TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PROBLEMS OF ZION.
ANYONE who wishes to explore the difficulties, intrica- cies, and anxieties of the Jewish problem in its most aggravated form—that is, the form it has taken in Palestine under Mr. Balfour's well-meant but unhappy pledge—cannot do better than study the two books which form the subject of a review in this issue of the Spectator. One, the work of Mr. Chesterton, The New Jerusalem (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s. 6d. net), is a clear small light partially illuminating the huge vault of a dangerous and dreary cavern. It flickers at times, but, as far as its light will carry, shows things as they are, and makes clear the realities of the situation in which the unfortunate British citizen has been placed by his own rashness, or, to be fairer, by the rashness of his leaders. The other, The Voice of Jerusalem (Heinemann, 15s. net), the work of Mr. Zangwill, is like a smoky green Bengal light, set alight no doubt with honest intention, but also with incantations of fury and menace. Instead of helping to make the way clear The Voice of Jerusalem confuses and exaggerates the terrors of the distance and the darkness. Our eyes are blinded by the dazzling uncertainty. We see flit by vast and vague forms—dreadful shadows of the past, horrors of the present, and portents of the days to come. But as we try to identify them and to learn something of the scene, the light fails, or else a thick cloud of smoke obscures the intense though distorting flare. It is not an illumination, but a phantasmagoria. Instead of helping us, it only increases our difficulties. It perplexes and perturbs through suggestions of panic and despair. The last chapter of Mr. Chesterton's book, " The Problem of Zionism," and his epilogue of three pages are among the best things that have appeared of late on this subject. The rest of Mr. Chesterton's book is useful and interesting, if somewhat wild and wandering, the author being apparently more occupied with the Crusades than with the Jews. No doubt this diversity of topics is intended to create a particular atmosphere, but many a man will, we fear, be put off by the talk about Tancred and the Middle Ages, and the other examples of what the Philistines are wont to call " Mr. Chesterton's fads." Nevertheless, the book as a whole is very able, very amusing, and, above all, very sincere. This last quality is indeed its best. It is by no manner of means easy to be whole-heartedly sincere when dealing with the Jewish problem. The environment in which one has to study and face that problem makes against sincerity. Take this example of our meaning. If we are to be truthful in the sense that a judge has to be truthful when he is summing up to the jury in a capital case, we must not let ourselves be carried away by our past misdeeds. The temptation to do so in studying the affairs of Zion is a very strong temp- tation and one that especially assails the best minds, but it must be steadfastly resisted. What we have got to think of is the Jewish problem of to-day, not the Jewish problem of the past. Again, we must avoid the fatal error which Shakespeare so well describes when he tells us that "Crimes, like lands, are not inherited." If in 1921 we proceed to treat the Jewish question on the principle that because those whom we vaguely call our ancestors behaved cruelly, with evil intent, and with diabolical recklessness towards the Jews, therefore we are bound to do something foolish as reparation, we shall never escape from our difficulties. Think of this invitation to Bedlam a little more closely. The Jews were hideously ill-treated in the Middle Ages and even up to modern times. Therefore we are at the bidding or supposed bidding of the Jews, or some Jews, to carry out an act of atonement, which is to take a form not unlike that of human sacrifice. Those who order the sacrifice do not suffer themselves. The suffering falls on persons specially selected for the purpose. If we deal, as it must be fully admitted we are all of us tempted to deal with the Jewish problem on these lines, we, the Christian peoples of the earth, are undone, and also the Jews whom we desire in an hysterical fit of contrition and pseudo-humanitarianism to succour and reinstate. So much for generalities.
And now a word as to the light which we have declared that Mr. Chesterton's book brings to the problem of Zionism. Mr. Chesterton begins by pointing out the perfect truth that he and those who act with him have in the past been termed anti-Semites, whereas in fact they were inspired by a similar spirit to that which inspires Zionism. The Zionists, in the American phrase, claim to be Jews first, last, and all the time. Mr. Chesterton believes with them that the problem will not be solved unless we recognize that Jews are Jews. " We," says Mr. Chesterton, speaking of himself and his friends, " desired that in some fashion, and so far as possible, Jews should be represented by Jews, should live in a society of Jews, should be judged by Jews and ruled by Jews. I am an Anti-Semite if that is Anti-Semitism. It would seem more rational to call it Semitism." That was, of course, exactly what the full-blooded Zionists desired. In it, however, as we feel sure Mr. Chesterton would now be the first to admit, lies a great peril. The British Government have been placed by their pledge, or apparent pledge—it was a pledge governed by a condition—in a most perilous position. Mr. Chesterton's aspiration just quoted has in the abstract a great deal to recommend it. It is sound per se and if considered in isolation. It is consonant with the wishes of the extreme Jews, for it concedes to them that position of exclusiveness which has made them what they are. Though socially and politically inconvenient, the Jewish demand for a national home is inspired by a very tremendous and magnificent aspiration—the aspiration for the pre- serving of their racial purity on the ground that the Jews are the chosen people, and therefore superior to every other people. This view of purity, by the way, is most eloquently touched upon by Disraeli's Sidonia. The great magnifico of commerce, it will be remembered, discussed with Coningsby the purity of race and blood in horses and men.
Those Jews who in their hearts do not want to maintain their racial exclusiveness or to prevent absorption naturally hate the idea of Zionism and of the national home. To them it appears nothing but a proposal to set up a huge international Ghetto bounded by the Mountains of Moab to the east, by the Mediterranean to the west, by the Desert of Sinai to the south, and by the Lebanon to the north. Though they dared not say so openly, for fear of being called bad Jews by their co-religionists, the larger part of the cultivated and prosperous English, American, and French Jews have said in their hearts : " We have striven to be good Englishmen, good Americans, or good French- men, as well as good Jews, and have been gradually leading our people to that racial absorption which we admit would probably be a good thing for us and for the Gentile, and finally end the Jewish problem. But now it seems we are to be deprived of the second nationality which we were beginning to value and be proud of. Will not you realize that this deprivation would be as hateful to us and to our children as it would be to any body of Christian Europeans ? " Thus Jewry was divided by two absolutely conflicting ideas. Then came the idea of a compromise. Very charac- teristically, this was suggested and proposed to be carried out by the lords of compromise, the English—the race which is less tainted by Jewish persecution than any other. Curiously enough, however, the English have never been popular with, or been helped by, the Jews. Who can deny that throughout recent times Jewish influence on the Continent has been directed against the British nation ? When, however, the accidents of the Great War, for it was these and nothing else, had thrown Palestine into the lap of the British Government, and when sentiment and policy alike combined to forbid us to leave the Holy Land in the hands of the Turks, we hit in a kind of half-dreamy and sentimental and half-practical way on the scheme of creating a sort of compendium compromise in Syria. It was a scheme which we fondly imagined would automatically solve a whole sackful of problems, and get us, and also the Jews and the world generally, out of " a tight place." It looked like laying for ever that Jewish spectre which has haunted Christen- dom, and in a sense rightly haunted Christendom, for so many generations. Accordingly, the British Government, confronted with the physical possession of Palestine and with the question, " What are we to do with the place now we have got it ". adopted the position which Mr. Chesterton, as a man of letters with a vision and also with a clear and logical mind, had arrived at long before. The compendium compromise when produced proved to be founded on the apophthegm, Let the Jews have Palestine for themselves and be done with it.
Zionism or the International Ghetto compromise was defended on some such lines as these : " If you telt us that the Jews don't want to go there, we answer that a great many don't, but a great many do. Therefore we shall try this new plan. It will rid us of the Jews who want to get away somewhere by themselves and run their own show. At the same time, the Jews who have become or are becoming good citizens, and who want to stay, and whom we are quite willing to keep with us, will remain and gradually be absorbed in the countries of their birth. So everybody will be happy. We shall have drawn the teeth of Semitism ; got rid of the temptation to persecute afforded by the presence of the corpus vile, and made everything and everybody quiet and comfortable."
Finally, and here we may bless ourselves for the fact, somebody or other remembered that you can never be truly English without trimming the boat. Accordingly the words of limitation contained in Mr. Balfour's pledge were put into it.
Let us confess that though we now look upon the matter with the deepest anxiety, this scheme had at first almost as great an attraction for us as it had for the Government, and originally also for Mr. Chesterton. It seemed indeed an ideal plan. Unfortunately, it was subject to one fatal drawback. Palestine, when we came to examine it at close quarters, proved an impossible national home for the Jews. The reason was absolute. It is already full of people who want to stay—nay, who are determined to stay—and who therefore cannot be removed to make room for the persecuted Jews of North-Eastern Europe without an act of supreme wickedness and injustice such as the Great Powers could not possibly sanction. To put it plainly, we did not ask the two simple ques- tions which would have brought down our vision of Zionism like a pack of cards : " How many people will want to come to the Jews' national home ' and " Where can we find land vacant for such an immigration ? " Those two questions, honestly answered, would have kept us out of the Palestine imbroglio. It is clear from Mr. Zang- will's most able and most stimulating, and, we must add in the strictest sense, terrible book, that he is a Zionist, and that he speaks for the mass of Zionists. He does not want to act more cruelly than may be necessary, but he is evidently, as we show by quotation in our review, prepared to say to the present Mohammedan and Christian inhabitants of Palestine, some of whose ancestors lived there before the Jews came across the desert of Sinai, " This is not your country, but ours. We want it, so get out of it." We can only say that to allow such a thing to happen would be to commit an act of unspeakable wickedness. That such a crime should be perpetrated with the assist- ance of British bayonets is unthinkable. It is a pound of flesh which we would not render even if we had promised to do so. But we have not made any such promise. On the contrary, we have said in plain terms that if such a thing as the eviction of the Arabs and Christians should be proved necessary, we could not carry out our pledge to find the Jews a national home.
Previous page
