ZIONISM
Zionism. By Leonard Stein. (Ernest Bann. 6s.)
MR. LEONARD STEIN is an English Jew, a late President of the Oxford Union and a barrister ; he went out to France in October, 1914, but towards the end of the War, whilst
still in the Army, was sent to Palestine. After demobilization he entered the Central Zionist Office in London. Whilst a convinced Zionist, he understands and appreciates the diffi- culties which might arise from precipitate action and, therefore, clearly leans towards circumspect moderation and full regard for Arab rights. The book is written in a judicious spirit, and in the main is a mere statement of fact, so conscientious and dispassionate as to be almost dry, with all feeling made so thoroughly colourless, if ever it is allowed to survive at all, as to render it almost flat. It outlines the history of Zionism, in the dark ages a passionate religious hope which at times hardened into a conscious will ; then traces the gathering of these, as yet haphazard, velleities into an organized political movement and follows up its development from the First Zionist Congress held at Basle in 1897 to the outbreak of the War ; it further gives a concise account of Jewish settle- ment in Palestine up to 1914. The chapter on the Balfour Declaration supplies the text of all the most important declara- tions and agreements concerning the Jewish National Home in Palestine ; the collection is concise and well arranged and anyone interested in the problem will find it of the greatest value. Then follow chapters on Jewish activities in Palestine, 1918-1925, and of the Zionist Organization ; these, together with the appendices on Jewish immigration and Zionist finance, give a full and clear account of both. It is only in the last chapter on "Zionist Aims and Prospects" that in one passage the feeling is permitted to break through, so well known on the European Continent as the Judenschmerz (the Jewish woe) ; but even this is stated in terms so restrained that one can hardly see how anyone could disagree with it, be he Jew or anti-Semite, aa adherent or an opponent of Zionism : —
"The Jews are almost everywhere unhappy and uncomfortable. Where they are not persecuted, they are nevertheless acutely conscious that as a body they are disliked. There is hardly a country in the world in which a Jew is not, as such, under impalpable but well-recognised disadvantages. Even where the Jews are least unwelcome they are perpetually on the defensive . . . "
From this condition anyone would wish to escape ; but millions of Jews seek an escape from even infinitely worse conditions, from the economic misery and degradation of the East European ghettos, from the danger of pogroms and the certainty of a daily round of insult and baiting. The only true escape from this darkness or twilight of moral misery would be in the normal life of a self-contained community. The oldest and most powerful tradition the world has ever known points to Zion as the Jewish National Home. Will this come in our own time ? Perhaps ; but, anyhow, the Jews have waited by now almost two thousand years without losing hope.
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