The Maccabaean

IN the good old times before the war a favorite hunting ground of tourists was the group of Bavarian castles, built by King Ludwig, whom a stupid and unimaginative world has chosen to designate as mad. But there is a land more thickly strewn with castles than Bavaria, and that is Spain. There, according to popular fancy, we are all of us able to erect the mansion of our ideal, and to dwell far from the jarring discords of reality. It is fortunate indeed that in these times of stress communication with the Spain in which our castles are located has not been cut off; we should be in a desperate plight were we unable to flee to our refuge of the spirit, to raise the draw- bridge, and to still for a moment the pain in our hearts. It is not in wistful recollections of the serene and kindly past that we can find courage to survive the universal devastation and carnage about us, but in resplendent visions of the future. We can perhaps find comfort in the fact that if our social edifice, fair and imposing to the eye, is being shattered by the blast of cannon, many a rotten beam which rendered the structure insecure is perishing together with the rest. It is a glorious thought that we shall be enabled to build anew instead of spending our energies in screening and repairing the errors of former generations. It is inspiring, too, to think that our lives are immeasurably longer than any which have been lived heretofore. For it is not by days or years that we should reckon our mortal span, but rather by experiences and by the evolution of our surroundings. In the last three years we have lived through decades of development in agricultural efficiency, lifetimes of progress in aerial and submarine navigation, centuries of political events in Russia and China. And when the war is over and the period of reconstruction sets in, we may witness eras of social progress, all compressed into what the almanacs tell us are a few petty years. For after the war we shall have the marvelous opportunity of sweeping away the dust and cobwebs that lurked in the corners

of the social edifice, and of laying the foundations of a finer, cleaner structure, in which there may be room and air and light for all. Woe to us if we do not profit by the "Thou shalt nots" to be discerned between the lines of history. Then indeed our children would be justified in denouncing us as a generation wilfully blind, utterly soulless. All this may be said of the world as a whole. But ours is a special case. We Palestinians shall have the privilege of building on virgin soil. Our land is not littered with the decaying remains of an unrighteous political and social régime. Our air is not tainted with the curses of an oppressed proletariat. We have no wrongs to redress. And moreover we are blessed as no people was ever blessed before us with an abundance and variety of material. Our people will come from the four corners of the earth laden with the lore of the nations, like the merchants who brought treasures from far and Solomon's palace. It is indeed a romantic thought! Israel the outcast wandering us with an abundance and variety of material. Our people will come from the four corners of the earth, sojourning among the peoples, painstakingly amassing the best and science; Israel the outcast no longer, building his house and calling upon the nations to witness his royal abode decked with the choicest ornaments of mankind. And the nations marvel: "We threw stones, and behold, they have turned to diamonds; we harbored a beggar, and behold, he is a prince." But our enthusiasm must not blind us to the dangers of our situation. Herzl the optimistic spoke in glowing terms of the good that would accrue to us from our having absorbed the great patience of the Slavs, the versatility of the Latins, the efficiency of the Germanic peoples. We like to think of Israel rehabilitated as faultless, unblemished. And yet we cannot deny that the Jews have been influenced by the less admirable traits of the nations among whom they have dwelt, as for instance the indolence and moral