with good intentions is being welded into an organism inspired by an ideal of action as well as imagination. The process is unspeakably slow in view of the needs that call, but it is a real process. It is not realizing itself without resistance. The notion of discipline and intelligence co-operation is no less foreign to Zionists than it is to the whole Jewish nationality. Without it, nothing can be accomplished, and the social ineffectuality of the Jews has been due largely to the fact that they insist on being without it. In communal life our people have been anarchs rather than democrats. Their democracy has been one of protest, not creation. Brandeis has brought us the idea of democracy as a creative and organizing force rather than democracy as a retaliatory and rebellious reaction. He has made Zionism in the daily life of the average Zionist a constructive program. The items of this program are familiar to all of us,—the reorganiza-
tion of the whole movement on lines that will give free play everywhere in the land to individual talent and individual distinction in the service of the cause; the spread of information, the education of our Zionist comrades and all our fellow-citizens, Jewish and Gentile alike, in the purpose, achievements and problems of the movement; the maintenance of our institutions in Palestine as the indispensible instrument of self-help and self-respect for our colonists there; the Americanization of Jewry in the United States through the Congress movement.
There is nothing to add to this program, nothing to subtract from it. What is most important for us is to recognize the fundamental necessity of discipline, and to follow our leader as loyally and with as complete a forgetfulness of self as utter a self-dedication to the cause as his own.
To a Bird
(From the Hebrew of H. N. Bialik)
Greetings! Peace to you, returning.Lovely bird, unto my windowFrom a warmer clime!How my soul for songs was yearningWhen my dwelling you desertedIn the winter-time!
Chirping, singing, dearest, birdling,Tell the wonders of that distantLand from which you came.In that fairer, warmer climateAre the troubles and the trialsMultiplied the same?
Do you bring me friendly greetingsFrom my brothers there in Zion,Brothers, for yet near?O the happy! O the blessed!Do they guess what heavy sorrowsI must suffer here?
Do they know and could they pictureHow the many rise against meHow their hatred swells?Singing, singing, O my birdlingSing the wonders of the land whereSpring forever dwells.
Does your singing bring me greeting From the land, its glens and valleys, Mountain height and cleft? Has her God compassioned Zion? Is she still to graves deserted, Only ruins left?
Tell me, does the Vale of Sharon, Do the highlands of Lebonah Drop their nard and myrrh? Does the oldest of the forests Wake from sleep? Is ancient, slumbering Teehanon astir?
Falls the dew like pearls on Hermon,From its snowy heights descendingTearlike does it fall?How fare Jordan's shining waters,How the hills and how the hillocksAnd the mountains all?
Has the heavy cloud departed,Spreading o'er them deathly shadow,Dark, enshrouding breath?Singing, chirping, tell me, birdling,Of the country where my fathersFound their life, their death.
Have the blossoms that I plantedNot yet withered as I withered?(Old am I, and wan.—Fruitful days I, too, rememberLike themselves, but now I'm faded,Now my strength is gone.)
Chirping, singing, whisper, birdling,Secrets of the shrubs and bushes,Murmurings of their shoots.Have they news of mercies coming,Have they hopes, as Lebanon's humming,So to swing with fruits?
And the laborers, my brothers,—Have not these who sowed with weepingReaped with song and psalm?Oh, that I had wings to fly with,Fly unto the land where flourishAlmond tree and palm!
I myself, what shall I tell you,Lovely bird, what stories hope youFrom my lips to know?In this far, cold land, no singing,Only sighs and lamentations,Only groans and woe.