The Maccabaean

I have spoken of the solidarity of the Yishub and of its common spirit, but this is not, of course, meant to suggest that all Jews in Palestine, or even all those whom the new colonization movement has brought thither, think alike on all matters of general importance. Extra-Palestinian Zionism is naturally concerned with "the Yishub" or "the Colonies" as a whole, and we get into the habit of using those terms as though they denoted something single and uniform. As a matter of fact, no society of human beings can expect to be free from internal differences of interest and outlook, and there would be something very unreal about the Yishub if it were an exception to that rule. Differences of outlook and conflicts of interest there are, and some of them go deep enough. The most striking is the difference between the farmers and planters and the agricultural

laborers on the question of "Hebrew labor"—a question which has, of course, its national as well as its economic side. As is usual in such cases, the difference tends to be intensified by misunderstandings and exaggerations on both sides, but the roots of it lie in circumstances for which neither side is responsible and which neither side alone can alter. The problem is one in which the Zionist organization will be compelled to take an active interest as the work of colonization develops, and the stability of our national home will depend to a large extent on its satisfactory solution. There is no reason to fear that a satisfactory solution will not be found. In this, as in other matters, the national consciousness will be strong enough to resist successfully any attempt of individual or sectional interests to jeopardize the national welfare.

WOULD call the eleventh Poale Zion Convention, I which has been recently held in Philadelphia, a Convention of compromise. Compromise was the keynote of that Convention, as compromise has become the pathway of the Poale Zion as a party. But I do not use the word compromise in its critical and negative meaning, but rather in its political and tactical sense. Political life is possible only through compromise, and as the Poale Zion has now become an important political and national factor in Jewish life and as they are increasing in numbers through new adherents from the most diverse quarters, they ought to accept the golden rule of compromise. Of course, that golden rule of compromise is a sin against the higher moral rule fiat justitia pereat mundus, but the sin is justifiable for the sake of unity of action.

Only through compromise was it possible to keep together the two halves of the Poale Zion party, which would perhaps have taken the course of secession if the opposing factions had not been ready to make concessions.. And plenty of dissensions have been accumulated in the Poale Zion party during the last turbulent years, certainly more than in any other party in Israel. On the threshold of action, at which Zionism has arrived at present, it would be more than unwise on the part of the party to resent any compromise, to cavil at some academic principle and to weaken the unified will to action. The Convention followed the maxim of Karl Marx, ‘who said once that an ounce of practice is worth more than a ton of theory.

The Poale Zion Party numbers now about 6,000 men:- bers and was represented at the Convention by about 150 delegates. But it must be taken into consideration that about 600 members, who always stood in the vanguard of the party, volunteered as legioneers and left America to fight for Palestine. Notwithstanding that great quantitative and qualitative loss that the party suffered during the last year, the party almost doubled since the convention of fight for Palestine. Notwithstanding that great quantitative but mostly from the ranks of organized labor, having been forced by recent events to a realization of the practicability and the real possibilities of Zionism. Even many old opponents of Zionism from the ranks of the intellectuals and workingmen have joined hands with the Poale Zion and added to the growth of the party. And these

few thousand party members are encircled by thousands and thousands of sympathizers and lukewarm proletarian Zionists, while the entire Jewish proletariat, with the exception of a few lost cases among the professional leaders and politicians, tends now more and more in its feelings and instincts towards Zionism.

- Under ihe pressure of that numerical increase of the party its character is undergoing a considerable change. The influx of the masses and the class-conscious elements brings in more hot blood, more social aspiration into the party, but at the same time the party is losing its romantic and poetical color, its cultural tinge. That is the tragedy of socialism, that it still remains a “fork and knife” problem and has not yet realized, that “man does not live by bread alone.” Whereas socialism should be imbued with all the deepest longings and the farthest visionings of the human spirit and “nothing idealistic should be foreign to that ideal,” it still remains imbedded in the fight for bread, rest and proper lawmaking. It is only natural that the newcomers in the Poale Zion ranks should have been given pause in the Hebraistic foundation of the new Zionistic culture. Very few among the Poale Zionists and even among the Zionists feel the universal philosophical and aesthetic value, the revolutionary inspirations, which are involved in a regenerated Hebrew culture in Palestine. Hebrew appears to the newcomers among the Poale Zion as superfluous, as romanticism, which is vulgarily identified with reaction, as a cultural expression of the upper classes. Is not Yiddish the language of the Jewish masses and their ‚needs, and cannot this lingua del pane become also the cultural language of the masses, the Zingua del core? And superficial thinking identifies Yiddish with democracy and radicalism, and the old reactionary antagonism against Zionism becomes transformed under new conditions into antagonism against Hebrew. There are many psychological, but, of course, few logical causes, why proletarian Zionists refuse Hebrew and accept Yiddish as the national language in the diaspora as well as in Zion.

To this split on the language question must be added all the deep differences which ought to arise in a socialist party in the war period. The problem of orientation, the question in connection with the Jewish Legion, as to whether a Zionist socialist party could absolutely identify itself with