The Maccabaean

Jewish laborers as they dared and supplanted them with Arabs. Incensed at this betrayal of the very cause which formed their one and only claim upon the helpful regard of the Jewish world in galuth, we who did the real work of upbuilding, organized ourselves into a branch of the Hapoel Hezair. The principles of the Hapoel Hazair are well known. We insist that every man in Eretz-Yisroel must work the land, assisted by his family. If there be need of hired workers, they must be Jewish workers waiting for their opportunity to acquire land by fair and righteous means. No one in Holy Land must be allowed to exist in the sweat of other people's brows; no one can be permitted to acquire vast landed estates; there must be no absenteeism and no private leasings. The new branch of the Hapoel Hazair at Petach-Tikvah sent a flaming protest to Baron Edmond against the doings of the ruling element. The protest was written by unschooled men but its heartfelt energy carried conviction:

"It is we," said the protest, "that truly put our lives into the soil, working without hope of reward in our own generation that those who may come after us may find the land once more a desirable land. While our employers are loudly appealing to Kol-Yisroel to loosen their pursestrings and to pay endless subsidies in furtherance of the Jewish cause in Eretz-Yisroel, they are sending their agents down to Wadi-el-Arish to recruit Arab contingents of labor content with pay upon which a decent Jewish standard of life is impossible. Jewish workers are discharged and Arabs called in from afar, at the very time when all generous givers in galuth are entreated to give without stint—

when they are giving in the deceived assurance that their money will go toward a repeopling of the soil with Jewish agriculturists—" and so on, giving facts and figures in support of our remonstrance. On receipt of our protest, Baron Edmond told the messenger of the colonists of Petach-Tikvah bluntly, that his purse was henceforth closed to them unless they stopped their importation of underpaid alien labor. Wadi-el-Arish has ceased ever since to be a recruiting station of colonial labor-agents.

For lack of space, I must take leave of this Prince in Israel with this parting glance upon an incident of his last voyage to Palestine, a few months before the outbreak of the war in 1914:

It so happened that the Baron’s yacht and the ship that brought the unhappy Mendel Beilis to Palestine reached port on the same day in Alexandria, Egypt. The future fortunes of Beilis were then uncertain. But Baron Edmond, hearing of his arrival, sent for him, spoke words of comfort to him, and assured him of a landed existence in Palestine, far from the reach of the Hamans of Czarist Russia. Baron Edmond made a triumphal tour of the colonies, surrounded by a guard of honor of mounted Ha-Shomerim. He saw, then and there, what had grown around the colonies of his fostering: the fruits of the National Fund, the work of the Colonial Bank, the disciplined effort of the Ha-Shomerim, the results of Hapoel-Hazair sacrifice, the hundredfold blessings of Zionist activities—everywhere helpmates and co-operators of his old-time essay to redeem the land. In the autumn of his life, he surveyed its rich harvest—may the same be said of all of us.

My soul is dead!—God Has cast me from his favor . . . Upon the seven seas my joy is spread, Upon all the highways my pain is led . . . The last grain of dust the wind has blown, And like a stone with grasses overgrown, I have been left upon Man's Desolate Mart, Alone with my congealed heart. On his wings, the sun will bring no more Consolation to me—the joy that was before. And only the wind Maybe will a warning and a greeting bring: The weeping of the hungry dogs behind The gallows where my brothers swing. A grain of sand soaked in the blood Of children who died under the knout. A small cloud from the smoking pyres, A cloud that ascended from the fires, Where young women and patriarchs with crushed eyes

Breathed out their last sighs . . .My heart is dead—!And seas blood-redCan make me shudder no more . . .I live as I lived before,I live, I feel and understand—And some place—some place two pigeons stand,With heads indrawn and with mute surmiseThey gaze with thoughtful eyes,Far into the world where the skies succulent blueHang over fields of bending grass—Ah, ThouOh, God,My God,Hast left me!And my eyes half closedLook into the night,Look into the blind and heavy night . . .And dead is my soul—Dead!