The Maccabaean

British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

I HAVE always been greatly interested in the Jewish question, and in the early years of this century, when anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe was in an an acute stage, I did my best to support a scheme devised by Mr. Chamberlain, then Colonial Secretary, for creating a Jewish settlement in East Africa under the British flag. There it was hoped that Jews flying from persecution might found a community, where, in harmony with their own religion, development on traditional lines might (we thought) peacefully proceed without external interruption and free from any fears of violence.

The scheme was certainly well-intentioned, and had, I think, many merits. But it had one serious defect. It was not Zionism. It attempted to find a home for men of Jewish religion and Jewish race in a region far removed from the country where that race was nurtured and that religion came into being. Conversations I held with Dr. Weizmann in January, 1916, convinced me that history could not thus be ignored, and that if a home was to be found for the Jewish people, homeless now for nearly nineteen hundred years, it was vain to seek it anywhere but in Palestine.

But why, it may be asked, is local sentiment to be more considered in the case of the Jew than (say) in that of the Christian or the Buddhist? All historic religions rouse feelings which cluster round the places made memorable by the words and deeds, the lives and deaths, of those who brought them into being.

Doubtless these feelings should always be treated with respect; but no one suggests that the regions where these venerable sites are to be found should, of set purpose and with much anxious contrivance, be colonized by the spiritual descendants of those who originally made them famous. If the centuries have brought no change of ownership or occupancy we are well content. But if it be otherwise, we make no effort to reverse the course of history. None suggest that we should plant Buddhist colonies in India, the ancient home of Buddhism, or renew in favor of Christendom the crusading adventures of our mediaeval ancestors. Yet, if this be wisdom when we are dealing with Budhism and Christianity, why, it may be asked, is it not also wisdom when we are dealing with Judaism and the Jews?

The answer is, that the cases are not raceless. The position of the Jews is unique. For them race, religion, and country are inter-related as in the case of no other race, no other religion, and no other country on earth. In no other case are the believers in one of the greatest religions of the world to be found (speaking broadly) only among the members of a single small people; in the case of no other religion is its past development so intimately bound up with

the long political history of a petty territory wedged in between States more powerful far than it could ever be; in the case of no other religion are its aspirations and hopes expressed in language and imagery so utterly dependent for their meaning on the conviction that only from this one land, only through this one history, only by this one people, is full religious knowledge to spread through all the world. By a strange and most unhappy fate it is this people of all others which, retaining to the full its racial self-consciousness, has been severed from its home, has wandered into all lands, and has nowhere been able to create for itself an organized social commonwealth. Only Zionism—so at least Zionists believe—can provide some mitigation of this great tragedy of the Jewish people.

Doubtless there are difficulties, doubtless there are objections— great difficulties, very real objections. And it is, I suspect, among the Jews themselves that these are most acutely felt. Yet no one can reasonably doubt that if, as I believe, Zionism can be developed into a working scheme, the benefit it would bring to the Jewish people, especially perhaps to that section of it which most deserves our pity, would be great and lasting. It is not merely that large numbers of them would thus find a refuge from religious and social persecution; but that they would bear corporate responsibilities and enjoy corporate opportunities of a kind which, from the nature of the case, they can never possess as citizens of any non-Jewish State. It is charged against them by their critics that they now employ their great gifts to exploit for personal ends a civilization which they have not created in communities they do little to maintain. The accusation thus formulated is manifestly false. But it is no doubt true that in many of the regions of Europe their loyalty to the State (to put it mildly) is feeble compared with their loyalty to their religion and their race. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? In none of the regions of which I speak here have they been given the advantage of equal citizenship; in some they have been given no right of citizenship at all. Suffering is the inevitable result; but other evils follow which aggravate the original mischief. Constant oppression, with occasional persecution, are apt either to crush their spirit, or to develop in them self-protecting qualities which do not always assume an attractive shape. The Jews have never been crushed. Neither cruelty, nor contempt, neither unequal laws nor illegal oppression, have ever broken their spirit, or shattered their unconquerable hopes. But it may well be true that, where they have been compelled to live among their neighbors as if these were their enemies, they have often obtained, and sometimes deserved, the repu-