experiences, the Jews have never been able to lose themselves wholly among other people or to adapt any other nation unreservedly as their own. "We cannot do so to-day," says Professor Gottheil, "and I doubt very much whether we shall be able to do so to-morrow. What we want is to reconstruct ourselves upon a rational and sane basis, by a return to the soil and to a life more regular and less wandering than ours has been during these hundreds of years."
In this spirit and to this end colonies of Jews from Russia and elsewhere have been established in Palestine. By means of irrigation, the dry valleys above Jaffa have been made to blossom like the rose, and the highways have been lined with shade trees and with flowers.
The trade in oranges and other fruits sent out. from Jaffa to the Mediterranean hotels has come to an end. The oranges rot on the trees. Steamers rarely touch at Jaffa or Beyrout. The tourist current strongest in April and May has ceased to flow. The people have no income and their distress appeals to the sympathies of America and Europe. That so many fair regions are likewise in distress renders their need obscure. With the people of Armenia, of Belgiuni, of Servia and of Poland, they aıe involved in a hideous war not of their own seeking, and their part is to suffer, and this mostly in silence. Their ery comes to us from afar, and disaster has engulfe«l other neonles also. and nearer to our homes.