The Maccabaean

Syrkin or a Brainin in those early days of the war to see that England must seek to secure her possessions in the East, and that the way to do so, and to win Jewish friendship at a stroke, was to declare for a Jewish Palestine. British interests and Jewish interests lay in a direct line one with the other. They still run to the same goal in the East. And that day when England will be able to take off her hands entirely from Jewish affairs in Palestine will be the consummation of a humanely enlightened statesmanship, that finds its own best gain in the gain of an ancient, powerful and grateful people.

In the meantime, no one who knows anything of England or her colonies questions the domestic justice that reigns, the respect for law that is enforced, the liberty that prevails,

the enterprise that is encouraged, or the prosperity that springs up.

Material and social progress follows rapidly in the wake of the British. Their genius for orderly improvement by dint of sheer industry is already bearing fruit. Good roads, improved railways, additional wells, a greater measure of public safety, modern hygienic regulations, respect for public officials,—all these necessary forerunners of commercial enterprise and social betterment have already made themselves pleasantly conspicuous.

The answer to the question, "What may we expect of the British?" is, now, before us in Palestine. Is it not a more momentous question: What may be expected of the Jews? On the answer to that question our future history depends.

PIONEERING days are not over in Palestine, nor the pioneering opportunity for the student. Our first pioneers were students from Russia; now there is room in a very real and special sense for the pioneer student from America. In the Kevutza, the co-operative workmen's colony, as it has been set afoot in the undeveloped stretches of lower Galilee, the American student will find every opportunity for hard work, for suffering, for death, it may even be, in the service of his people. In those ancient hills, among those glorious vistas of mountain and vale that have no like in any other land, in that man-made wilderness sparsely peopled by the Fellah and the Bedouin, as ancient, as wild and sometimes as beautiful as the hills he inhabits, there is a great hope and there is a great work to be done for the Jewish people and for humanity. We are a little people burdened with a great vision. A vision possessed our early pioneers: the vision of Israel redeemed. In our later pioneers to the wild country of Galilee that vision had deepened to see Israel redeeming, Israel as the bearer of the message of labor for all, and bread and land for all. Such a vision still possesses the struggling laborers there, the few sturdy indomitable young people that have held out under a shattering blow.

For the great war that shattered so much came near to shattering wholly the still young and weak Jewish settlement in lower Galilee. When the war began, most of the Kevutzoth had only a year or two of life behind them; and for nine months longer than Judea they pined under the Turkish military depredations. They are breathing, struggling for life, as one after a fever crisis. This in varying measure is true of all the Jewish settlements of lower Galilee; the poor little "capitalist" community of Sedjera has scarcely a chair left to sit on, and its children look half starved. None of our colonies must be allowed to fail; but the

Kevutza dare not fail. It is the first fruits of a great vision.

A barnyard with stone buildings around it, wide fields and orchards to cultivate, a marvelous country to look upon, a handful of young men and women, perhaps a few children under school age, bad sleeping conditions, varying degrees and ideas of cleanliness, food and water problems, malaria rampant, a physician once a week, wild Arab neighbors that challenge tact, all the possibilities for perfection and all the hard facts of defective, humanly defective life: such is the Kevutza. A small, very small, book shelf, no culture, rude manners, quarrels, a mental maelstrom of half-baked philosophies and morals, an almost religious fervor against some of the things we have been wont to call religious, a stupid arrogance, a marvelous capacity for vision, for sacrifice: such is its social aspect.

Here is the opportunity for the American student, not only to redeem the land, but to redeem the people, himself and his neighbor. All his knowledge, all his skill will be welcomed; all his humility will be put to the test. Here, in the school of hard bodily labor, of discomfort and often disgust, of difficult close personal relationships, he may best prepare himself for service in a generation of pioneers. He will have faced the dangers that youth needs to be complete. He will have learned how to sing and strive and moan and comfort in that Hebrew tongue that holds the password to our new house of life. He will know the worst that is to be known, he will have helped to make it better, and so he will learn to dream of the highest that is ours to attain.

When I saw the shining faces of our young Jewish workmen in Galilee—and workwomen, too—those resolute young peasants, rebels, heroes, I thought of our Jewish young people in America with their smooth lives, with their restless spirits, and I said to myself: There is room for more heroes here.