September 13, Vienna
Among the many newspaper clippings which Argus sends the following is especially interesting. It is an interview by Madame Lera, the wife of some South American diplomat.
The statements in it made by Nuri Bey are curious.
News of the Day
An Interview with the Apostle of Zionism.
It is common knowledge that the Zionists are those Jews who dream of re-establishing the kingdom of Judea and rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.
From a practical point of view, many obstacles appear to stand in their way. The Turks, no doubt, will not be eager to give up Palestine; and if the promoters of Zionism succeed in convincing them by persuasive arguments, Christians of every persuasion would rise en masse indignantly to oppose an arrangement that would put the Holy places in the power of Christ’s executioners.
The Zionists, for that matter, are not numerous; the great majority of the sons of the Widow prefer to build up among the infidel nations the strongholds of an imaginary Jerusalem, and it is only the mystics attached to tradition and believing in the Messianic future who wish to lead their people back to the Promised Land.
It is no less interesting to follow a movement which aims at reuniting the dispersed Jews, at pitching a tent for the wandering flocks of the encampment of Israel.
Did the Congress held at Basel at the beginning of this month make progress with its plan? We don’t know. One of our correspondents sends us the account of an interview he had with one of the most devoted apostles of Zionism: M. Herzl. Our correspondent limited himself to recording his interlocutor's arguments just as a recording machine would do. It is for our readers to draw their own conclusions.
M. Herzl kindly consented to satisfy my desire to know more about Zionism and more than the superficial accounts in the newspapers. The day before his departure for The Hague he came and spent an hour with me.
Not being familiar with interviewing, I shall limit myself to summarizing as best I can, and very faithfully, the principal ideas put forward by M. Herzl.
“What is Zionism, and what do I want to do? What I have been dreaming of for four years and what haunts every hour of my life? This is it. I want to give the Jews of all nations a corner of the world where they can live in peace, no longer hounded, outcast, and despised. Among us, as always happens, it is the poor who are most to be pitied. The others, who can change their place of residence as they see fit, who are in contact with the upper classes, have to put up with a great deal of damage to their self-esteem and with wounded dignity; but you could not believe the extent of the poor Jew's misery in certain countries. I want to offer these outcasts a country that will be their own, where, with complete freedom and thanks to that freedom, their abilities can be developed and at the same time the vices and faults which centuries of persecution and ostracism have fostered in them may be shed; to rid them in time of that moral scurf; to allow their very real intellectual and moral gifts free play, so that finally my people may no longer be the dirty Jews, but the people of light that they are capable of being.
“The new Jerusalem that I foresee in my dreams, the revived Palestine, rejuvenated and flourishing, that haunts me, appear before me in their minutest details, and I see them as the summary, the essence, of everything it has taken civilization centuries to achieve." And growing more fervent: “You must realize that the origin of countries and cities has always been haphazard, that they have grown little by little, have improved by a slow progression, and that even in the most beautiful city, side by side with progress and modernity, there is always a more or less considerable trace of past ages: old sections, picturesque but unhealthy, where it is often difficult to introduce modern improvements.
“Over there, in that land which seems dead today but which is only sleeping, ready, like Jairus’ daughter, to rise from the grave and take her place among the living once more, it will be entirely different. There is everything to be done? Well, all the better! We shall do everything. We shall choose the best sites for our cities; to build them we shall use all the resources of modern science; we shall make the earth fertile, and our people will learn to cultivate that earth; they will learn to exercise their abilities and their gifts of perseverance, industry and intelligence in other ways than those to which they have been, so to speak, confined up till now.
“I want to drive the hucksters and the filth that dishonor Jerusalem out of that holy city. To clean it up without harming it, respecting every stone, and to dedicate it to humanitarian works, asylums for the aged and for children, to the products of the mind, to everything that would preserve its character of contemplation and august grandeur. Only outside its walls would rise the new city, modern Jerusalem, dominated and protected by the majesty of the old walls.״
“־But,” said I, “as a practical matter, how will you make your dream come true?״
“Ah, that’s it! We need the country first! . . . Will Turkey consent to let it go? And yet, what could be more just, more natural, than to permit us to establish ourselves in that land which is ours, to whose possession no one can contest our moral right! And then there are the European powers: another big question mark! And lastly my own people. Yes, you would not believe that even among the Jews my project has many enemies. Some don’t understand it, others don’t want to understand it, still others seek to interpret my motives, to see in them the calculations of ambition and interest, there where there is an idea which has taken possession of me and which I would make triumphant. But no matter; I go forward with my dream, in my dream, if you will, and for it.
It is so dear to me that I have always resisted the desire to give it shape by spelling out, in a novel for example, what the future of our race may be.״
M. Herzl said all this in a warm, expressive voice, with vibrant, moving words; and as I listened, I recalled that passage in Tancred where, speaking of the constancy of the Jews who throughout the centuries and in spite of persecution maintain the traditions of their race and still celebrate the feasts of Israel, no longer under the burning sky of Galilee but in the damp cities of the north, Disraeli adds: ״A race that persists in celebrating their vintage, although they have no fruits to gather, will regain their vineyards.״
Several days later I was with some diplomats, among them one of the Turkish delegates, His Excellency Nuri Bey, secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The talk was about all sorts of subjects, among them Zionism; His Excellency’s sly smile gave me to understand that this would never really be more than a dream—at least in this form. To admit the Jews, yes indeed! Turkey is vast; she is far from being developed as she should and could be; there is room for millions more of inhabitants, and the Jews, under the protection of Turkish law, would be safe from all persecution in the enjoyment of absolute freedom of conscience. But the Holy Places cannot be turned over to them; even the laws of Turkey forbid Jewish groups to establish themselves there.
It would not be acceptable to the Christian nations to see pass into the hands of the Jews the sacred soil where Golgotha and the Mount of Olives rise.
M. L.
