Chapter III: Introduction: By the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.p

WHETHER it be helpful for one who is not a Jew, either by race or religion, to say even the briefest word by way of introduction to a book on Zionism is, in my own opinion, doubtful. But my friend, M. Nahum Sokolow, tells me that I long ago gave him reason to expect that, when the time came, I would render him this small measure of assistance; and if he attaches value to it, I cannot allow my personal doubts as to its value to stand in his way.

The only qualification I possess is that I have always been greatly interested in the Jewish question, and that in the early years of this century, when anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe was in 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, 1906, 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found should, of set purpose and with much anxious contrivance, be colonized by the spiritual descendants of those who originally made them famous.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 favour of Christendom the crusading adventures of our mediæval ancestors. Yet, if this be wisdom when we are dealing with Buddhism 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 parallel. The position of the Jews is unique. For them race, religion and country are inter-related, as they are inter-related 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.

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 large parts of Europe their loyalty to the State in which they dwell is (to put it mildly) 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 have they been given the advantage of equal citizenship, in some they have been given no right of citizenship at all. Great suffering is the inevitable result; but not suffering alone. Other evils follow which aggravate the original mischief. Constant oppression, with occasional outbursts of violent persecution, are apt either to crush their victims, 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 neighbours as if these were their enemies, they have often obtained, and sometimes deserved, the reputation of being undesirable citizens. Nor is this surprising. If you oblige many men to be money-lenders, some will assuredly be usurers. If you treat an important section of the community as outcasts, they will hardly shine as patriots. Thus does intolerance blindly labour to create the justification for its own excesses.

It seems evident that, for these and other reasons, Zionism will mitigate the lot and elevate the status of no negligible fraction of the Jewish race. Those who go to Palestine will not be like those who now migrate to London or New York. They will not be animated merely by the desire to lead in happier surroundings the kind of life they formerly led in Eastern Europe. They will go in order to join a civil community which completely harmonizes with their historical and religious sentiments: a community bound to the land it inhabits by something deeper even than custom: a community whose members will suffer from no divided loyalty, nor any temptation to hate the laws under which they are forced to live. To them the material gain should be great; but surely the spiritual gain will be greater still.

But these, it will be said, are not the only Jews whose welfare we have to consider. Granting, if only for argument’s sake, that Zionism will on them confer a benefit, will it not inflict an injury upon others who, though Jews by descent, and often by religion, desire wholly to identify themselves with the life of the country wherein they have made their home. Among these are to be found some of the most gifted members of a gifted race. Their ranks contain (at least, so I think) more than their proportionate share of the world’s supply of men distinguished in science and philosophy, literature and art, medicine, politics and law. (Of finance and business I need say nothing.)

Now there is no doubt that many of this class look with a certain measure of suspicion and even dislike upon the Zionist movement. They fear that it will adversely affect their position in the country of their adoption. The great majority of them have no desire to settle in Palestine. Even supposing a Zionist community were established, they would not join it. But they seem to think (if I understand them rightly) that so soon as such a community came into being men of Jewish blood, still more men of Jewish religion, would be regarded by unkindly critics as out of place elsewhere. Their ancient home having been restored to them, they would be expected to reside there.

I cannot share these fears. I do not deny that, in some countries where legal equality is firmly established, Jews may still be regarded with a certain measure of prejudice. But this prejudice, where it exists, is not due to Zionism, nor will Zionism embitter it. The tendency should surely be the other way. Everything which assimilates the national and international status of the Jews to that of other races ought to mitigate what remains of ancient antipathies: and evidently this assimilation would be promoted by giving them that which all other nations possess: a local habitation and a national home.

On this aspect of the subject I need perhaps say no more. The future of Zionism depends on deeper causes than these. That it will settle the “Jewish question” I dare not hope. But that it will tend to promote that mutual sympathy and comprehension which is the only sure basis of toleration I firmly believe. Few, I think, of M. Sokolow’s readers, be they Jew or be they Christian, will rise from the perusal of the impressive story which he has told so fully and so well, without feeling that Zionism differs in kind from ordinary philanthropic efforts and that it appeals to different motives. If it succeeds, it will do a great spiritual and material work for the Jews, but not for them alone. For as I read its meaning it is, among other things, a serious endeavour to mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb. Surely, for this if for no other reason, it should receive our support.

A. J. B.

_Friday, 20 September, 1918_

LETTERS TO THE AUTHOR

_From the Rt. Hon. Viscount Bryce._

3, BUCKINGHAM GATE,
S.W. 1,
_January 30th, 1918_.

DEAR SIR,

In response to your request for some observations by me on the value which your treatise may have for students of history, I send you these few lines. The pressure of heavy and urgent work forbids me to deal in any but the briefest way with the subject of your book, great as its interest is.

The history of Israel presents some of the most striking phenomena in world history. No other nation (with the exception of the two very ancient nations of the Far East) has annals so long as are those of the descendants of Abraham. Those annals go back, dim as are their earlier outlines, to a time long anterior to the earliest records of the Hellenic and Italic peoples. The records of the old civilization of Assyria and Egypt are, no doubt, even more remote in time, but the nations that created those civilizations have been so changed by conquest and the admixture of new elements that we can no longer recognise them as the same. But Israel has preserved its identity through all vicissitudes. It was carried into captivity in a far land, and returned thence after seventy years. It was, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Emperor Hadrian, scattered over the face of the earth, and now counts its children everywhere, from Singapore to San Francisco. Its numbers have grown to be fifteen or twenty times greater than they were before the Great Dispersion. It has been kept in existence as a nation through many centuries of oppression and suffering by its Faith and its Literature, a faith embodied in a law which included both a moral and a ceremonial code, a Literature small in bulk but splendid in content, which has formed the mind of the people, sharpening their intelligence and intensifying their national self-consciousness. It is one of those three great literatures of the ancient world which still rule the thought and still help to form the character of mankind. This is a unique phenomenon, and perhaps the most striking testimony that history can show to the vivifying power of ideas.

This consciousness of an enduring national life has been constantly associated in the thoughts of Israel with the ancient home in Palestine, a little country, no bigger than Wales in Britain or Connecticut in North America. To its rocky hills and green valleys, its cities and its battlefields, its heroes and its prophets, the hearts of the people have turned in days of sorrow. The memories of these things have maintained the sense of national life. The flame has often burnt low, but it has never been extinguished. Quite recently it has leapt up with a brilliant glow. The idea that a part of the dispersed people should be gathered from the regions where their lot was worst and be re-settled in their ancient home, long desolated by the tyranny of the cruel and rapacious Turk, has gained strength, and the capture of Jerusalem by the British arms has now made it seem attainable. The sympathy of many thoughtful and sympathetic Christians has been gained, and the British Government has given clear expression to that sympathy. It is to the history of this idea of re-settlement, to which the name of Zionism is now given, that your book is devoted. There are, I am aware, some differences of opinion among Jews themselves as to the form in which this idea might be practically realized, and as to the way in which that form might affect the position of Jews in the countries where they now dwell and of which they wish to remain citizens, though I gather that these differences do not touch the question of the desirability of a large Jewish immigration into Palestine. Upon these differences of opinion I must not pronounce any judgment, though personally inclined to believe that the existence of a national home at the eastern end of the Mediterranean will not affect the loyalty to the other countries where they dwell of the Jews settled in those countries, nor expose them to any suspicion of disloyalty. It is as a student of history, and in that capacity only, that on this particular occasion I desire to speak, expressing my sense of the high interest of the subject of your book, and feeling that the rapid growth of the Zionist movement, the forces that have produced it, and the enthusiasm it has excited, well deserve to be fully, accurately, and impartially described.

I am,
Faithfully yours,
BRYCE.

MR. N. SOKOLOW.

_From Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, M.P._

9, BUCKINGHAM GATE,
S.W. 1,
_May 27th, 1918_.

MY DEAR MR. SOKOLOW,

After many days’ delay, I write to you my message of goodwill and good hope for the success of this your great work on the cause which you have at heart and for which you have laboured so long.

It is an odd thought which crosses my mind at this moment――if it be egotistical I cannot help it――nevertheless I will set it down. I foresee myself handed down to posterity as one of those enduring obscurities, who did nothing in any way remarkable, yet whose names last for all time, because they scratched their fleeting impressions on the Memnon at Luxor.

In languages yet unknown, and in States unborn, this your work will be read by people who will know perhaps as little of the details of life in these days as we do of those of the times of the first dispersion of the Jews.

Your cause has about it an enduring quality which mocks at time; if a generation is but a breath in the life of a nation, an epoch is but the space ’twixt a dawn and a sunrise in the history of Zionism.

When all the temporal things this world now holds are as dead and forgotten as the curled and scented Kings of Babylon who dragged your forefathers into captivity, there will still be Jews, and so long as there are Jews there must be Zionism.

We live in an age when mankind is reaping the whirlwind of its wickedness and folly. Wherein the past men have sown those dragons’ teeth of intolerance, tyranny, injustice, and race hatred, legions of armed men now spring up to destroy and shatter the husbanded resources of progress.

The War of to-day is the logical result of the “peace” of yesterday. The grand problem which we have to consider is whether or no the peace of to-morrow is to be the precursor of a future war which will overwhelm civilization for ever. Unless forces different to those which have counted in the direction of the affairs of men hitherto are in the ascendant, I feel no doubt that what is called Civilization is predestined to suicide, and that in the real meaning of the words “_felo de se_.” The blind genius which people call “science” wrests mechanical discoveries and chemical formulæ from the accumulated experience of the past and gives men hygiene, transit, and commerce with one hand, and explosives and military organization with the other. You, my dear Mr. Sokolow, represent a people who have watched this process of constructive destruction in the course of evolution, and have seen the higher men climb in pride and vanity the more deplorable is their fall.

If the peace which is to follow the War is to be a real peace, and not a pause in war, then you and your people must be watchers no longer. In Zionism lies your people’s opportunity. In alliance with those other forces of regeneration and illumination which are centred on Jerusalem and which radiate through the world, it may be that you and your successors will play a part in establishing a moral order which will enable mankind to combine universal material progress with mutual subjection and charity.

Yours very sincerely,
MARK SYKES.

THE ILLUSTRATOR TO THE READER

THE privilege afforded me by my friend the Author of participating in the production of a work on so epoch-marking a question as Zionism, has more than compensated me for any time and trouble I have expended on the particular section allotted to me. There are eighty-nine illustrations in the book, to which I have fortunately been able to contribute thirty, dealing mainly with the earlier period. For the portraits, _etc._, of many of our contemporaries, I must accord my sincere thanks to those whose courtesy and kindness have enabled me to carry out my purpose.

I am indebted for the lithograph of Elim H. _d’_Avigdor¹ to his recently deceased widow. Mr. Semi Tolkowsky obtained for me an unpublished photograph of Colonel C. R. Conder from his daughter, Mrs. Julian G. Lousada. That venerable lady, Mrs. Finn, lent me a photograph of her late husband, “The British Consul of Jerusalem and Palestine.” Mr. Joseph Cohen Lask granted me the loan of the Hebrew periodical, _Keneseth Israel_, containing a woodcut of David Gordon, the editor. The celebrated artist, Leopold Pilichowski, entrusted me with the negative of his famous painting of Theodor Herzl, known as the “Congress” portrait. It was done from sketches taken from life during the Uganda Congress, and finished in 1906 to the order of the late President, David Wolffsohn, for the Actions Committee, to be exhibited at Zionist congresses. The illustration of _Grand Rabbin_ Zadok Kahn is taken from a pastel by the Jewish artist, J. F. Aktuaryus, in the collection of Mr. Elkan N. Adler. Dr. Hartwig Hirschfeld lent me a lithograph of his father-in-law, Dr. Louis Loewe; and Professor Dr. Arnold Netter sent from Paris a lithograph of his uncle, Charles Netter. The portrait of Laurence Oliphant was reproduced from an unpublished photograph in the possession of his relative, Mr. Lancelot Oliphant. To procure a likeness of Dr. M. J. Raphall I had some difficulty. The Birmingham congregation to whom he ministered from 1841‒1849 knew nothing of any portrait. From an advertisement in the _Jewish Chronicle_, 27 July, 1849, it appears that the learned _Rabbi_ possessed a painting done of him by W. H. Vernon, from which Mosely Levi of Birmingham produced a lithograph, but I failed to discover the whereabouts of either. Knowing that on leaving this country he settled in the United States, I communicated with Mr. Albert M. Friedenberg, the corresponding secretary of the American Jewish Historical Society, to whom my particular acknowledgments are due for discovering a small oil painting of the Doctor, copied from a photograph taken in his later years, in the possession of the _B’nai Jeshurun_ congregation of New York, whose _Rabbi_ he was from his arrival in America until 1866, two years before his demise. With the consent of the Trustees, and by the courtesy of Mr. Herman Levy, the President, an excellent reproduction was placed at my disposal.

¹ From a pencil drawing by his second daughter, Estelle,
Mrs. George E. Nathan.

The frontispiece to the second volume, “Edmond _de_ Rothschild,” is a facsimile of a photograph¹ from the painting by _M._ Aimé Morot. From _M._ A. Salvador, Mdme. L. J. Raynall and _M._ André Spire of Paris were instrumental in procuring a photograph of his uncle _M._ Joseph Salvador, whose portrait has hitherto never been published.

¹ Autograph presentation copy from the Baron to the Author.

Miss Marian O. Wilson came to my assistance in permitting me to take a copy of a photograph of her father, Sir Charles W. Wilson, and Mr. Joseph Cowen lent J. H. Kann’s _Erez Israel_, containing a likeness of President David Wolffsohn. The illustration, “Members of the _Maccabean_ Pilgrimage,” I have been enabled to reproduce, thanks to the kindness of Mr. Herbert Bentwich, its organizer, who also furnished me with the names of the pilgrims. The President and Council of the Jews’ College were pleased to grant me the privilege of having a photograph taken of the historical painting, “The Conference between Menasseh Ben-Israel and Oliver Cromwell,” by Solomon Alexander Hart, R.A., formerly in the collection of Sir Julian Goldsmid, Bart., and subsequently presented to the College by Frederic David Mocatta in 1896.

My thanks must also be accorded to the proprietors of the _Century_ for the use of the portrait of Emma Lazarus; to the _Graphic_ for the sketch from life of Bernard Lazare taken by Paul Renouard during the Dreyfus trial; to the _Illustrated London News_ for the likeness of Baron Hirsch; to the _Jewish Encyclopedia_ for the portraits of Samuel Joseph Fuenn, _R._ Zebi Hirsch Kalischer, Samuel David Luzzatto, and Mordecai Manuel Noah; and to the _Jewish World_ for that of Dr. Israel Hildesheimer.

There are many eminent Zionists whose lineaments I should like to have seen in this work, but owing to present conditions the portraits were not procurable.

The following portraits and illustrations may not be reproduced without authority:――Col. C. R. Conder, James Finn, Theodor Herzl by Pilichowski, _R._ Zadok Kahn, Laurence Oliphant, Dr. M. J. Raphall, Edmond _de_ Rothschild, Joseph Salvador, Sir Charles W. Wilson, “The Conference between Manasseh Ben-Israel and Oliver Cromwell,” and the “Members of the _Maccabean_ Pilgrimage.”

ISRAEL SOLOMONS.

CONTENTS