o. Palestine will be offered them, either as an area for
colonization or, still better, as a full property under the
protectorate of a great power. They will be accorded also entire
equality of rights in Russia and Roumania.

_The Basis of Jewish Hopes: (1) The Self-Interest of the Powers_

WE may plead reasons or excuses for indulging in this dream.
Utterances of leading personalities of the big nations which will
necessarily be represented at the peace conference have become
publicly known which permit the conclusion, without intentional
self-beguiling, that some governments at least, if not all of them,
are occupying themselves earnestly with the Jewish problem and
examining the question whether it might not be worth trying to settle
the Jews in search of a homestead in Palestine, under international
and local legal conditions vouchsafing them full freedom of economic,
intellectual, and moral development.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the situation of the six
millions of Russian Jews occupies a certain place in the thoughts and
cares of the governments. Several countries have an interest in
turning away from their frontiers the ever more violently swelling
stream of Jewish emigration, and doing so otherwise than with the
brutal method of locking up their boundaries and posting a police
watch before them. Others have the well-being of Russia at heart; they
understand that the sufferings and the despair of her six millions of
Jews are a source of dire evils and that the emancipation of this
hard-working and highly gifted population will bring about the
material prosperity, the general progress, and the powerful
strengthening of Russia. Other countries again, the statesmen of which
are more farseeing than the average and have been able to rise to the
conception of a political world hygiene, are aware that the systematic
crushing of six millions of intellectual and strong-feeling people
driven to despair must create a hotbed of the most dangerous
anarchistic and revolutionary epidemics, the spreading of which
cannot easily be limited to the spot of their origin. Lastly, even the
most irreclaimable pessimist will admit at least the possibility that
governments may not be entirely inaccessible to purely humane
sentiments of pity and justice, and may regard the treatment of the
Jews of Russia and Roumania as an indictment against the civilization
and the ruling religion of white mankind.

_(2) The Prec