The Maccabaean

colonization, including land purchase, agricultural settlements, education and public health, would amount to about £1,000,000 per annum, and this money should be raised as a loan by the Zionist Organization for the first ten years. Dr. Weizmann emphasized that the Jewish character of Palestine would be assured by the first 100,000 Jewish productive workers, and he believed that a Jewish State might be realized even within the next ten years.

There can be little doubt that Dr. Weizmann's report will have the effect of dispelling the despondency that prevailed in some quarters, and in giving a beneficial stimulus to propaganda in general. He has come back just in time for the resumption of the Peace Conference, and he will be leaving again in a few days, as will also Mr. Sokolow, for Paris, to be present at the final settlement of the future of Palestine. Mr. Herbert Samuel is expected to leave for Palestine on the 11th inst., so that there will be just sufficient time for conferences between him and Dr. Weizmann.

An important and active part in the deliberations of the Zionist Executive is now taken by Dr. Max Nordau, who arrived in London some three weeks ago, after his five years' exile in Spain. Those who expected to find an infirm and broken-down old man have been agreeably disappointed. He walks with the same firm, easy step and the same upright bearing which characterized him ten years ago. That he has aged in appearance might have been expected, but the change is less than one anticipated. But it is when he speaks that one finds there has been no change at all; it is the same eloquent and vigorous Nordau of ten and fifteen years ago, with unabated wit, unquenchable passion, and infinite resource. He was in his element when he received a corps of British press representatives, although his remark about an absentee citizenship of Palestine acquirable merely by the paying of taxes has naturally aroused much criticism. Dr. Nordau has already been tendered an official reception by the Council of the English Zionist Federation. Next Sunday a public reception is to be given to him by the Federation, when an illuminated address in Hebrew and English, signed by representatives of all the affiliated societies, will be presented to him. Everybody had been looking forward to Nordau's masterly survey of the Jewish situation at the Basle Conference, but as the Conference is postponed it is possible that he may have some other opportunity of delivering himself upon that theme. Before very long there will be a further addition to our propaganda literature in the form of a publication entitled "The Nordau Garden City." It will contain articles upon Nordau and upon the features of the Garden City which is to perpetuate his name, and it will be issued by the Head Office of the Jewish National Fund in different languages.

Palestine forms at present the only bright spot in the Jewish horizon. Elsewhere there is only gloom and distress. From every country in Central and Eastern Europe come stories of suffering and persecution, of outrage and despair. The long-awaited settlement of the Rumanian Treaty has unfortunately not realized our wishes. This diplomatic document, so far as the Jews are concerned, was to have reproduced all the main features of the Treaty with Poland, but the Rumanians kicked and protested and mancuvered until they succeeded in effecting the exclusion of the two important clauses relating to Jewish schools and the observance of the Sabbath. The elimination of these

clauses may bring about an unfortunate reaction in Poland, where any excuse will be welcome for ignoring the provisions of the Treaty respecting the Jews. What is worse still, a recent article in the Temps makes it pretty clear that Rumania has no serious intention of carrying out the Treaty even in its unsatisfactory form. In Austria the threat of expulsion still hangs over the heads of 66,000 Jews in Vienna. In Jugo-Slavia a similar fate threatens many Jews in Serajevo. From Germany, Austria, Hungary and Poland come sinister reports of a veritable epidemic of apostasy as a desperate refuge from persecution. Verily, the peace that has followed upon the Great War does not spell Peace for Jewrv.

The Heart of Ha-Poel

(Continued from page 49)

ers thereof. Such an arrangement will of necessity benefit the land. Jewish hands will work in Palestine, and Jewish hearts will be sustained throughout the hardships of rough work by beating in unison with the moral sentiment of Jewish public opinion in Galuth.

But the greatest things that Galuth can give us are young forces sent hither to help us in shaping the new life of the nation by reforming their own individual lives. The more we get of such strong young souls, the better. National capital drawn from Galuth is of no avail whatever here unless it is accompanied by moral capital in the shape of young lives.

Whenever great works are contemplated in Galuth on behalf of Palestine, mechanical standards of value should be abandoned. Remember that in the beginning great volumes of capital have been spent here—to little use. Remember also what the Bilu did with scarcely any capital to speak of. Remember how our “benefactors,” people of sterling good intent, “worked” in Palestine, with other people’s hands, and what became of it all. It is time to understand that the intuition of the new life must fill the entire man to be of any use— must literally go to his finger- tips. If you have no intuition in your hands, you can’t reshape the life of a nation. . . . For this is our chiefest misfortune: the deep roots that parasitism has struck in our midst. We are parasites of other people’s handiwork, of alien brains, of foreign life. We must learn now in pain of transformation to work ourselves, to think, to feel, create, live ourselves—all this must be learned. To be sure, Palestine is a good teacher, but we—we are backward pupils.

I have no skill to set my words prettily, but there is no need of any such skill in the communion of true hearts. A thought made me sit down at the writing-table, and this thought is now taking leave of me like a child leaving for the first time the parental home to go into the world—to be kindly received or ill-used—who knows? Who knows whether we shall find clarity of mind enough to bethink ourselves and to go about the healing of our soul with a determined will, strong enough for a great national deed? . . . You have my message now. Tell me, friends, has it reached the right address? The Peace and Benediction of Palestine be with you all!