nd, where we can have hooked noses, black or red
beards, and bow legs, without being despised for it; where we can live
at last as free men on our own soil, and where we can die peacefully
in our own fatherland. There we can expect the award of honor for
great deeds, so that the offensive cry of 'Jew!' may become an
honorable appellation, like German, Englishman, Frenchman--in brief,
like all civilized peoples; so that we may be able to form our state
to educate our people for the tasks which at present still lie beyond
our vision. For surely God would not have kept us alive so long if
there were not assigned to us a specific role in the history of
mankind." He adds: "The Jewish state is a world need." He draws the
logical consequence for himself: "I believe that for me life has ended
and world history begun."

He let the first storm pass over him, yielding to its imperious will,
making no effort to stem its fury lest he interrupt the inspiration.
When it had had its way with him, he took hold of himself again, and
gathered up his energies for the effort to reconstruct everything
logically and in ordered fashion. He was afraid that death might come
upon him before he had succeeded in reducing to transferable form his
historic vision. Thus, in the course of five days, he added to his
diary a sixty-five page pamphlet--in effect the outline of _Der
Judenstaat_--which he called: _Address to the Rothschilds_.

In the address he writes, "I have the solution to the Jewish question.
I know it sounds mad; and at the beginning I shall be called mad more
than once--until the truth of what I am saying is recognized in all
its shattering force."

He wrote to Bismarck asking for an interview in order to submit his
plan for a solution to the Jewish problem but he received no reply.

He wrote to Rabbi Gudemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna, the occasion being
the anti-Jewish excesses which had occurred in Vienna. "This plan ...
is a reserve against more evil days."

Herzl, in his first visit to England, met and talked with Israel
Zangwill, the novelist, whom he impressed without quite winning him
over. But Zangwill made it possible for him to meet more than a few
prominent, influential Jews of whom he made immediate converts. None
of them wanted to know anything about the Argentine, and on this point
the practical men were united with the dreamers: Palestine alone came
into the picture for a national concentration of the Jews.

After h