The Maccabaean

THIS is the time of the world-war, primarily waged for "Weltpolitik." To the issues of this war there has been tacked on the issue of Nationalism. Zionism as a branch of the Nationalistic movement has now at last the opportunity of its life to present its claims to the attention of Europe and demand equal consideration with those of the other smaller nationalities whose status will be subject to readjustment along more natural lines. It may, therefore, not be amiss to examine here the subject of Nationalism, in relation to the philosophy of Zionism:

Nationalism is best considered in conjunction with its antithesis Cosmopolitanism, a tendency which has found nowhere so strong adherents as among our own scattered, disjointed, unterritorial people. Cosmopolitanism affects to see in the, not very distant, future a disappearance of all nations, as political and cultural entities, their merging and absorption into one grand universal world-nation, speaking one world-language and inspired by one grand, common aim of life. This beautiful utopia has found its champions largely among the ultra-radicals and among socialist leaders, such as Kautsky, who even goes to the length of demonstrating, by what process and gradations these national differences, especially the national languages, will march to their extinction. Holding such or similar views our own Cosmopolites—insofar as they do not belie themselves, as some do, by the claim that there is no Jewish nationality at all—clamor about the uselessness of reenacting our nationality politically or its fortification in the diaspora against assimilation by erecting a cultural center in Palestine, pending disappearance of the nations, as they claim.

To this the reply of the Nationalists is that the nations normally living and undergoing the normal vicissitudes of life, especially modern life, do not die, cannot die.

There is no reason to suppose that a nationality and all that constitutes and characterizes it can disappear, when the great mass of individuals composing that nation find their livelihood on the soil on which they live and will be able to continue to live on it in view of modern, scientific exploitation of soil and when all the great cultural nationalistic activity will go on as heretofore. To put it tersely, there is no possible way whereby under modern conditions, a German peasant, say, living in the heart of Germany and a French artisan living in the heart of France, each surrounded, as they are, by their respective national atmospheres can cease to be nationally what they are and, at long range, assimilate, become de-Germanized or de-Gallicized and instead, cosmopolitanized. Such assimilation requires the presence of both of these types in one locality and there, too, it will not be a question of either of them yielding up what is typical in them and acquiring some third type, but as is the case with assimilation everywhere, the weaker type will yield to the stronger which then becomes the predominant. This, of course, would not

be found affecting the problem of the persistence of the respective nationality at all, and least of all will it hardly be the cosmopolitan ideal, because it would not make for the disappearance of nations.

The only disturbing factors in this connection are emigration and the natural increase of population. Upon closer scrutiny, however, neither of these will have an effective bearing upon the subsidence of nationalism and the realization of the cosmopolitan utopia.

Emigration is generally due to warped economic development and prevalence of conditions making it impossible for an overflow of the population to subsist on the national soil. It would take us far afield to discuss this most interesting and important phenomenon of modern life, much as we might like to in view of the fact that emigration plays so important a part in the life of our people.

Suffice it to state here, that no student of the subject regards emigration as a sempiternal phenomenon but on the contrary, as quite transitory. Much of emigration, if not all, could be prevented by a different distribution of wealth and regulation of the labor market, in fact by a thorough-going overhauling of the social machinery in each land. With scientific handling it might be obviated entirely. But still, admitting for a moment that it is a standing phenomenon, emigration affects with every normal people (that is, excluding us) a small percentage only of the entire nation and, furthermore, the places vacated by the emigrants are soon taken by others who on account of the resultant increase of elbow-room become more stably fixed in their homeland and emigration consequently diminishes in extent. The nations furnishing these emigrants become in fact relieved, and their national life flows on uninterruptedly, perhaps owing to the emigrational tapping more healthily than ever. How does that factor then destroy nationality? All it does is to pour humans of various nationalities, a small percentage of each upon nearly virgin soil, or where otherwise labor is required, where they either succumb to the influence of the dominant native race as with us here or, through lack of self-adaptation, migrate back to their native land, whereby their loss is made good again. If they stay in the new country, then instead of advancing the principle of cosmopolitanism, they complicate things more in the opposite direction, for they help in the production of a new nation, thus removing the cosmopolitan millennium quite a number of milestones. The effect of a great increase in population and its very remote effect upon nationalism may also be discounted. Such an increase goes mostly hand in hand with increasing economic development and the ability of the country to provide for all the increase witness Germany's rapid increase in population pacing equally with her economical development. If the country cannot provide sufficiently for the increase in population, that surplus is disgorged into emigrational channels and when even these are occluded the surplus, by a self-regulational activity, diminishes, the rate of birth becoming lower. Anyhow, such increase in