d, in which
millions of Jews would be grouped together, united as a nation.
All these feelings on the part of the assimilation Jews are
comprehensible. From their standpoint they are justified. These Jews,
however, have no right to expect that Zionism should for their sake
commit suicide. The Jews who are happy and contented in the land of
their birth, and who indignantly reject the suggestion of abandoning
it, are about a sixth of the Jewish nation, say two millions out of
twelve. The other five sixths, or ten millions, feel themselves
profoundly unhappy in the countries where they reside, and they have
every reason for doing so. These ten millions cannot be called upon to
submit forever unresistingly to their thraldom, and to renounce every
effort for redemption from their misery, merely in order that the
comfort of two million happy and contented Jews may not be disturbed.
The Zionists are, moreover, firmly convinced that the misgivings of
the assimilation Jews are unfounded. The reassembling of the Jewish
people in Palestine will not have the consequences which they fear.
When there is again a Jewish country, the Jews will have the choice of
emigrating thither, or of remaining in their present home. Many will
doubtless remain, and will prove by their choice that they prefer the
land of their birth to their kindred and to their national soil. It is
barely possible that the Anti-Semites will still throw the scornful
and perfidious "stranger!" in their face. But the real Christians
among their fellow-countrymen, those who think and feel according to
the teaching and examples of the Holy Writ, will be convinced that
they do not regard themselves as strangers in the land of their birth,
and will then rightly comprehend the real meaning of their voluntary
renunciation of a return to a land of the Jews, and of their fidelity
to their homes and to their Christian neighbors.
The Zionists know that they have undertaken a work of unexampled
difficulty. Never before has the effort been made to transplant,
peacefully, in a short space of time, to another soil, several million
people from various countries; never has it been attempted to
transform millions of physically degenerate proletarians, without
trade or profession, into agriculturists and cattle breeders, to bring
townbred hucksters and trades people, agents, and men of sedentary
occupation again into contact with the plough and the mother earth. It
will be necessar
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