feel again the unity I have forgotten. The old Messianic hope looms up big before me. The Heimweh of the long-lost wanderer, the grief-stricken, menaced nomad takes possession of me. I feel the terrible danger of dissolution: it is so bitter to stare destruction in the face, to contemplate annihilation of so long and so miraculous an existence. I feel that there is no place like his old home. The homeless Jew must return to Palestine. The big world is too small. It has no room for him. Good or bad, he is always offensive, and he is exalted only to be cast down into an abyss of misery. Civilization is not even civil, and it has no hospitality for its earliest light-bearer. The world is a wretched ingrate. We have given everything, including the means of future salvation; we receive nothing but calumny, and are doomed to everlasting damnation. 'We have given you your religion,' we say to the Christians. 'That's nothing,' they answer; 'it has not affected us in the least.' And they prove it. They keep on baiting and persecuting and killing their neighbours, not as themselves. What must we do? Get back our old home, though we have to pay for it. There, at least, will we find 'a crust of bread and a corner to sleep in.'

"We must have a common cause, an object of unity, a centre of gravity, in order to survive as a people, and this is what we can have in the proposed Jewish State.

"And what an inspiring picture it will be of Israel, bruised and bleeding from the travail of his long, futile travels, at last straightening up his back and returning home to rebuild his national life and his temple in Palestine. There he will create an ideal republic, fashioned after the teachings of the prophets and the lessons he has received from the teachers of the nations—a republic that will teach the world justice and righteousness. 'And from Zion shall issue the law, and the word of God shall go forth from Jerusalem,' and our poets to come shall sing new psalms to God on the banks of the Jordan, in the shades of Lebanon and in the beautiful gardens of Sharon and Carmel. I have never been there, and though I have gone through life without a geography, yet I seem to remember all these places. The grand, vigorous Hebrew language shall come to life again and we shall have a glorious literature of Israel's resurrection. Ah, how beautiful the vision that looms up as I contemplate these things! And then—"

Keidansky ceased speaking, paused, and asked for another glass of tea.

"And then?" I asked.

"Then," he continued, "the mood passes, the feeling alters, the picture that a fleeting fancy has thrown upon the canvas of my view, fades, a change comes over the spirit of my dream. I remember that I am no longer the pious little boy praying in the synagogue of Keidan, 'a year hence in Jerusalem.' The greater vision appears before me, the larger ideal comes back, and Keidansky is himself again. Sometimes I am a Zionist, but only sometimes. The rest of the time I am as strongly opposed to it as any of you, because with all my imputed universalism I have great hopes for my people, and because I have marked out a greater role for Israel to play in the history of the future than being a mere little bee building a little hive in a tiny obscure corner of the globe."

Here the medical student protested that a man cannot be both for and against an idea at the same time, that those who are not with us are wrong and against us, and that Keidansky is a "long distance off"—for he said, "scientifically analyzed"—

"Scientifically analyzed, you are a bore," Keidansky broke forth infuriated, "and don't interrupt me when I am solving problems and making history. Be consistent, boys, and do not ask me to be so. Give me, at least, the right that you grant to a character in fiction, the right to be irrational, illogical, and, above all, superbly inconsistent. I am a character in life and nothing is so fictitious. At times, I want to be with all, feel with all, believe with all, see the beauties of all ideals, and also point out the great fact about them—that they are all fatal—and yet that to be without ideals is baneful and deadly. I cannot be partial, and that is why they expelled me from DeLeon's Socialist Labor party. Partiality is destructive to art, and I might have been an artist, if I had had the patience and self-abnegation and a lot of other requisites and things.

"But to return to the larger vision, which eclipses the dreamlet of Zionism. The Jew must not be relegated to an obscure corner of the world, to a little platform whereupon he will recite a piece in an unknown tongue. I want a big stage for him—the world. I want a great play for him—all its multitudinous activities. For he is a wonderful actor. He has versatility, illusion, imagination and dramatic power. It is an inspiring part he plays in the world-drama. So let the play go on, and do not ask him to waste his energies and bargain with the Sultan for a bit of barren land that has been taken from him so long ago. He has a bigger task to perform, a larger mission to fulfil.

"He must live among the nations and help them in their upward struggle for a higher civilization and a nobler life. If there are evils to be abolished he will help abolish them, and if there are dire problems, why, he has brains, which he loans more often than money. And this is the spectacle that I gloat over and glory in seeing: Israel among the nations, the saviour and the outcast, the redeemer and the rejected, the revered teacher and truant student, the honoured guest and persecuted resident, helping nations to make their histories, here and there, writing great words in them, ministering to their arts and helping to humanize humanity. To be persecuted and oppressed by the nations is inconvenient and annoying, but to make music, paint pictures, write books, sing songs, mould statues for them—how superb! Ah, what a tragedy to be a Jew, and yet, how glorious! The nations need the Jew and he must not desert them in their hour of need, and if he is true to his best self and keeps on growing he will not die and vanish as a people. In any case 'tis nobler to die for a good cause than to live in impotence. So let the Jew remain, with whatever nation he abides, and as a good citizen help it grow great and good, and show that Ibsen was right when he called us the aristocracy of the race. Let not, I say to the Zionists, the Jew be like the little boy who runs away from school after he receives a thrashing and before he has taught his teacher a lesson. To sacrifice for Dr. Herzl's scheme our vast opportunities in the world, which owes us so much, and to which we are so indebted, would be selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. So let us remain. We can do so much in so many countries with the teachings and spirit of Judaism. We, too, are frail and have many faults, but we can improve where there's lots of room and plenty of opportunities.

"Life is a melodrama, and in the latter acts the long-lost brothers, Jew and Christian, who have for so long waged war against each other, will recognize, understand each another, and perhaps, things will end happily, after all.

"Meanwhile we will forgive France for the Dreyfus affair, because of her perfect prose and beautiful poetry. I will even forgive Captain Dreyfus for having been such a bore, if he will stop writing books. Let the Jews remain in Russia instead of going to Palestine, for think of the love of freedom that tyranny engenders! Think how good all our oppressions have been in that they made us love liberty and truth. Think what a chance to shed blood for freedom there will yet be in Russia. Our people should remain there. Things are changing. What a fine literature it is producing, and how noble