ver in the present crisis.
It is admitted that there is much Arab and Syrian labour employed;
and this in itself would leave all the danger of the Jew
as a mere capitalist. The Jews explain it, however, by saying
that the Arabs will work for a lower wage, and that this is
necessarily a great temptation to the struggling colonists.
In this they may be acting naturally as colonists, but it is none
the less clear that they are not yet acting literally as labourers.
It may not be their fault that they are not proving themselves to
be peasants; but it is none the less clear that this situation in itself
does not prove them to be peasants. So far as that is concerned,
it still remains to be decided finally whether a Jew will be an
agricultural labourer, if he is a decently paid agricultural labourer.
On the other hand, the leaders of these local experiments,
if they have not yet shown the higher materialism of peasants,
most certainly do not show the lower materialism of capitalists.
There can be no doubt of the patriotic and even poetic spirit in which
many of them hope to make their ancient wilderness blossom like the rose.
They at least would still stand among the great prophets of Israel,
and none the less though they prophesied in vain.

I have tried to state fairly the case for Zionism, for the reason
already stated; that I think it intellectually unjust that any attempt
of the Jews to regularise their position should merely be rejected
as one of their irregularities. But I do not disguise the enormous
difficulties of doing it in the particular conditions Of Palestine.
In fact the greatest of the real difficulties of Zionism is that it
has to take place in Zion. There are other difficulties, however,
which when they are not specially the fault of Zionists are
very much the fault of Jews. The worst is the general impression
of a business pressure from the more brutal and businesslike type
of Jew, which arouses very violent and very just indignation.
When I was in Jerusalem it was openly said that Jewish financiers
had complained of the low rate of interest at which loans were made
by the government to the peasantry, and even that the government
had yielded to them. If this were true it was a heavier reproach
to the government even than to the Jews. But the general truth
is that such a state of feeling seems to make the simple and solid
patriotism of a Palestinian Jewish nation practically impossible,
and forces