gnificent and proud; we were men who knew how to
face war and how to defend the state; had we not started out with such
gifts, how could we have survived two thousand years of unrelenting
persecution?"

At that time Herzl came across the Zionist solution, and definitely
rejected it. Discussing the novel _Femme de Claude_, by Dumas the
younger, he says of one of its characters: "The good Jew Daniel wants
to rediscover the homeland of his race and gather his scattered
brothers into it. But a man like Daniel would surely know that the
historic homeland of the Jews no longer has any value for them. It is
childish to go in search of the geographic location of this homeland.
And if the Jews really 'returned home' one day, they would discover
on the next day that they do not belong together. For centuries they
have been rooted in diverse nationalisms; they differ from each other,
group by group; the only thing they have in common is the pressure
which holds them together. All humiliated peoples have Jewish
characteristics, and as soon as the pressure is removed they react
like liberated men."

The inner apotheosis was drawing nearer and nearer for Herzl. In
October, 1894, Herzl was in the studio of the sculptor, Samuel
Friedrich Beer, who was making a bust of him. The conversation turned
to the Jewish question and to the growth of the anti-Semitic movement
in Vienna, the hometown of both Herzl and Beer. It was useless for the
Jew to turn artist and to dissociate himself from money, said Herzl.
"The blot sticks. We can't break away from the ghetto." A great
excitement seized Herzl, and he left the atelier, and on the way home
the inspiration came on him like a hammerblow. What was it? The
complete outline of a play, "like a block of basalt."

With this play Herzl completed his inner return to his people. Until
then, with all his emotional involvement in the question, he had stood
outside it as the observer, the student, the clarifier, or even the
defender. He had provided the world-historic background for the
problem, he had diagnosed it and given the prognosis for the future.
Now he was immersed in it and identified with it.

He had become its spokesman and attorney, as he was spokesman and
attorney for other victims of injustice. It was no accident that the
hero of the play was a lawyer by vocation and avocation. For the hero
was Herzl himself, and the transformation which unfolded in Dr. Jacob
Samuel was the transformat