ou'll give me a subscription for Jewish
Self-Defence----'

'Jewish Emancipation!' cried the fur-dealer. 'Why didn't you say so at
first?' He put his hand in his pocket. 'That's _my_ Party--or rather
the National Group in it, the Anti-Zionist faction.'

The stern Bundist laughed. 'No, he doesn't mean he's a J.E. even of
the other faction.'

His father-in-law took his hand out of his pocket.

David cast a rebuking glance at the Bundist. 'Why did you interfere?
Perhaps my way may prove the shortest to Jewish Emancipation.'

His hearers smiled a superior smile, and the fur-dealer shook his
head. 'I belong also to the Promotion of Education Party--I am for
peaceful methods,' he announced.

'So I perceived,' said David drily.

To be rid of him, the Bundist gave him the address of a man who kept
aloof from Polish politics--a bourgeois cousin of his, Belchevski by
name, who might just as well be killed off in the _Samooborona_.

But even Belchevski turned out to be a Territorialist. David
imprudently told him he had seen his fellow-Territorialist Grodsky,
who had half promised----

'Associate with a brainless, bumptious platform-screamer!' he
screamed. 'He's worse than the hysterical Zionists. It is a territory
we need, not Socialism.'

'I agree. But even more do we need Self-Defence.'

'The only Self-Defence is to leave Russia for a land of our own.'

'Five and a quarter million of us? Why, if two ships--one from Libau
for the north, and one from Odessa for the south--sailed away every
week, each bearing two thousand passengers, it would take over a
quarter of a century. And by that time a new generation of us would
have grown up.'

The Territorialist looked uneasy.

'Besides,' David continued, 'what new country could receive us at the
rate of two hundred thousand a year? It would be a cemetery, not a
country.'

The Territorialist smiled disdainfully. 'Why didn't you say at first
you were a bourgeois? The unconditional historic necessity which has
created the I.T.O. may drive at what pace it will; enough that as soon
as our autonomous land is ready to receive us, I intend to be in the
first shipload.'

'Have you this land, then?'

'Not yet. We've only had time to draw up the Constitution. No
Socialism as that idiot Grodsky imagines. But Democracy. Hereditary
privileges will be abol----'

'But what land _is_ there?'

'Surely there are virgin lands.'

'Even the virgin lands are betrothed!' said David.