y know it. And some of the phrases
of the Zionists, such as those that I have noted, too often tend
to produce the impression that they ignore when they are not ignorant.
They are not ignorant; and they do not ignore in practice;
even when an intellectual habit makes them seem to ignore in theory.
Nobody who has seen a Jewish rural settlement, such as Rishon,
can doubt that some Jews are sincerely filled with the vision
of sitting under their own vine and fig-tree, and even with its
accompanying lesson that it is first necessary to grow the fig-tree
and the vine.

The true test of Zionism may seem a topsy-turvy test.
It will not succeed by the number of successes, but rather
by the number of failures, or what the world (and certainly
not least the Jewish world) has generally called failures.
It will be tested, not by whether Jews can climb to the top
of the ladder, but by whether Jews can remain at the bottom;
not by whether they have a hundred arts of becoming important,
but by whether they have any skill in the art of remaining insignificant.
It is often noted that the intelligent Israelite can rise to positions
of power and trust outside Israel, like Witte in Russia or Rufus Isaacs
in England. It is generally bad, I think, for their adopted country;
but in any case it is no good for the particular problem of their
own country. Palestine cannot have a population of Prime Ministers
and Chief Justices; and if those they rule and judge are not Jews,
then we have not established a commonwealth but only an oligarchy.
It is said again that the ancient Jews turned their enemies
into hewers of wood and drawers of water. The modern Jews have
to turn themselves into hewers of wood and drawers of water.
If they cannot do that, they cannot turn themselves into citizens,
but only into a kind of alien bureaucrats, of all kinds
the most perilous and the most imperilled. Hence a Jewish
state will not be a success when the Jews in it are successful,
or even when the Jews in it are statesmen. It will be a success
when the Jews in it are scavengers, when the Jews in it are sweeps,
when they are dockers and ditchers and porters and hodmen.
When the Zionist can point proudly to a Jewish navvy who has _not_
risen in the world, an under-gardener who is not now taking his ease
as an upper-gardener, a yokel who is still a yokel, or even a village
idiot at least sufficiently idiotic to remain in his village,
then indeed the world will