nough to recognize that all nations are
compact of incongruites, vitalized by warring elements. Nor has he any
sympathetic perception of the mystic religious hopes of generations
of zealots, of the great swirling spiritual currents of Ghetto life.
But in a national movement--which appears at first sight hopeless,
because it lacks the great magnetizer, religion--lies a chance denied
to one who should boldly proclaim himself the evangel of a modern
Judaism, the last of the Prophets. Political Zionism alone can
transcend and unite: any religious formula would disturb and dissever.
Along this line may all travel to Jerusalem. And, as the locomotive
from Jaffa draws all alike to the sacred city, and leaves them there
to their several matters, so may the pious concern themselves not at
all with the religion of the engineer.

Not this the visionary figure created by the tear-dimmed yearning of
the Ghetto; no second Sabbatai Zevi, master of celestial secrets,
divine reincarnation, come with signs and wonders to lead back Israel
to the Promised Land. Still less the prophet prefigured by Christian
visionaries, some of whom, fevered nevertheless, press upon the
Congress itself complex collations of texts, or little cards with the
sign of the cross. Palestine, indeed, but an afterthought: an
aspiration of unsuspected strength, to be utilized--like all human
forces--by the maker of history. States are the expression of souls;
in any land the Jewish soul could express itself in characteristic
institutions, could shake off the long oppression of the ages, and
renew its youth in touch with the soil. Yet since there is this
longing for Palestine, let us make capital of it--capital that will
return its safe percentage. A rush to Palestine will mean all that
seething medley of human wants and activities out of which profits are
snatched by the shrewd--gold-rush and God-rush, they are both one in
their economic working. May not the Jews themselves take shares in so
promising a project? May not even their great bankers put their names
to such a prospectus? The shareholders incur no liability beyond the
extent of their shares; there shall be no call upon them to come to
Palestine--let them remain in their snug nests; the Jewish Company,
Limited, seeks a home only for the desolate dove that finds no rest
for the sole of her feet.

And yet beneath all this statesmanlike prose, touched with the special
dryness of the jurist, lurk the romance