|Among my letters this morning was one requesting that if I were in
favour of “the reconstitution of Palestine as a National Home for the
Jewish people,” I should sign the enclosed declaration and return it in
the envelope (unstamped), also enclosed. I dislike unstamped envelopes.
I also dislike stamped envelopes. You can ignore an unstamped enveloped
but a stamped envelope compels you to write a letter, when perhaps you
don't want to write a letter. My objection to unstamped envelopes is
that they show a meagre spirit and a lack of confidence in you. They
suggest that you are regarded with suspicion as a person who will
probably steam off the stamp and use it to receipt a bill.
But I waived the objection, signed the declaration, stamped the envelope
and put it in the post. I did all this because I am a Zionist. I am so
keen a Zionist that I would use a whole bookful of stamps in the cause.
I am a Zionist, not on sentimental grounds, but on very practical
grounds. I want the Jews to have Palestine, so that the English may have
England and the Germans Germany and the Russians Russia. I want them to
have a home of their own so that the rest of us can have a home of
our own. By this I do not mean that I am an anti-Semite. I loathe
Jew-baiting, and regard the Jew-baiter as a very unlovely person. But I
want the Jew to be able to decide whether he is an alien or a citizen.
I want him to shed the dualism that makes him such an affliction to
himself and to other people. I want him to possess Palestine so that he
may cease to want to possess the earth.
I am therefore fiercely on the side of the Zionist Jews, and fiercely
against their opponents. These people want to be Jews, but they do not
want Jewry. They do not want to be compelled to make a choice between
being Jews and being Englishmen or Americans, Germans or French. They
want the best of both worlds. We are not a nation, they say; we are
Englishmen, or Scotsmen, or Welshmen, or Frenchmen, or Germans, or
Russians, or Japanese “of the Jewish persuasion.” We are a religious
community like the Catholics, or the Presbyterians, or the Unitarians,
or the Plymouth Brethren. Indeed! And what is your religion, pray? _It
is the religion of the Chosen People_. Great heavens! You deny that
you are a nation, and in the same breath claim that you are the Chosen
Nation. The very foundation of your religion is that Jehovah has picked
you out from all the races of men as his own. Over you his hand is
spread in everlasting protection. For you the cloud by day and the
pillar of fire by night; for the rest of us the utter darkness of the
breeds that have not the signature of Jehovah. We cannot enter your
kingdom by praying or fasting, by bribe or entreaty. Every other nation
is accessible to us on its own conditions; every other religion is eager
to welcome us, sends its missionaries to us to implore us to come in.
But you, the rejected of nations, yourself reject all nations and forbid
your sacraments to those who are not bom of your household. You are
the Chosen People, whose religion is the nation and whose nationhood is
religion.
Why, my dear sir, history offers no parallel to your astounding claim to
nationality--the claim that has held your race together through nearly
two thousand years of dispersion and wandering, of persecution and
pride, of servitude and supremacy--
Slaves in eternal Egypts, baking your strawless bricks;
At ease in successive Zions, prating your politics.
All nations are afflicted with egoism. It is the national egoism
of Prussia that has just brought it to such catastrophic ruin. The
Frenchman entertains the firm conviction that civilisation ends at the
French frontier. Being a polite person, he does his best not to betray
the conviction to us, and sometimes almost succeeds. The Englishman,
being less sophisticated, does not try to conceal the fact that he has
a similar conviction. It does not occur to him that anyone can doubt his
claim. He knows that every foreigner would like to be an Englishman if
he knew how. The pride of the Spaniard is a legend, and you have only to
see Arab salute Arab to understand what a low person the European must
seem in their eyes. In short, national egoism is a folly which is pretty
equally distributed among all of us. But your national egoism is unlike
any other brand on earth. In the humility of Shylock is the pride of the
most arrogant racial aristocracy the world has ever seen. God appeared
to you in the burning bush and spoke to you in the thunders of Sinai,
and set you apart as his own exclusive household. And when one of your
prophets declared that all nations were one in the sight of God, you
rejected his gospel and slew the prophet. By comparison with you we are
a humble people. We know we are a mixed race and that we have no more
divine origin--and no less--than anybody else. Mr Kipling, it is true,
has caught your arrogant note:
For the Lord our God Most High,
He hath made the deep as dry,
He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth.
But that is because Mr Kipling seems to be one of those who believe we
are one of the lost tribes of your Chosen race. I gather that is so from
another of his poems in which he cautions us against