more private and personal even than nationality.  Even when the purpose is not any sort of treachery, the very position is a sort of treason.  Given the passionately patriotic peoples of the west of Europe especially, the state of things cannot conceivably be satisfactory to a patriot.  But least of all can it conceivably be satisfactory to a Jewish patriot; by which I do not mean a sham Englishman or a sham Frenchman, but a man who is sincerely patriotic for the historic and highly civilised nation of the Jews.

For what may be criticised here as Anti-Semitism is only the negative side of Zionism.  For the sake of convenience I have begun by stating it in terms of the universal popular impression which some call a popular prejudice.  But such a truth of differentiation is equally true on both its different sides.  Suppose somebody proposes to mix up England and America, under some absurd name like the Anglo-Saxon Empire.  One man may say, “Why should the jolly English inns and villages be swamped by these priggish provincial Yankees?” Another may say, “Why should the real democracy of a young country be tied to your snobbish old squirarchy?” But both these views are only versions of the same view of a great American:  “God never made one people good enough to rule another.”

The primary point about Zionism is that, whether it is right or wrong, it does offer a real and reasonable answer both to Anti-Semitism and to the charge of Anti-Semitism.  The usual phrases about religious persecution and racial hatred are not reasonable answers, or answers at all.  These Jews do not deny that they are Jews; they do not deny that Jews may be unpopular; they do not deny that there may be other than superstitious reasons for their unpopularity.  They are not obliged to maintain that when a Piccadilly dandy talks about being in the hands of the Jews he is moved by the theological fanaticism that prevails in Piccadilly; or that when a silly youth on Derby Day says he was done by a dirty Jew, he is merely conforming to that Christian orthodoxy which is one of the strict traditions of the Turf.  They are not, like some other Jews, forced to pay so extravagant a compliment to the Christian religion as to suppose it the ruling motive of half the discontented talk in clubs and public-houses, of nearly every business man who suspects a foreign financier, or nearly every working man who grumbles against the local pawn-broker.  Religious mania, unfortunately, is not so common.  The Zionists do not need to deny any of these things; what they offer is not a denial but a diagnosis and a remedy.  Whether their diagnosis is correct, whether their remedy is practicable, we will try to consider later, with something like a fair summary of what is to be said on both sides.  But their theory, on the face of it, is perfectly reasonable.  It is the theory that any abnormal qualities in the Jews are due to the abnormal position of the Jews.  They are traders