The Maccabaean

man. It was quite natural for Marx to assume that he had discovered the key to the understanding of the human development. Discoverers are not required to be dispassionate appraisers of the value of their contribution. But it is a strange purblindness on the part of later investigators of society to attempt to deny that when a man's physical wants are satisfied, there still remains a quantity of desires, hopes, aspirations wants and fears, that may be called moral and spiritual or denominated x or y entities by those who fear these terms. Many Socialists have denied it, or have used words of which the plain intendment was that they denied it. And by doing so, they lay themselves open to the vigorous attack that Mr. Zimmern delivers against them.

For Mr. Zimmern is an idealist and boasts of it. There is a far-off vision before his eyes of a commonwealth of brothers and he thinks that a concerted push from all will bring us a measurable step toward it. And one of the ideals of his commonwealth will be the fruition of the spirit of nationality, to which this book is particularly dedicated.

En GE ERBE EB The economic questions treated by Mr. Zimmern, fraught though they are with a fine enthusiasm, will probably fail to convince either Socialists or the uncompromising defenders of the existing system. It is the usual fate of moderates that they satisfy neither side. And it is perhaps a special characteristic of economic controversies that the votaries of one doctrine can scarcely treat with decent patience the adherents of another. But on the other matter with which the book deals, Mr. Zimmern is notably more successful. The spirit of nationalism has’ rarely been presented so eloquently and fully. For Zionists, these chapters will naturally be of primary interest.

Mr. Zimmern (p. 53) defines a nation as a “body of people united by a corporate sentiment of peculiar intensity, intimacy and dignity, related to a definite home-country.” I doubt whether Mr. Zimmern meant this as a definition in the logical or philosophical sense. Definitions of that sort are parlous things, indeed, and not to be lightly attempted. But as the sort of shorthand description which gives us the essence or most of the essence of the matter, it is excellent, and in the following pages the author appends a commentary sufhiciently detailed to give the reasons for the choice of just these terms. Doubtless critics would attack precisely that part of this definition that is most significant for us. The definite home-country might seem to be contained in the definition in a less organic way than the other elements. But we have merely to omit it to see how denuded of content the term becomes. Except for this definite home-country, a religious society, a club of veterans might claim to be meant by the definition.

Mr. Zimmern goes on to say in words that may be commended to the consideration of a great many Jews: "Every nation has a home, though some nations, such as the Jews, the Irish, the Norwegians and the Poles, live for the greater part in exile. If the Jews ceased to feel a peculiar affection for Palestine, or the Irish for Ireland, they would cease to be a nation as the gipsies have ceased to be a nation; and when the individual Jew ceases to feel a peculiar affection for Palestine, he ceases to be a Jew."

Zionists will not need to be convinced that this is true. Non-Zionists will no doubt indignantly repudiate it. But will the most bitter opponent of Zionism venture to assert that a Jew can regard Palestine with complete indifference, that he will read a newspaper account of its progress with

the same feelings as he would learn of events in Kamchatka or Liberia? Those who lay stress upon the purely religious character of the Jewish bond, are scarcely in a position to deny that that religion is predicated upon a sacred literature written in Palestine and incomprehensible without a clear grasp of Palestinian conditions and history. In other words, to every Jew, Zionist as well as non-Zionist, Palestine is something else than an indifferent section of the earth's surface, and therefore, even the avowed antegonists of a Jewish national consciousness, are nevertheless as long as they call themselves Jews, in any other than a racial sense, part of a Jewish national body.

Since Palestine as a geographical entity is indestructible, this national Jewish consciousness would exist, even if there were not a single Jew residing in Palestine. But Mr. Zimmern is not merely a Nationalist in general, but a Zionist in particular. The Jewish nationality may, it is true, exist independently of a Jewish Palestine, but would it be worth while? After all, nationalism is not a nostrum that will cure the evils of society, however applied and however derived. In one of the best of these essays, “True and False Nationalism (pp. 60-86), the title implies that Nationalism can be an evil as well as a good. Mr. Zimmern, it is true, is thinking of that phase of Nationalism, which in the words he often quotes from Lord Acton, is the greatest adversary of the rights of Nationality. The Nationalism of Prussifi- cation or Magyarization is the negation of what is understood by Nationalism proper. There we see a deliberate attempt to eradicate a national consciousness, for the sole reason that those who bear it happen to reside within the territorial limits in which the bearers of a different national consciousness are in the majority. That wise and unbelievably learned man, Lord Acton, inveighed against this form of cruelty more than fifty years ago, and his words are properly regarded by Mr. Zimmern as prophetic.