come to blow the trumpets and lift
up the heads of the everlasting gates; for God will have turned
the captivity of Zion.

Zionists of whose sincerity I am personally convinced,
and of whose intelligence anybody would be convinced, have told
me that there really is, in places like Rishon, something like a
beginning of this spirit; the love of the peasant for his land.
One lady, even in expressing her conviction of it, called it "this
very un-Jewish characteristic." She was perfectly well aware both of
the need of it in the Jewish land, and the lack of it in the Jewish race.
In short she was well aware of the truth of that seemingly topsy-turvy
test I have suggested; that of whether men are worthy to be drudges.
When a humorous and humane Jew thus accepts the test, and honestly
expects the Jewish people to pass it, then I think the claim
is very serious indeed, and one not lightly to be set aside.
I do certainly think it a very serious responsibility under the
circumstances to set it altogether aside. It is our whole complaint
against the Jew that he does not till the soil or toil with the spade;
it is very hard on him to refuse him if he really says, "Give me
a soil and I will till it; give me a spade and I will use it."
It is our whole reason for distrusting him that he cannot really love
any of the lands in which he wanders; it seems rather indefensible to be
deaf to him if he really says, "Give me a land and I will love it."
I would certainly give him a land or some instalment of the land,
(in what general sense I will try to suggest a little later) so long
as his conduct on it was watched and tested according to the principles
I have suggested. If he asks for the spade he must use the spade,
and not merely employ the spade, in the sense of hiring half a hundred
men to use spades. If he asks for the soil he must till the soil;
that is he must belong to the soil and not merely make the soil
belong to him. He must have the simplicity, and what many would
call the stupidity of the peasant. He must not only call a spade
a spade, but regard it as a spade and not as a speculation.
By some true conversion the urban and modern man must be not
only on the soil, but of the soil, and free from our urban trick
of inventing the word dirt for the dust to which we shall return.
He must be washed in mud, that he may be clean.

How far this can really happen it is very hard for anybody,
especially a casual visitor, to disco