followers to serve the country to which they belong with the utmost devotion, and to further its interest with their whole heart and all their strength'? This declaration is void of any power. It is incorrect; for no legal or historical proof can be given for the statement that Judaism-we say Judaism, and not the temper or inclinations of individual Jews-obliges its followers to serve their country with the utmost devotion. We have seen above in what Judaism really consists. We have seen that in Judaism, alone of all religious. systems, religion and nationality are so indissolubly one and identical that no real Jew can hesitate to sacrifice his temporary nationality as an Englishman or German to the eternal and indelible nationality ingrained in him by his religion. One of the distinguished Jews of this country, whose family has been in England for centuries, has told the writer of this article that he should not hesitate at all, in case of an emergency grave enough for such a resolution, to sacrifice his English nationality to the interests of Judaism.

The religious Zionists, we said, cannot deny practical identity with the political Zionists. The Jewish clergy of New York have, in June last, passed the following two resolutions with regard to Dr. Herzl's plan: 'Resolved that while every association of Palestine with the Jews arouses our interest and touches a responsive chord in Jewish hearts, we deprecate any movement tending towards the formation of a Jewish State in Palestine capable of being construed as casting doubt upon the citizenship, patriotism, or loyalty of Jews in whatever country they reside.' This is an excellent example of a style so ambiguous as to admit of any construction whatever. The New York clergy say that they deprecate any such movement of political Zionism as might by Americans be construed as unpatriotic. They therefore do not deprecate any such political Zionism as might by Americans be construed as being not unpatriotic. In other words, all depends on what the Americans will say. Does not that imply that the Jewish clergy of New York are, au fond, quite in favour of political Zionism, provided it does not create any scandal? They, too, hasten to add, in a second declaration, that we reaffirm our conviction that the true mission of Judaism is religious and not political, and that any plan or proposal for the uplifting of the Jewish people as such must be tested by its spiritual value and purpose.' Here, too, as in the case of the German rabbis, the fundament of Judaism is deliberately disregarded. The uplifting of the Jewish people as such 'implies, in consequence of the very essence of Judaism, a political or national movement as much as a religious one. hopeless to represent Judaism as being on a line with the Christian denominations. It is essentially different from them, in that it can under no circumstances divest its religious from its nationalist character. The rabbis may go on denying, ignoring, or dissimulating that as much as they please; the fact of that dualism remains, and

It is

is patent to any one who has given himself the trouble of reading some of the modern researches into the theology of the Old Testament, and into the history of the Jews since the destruction of the Temple by Titus. The religious Zionists, therefore, by suppressing the national element in the dual character of Judaism, place themselves in an altogether false position, and will never achieve what in their innermost hearts they ardently wish to realise. The political Zionists, of the type of Dr. Nordau and Dr. Herzl, commit the opposite mistake or false feint; they suppress and disregard the religious element in the dual character of Judaism, and will consequently achieve still less than their opponents. It is hopeless to appeal to purely utilitarian and opportunist motives in trying to move a complex of people whose great hope and central interest are of a religious character. An exodus of Jews cannot be brought about by a power propped up by considerations of mere nationalism. For in the first place there are no greater Antisemites than many of the Jews themselves. It is no exaggeration to say that nearly all modern Jews, who have received a genteel education at colleges and universities, are more inclined to Antisemitism than Christians of the same social status. It is mere folly to think that those antisemitic Jews who are amongst the best gifted and the most influential will associate themselves in a risky enterprise with the very people whom they inwardly detest. He who undertakes to unite men of so utterly divergent opinions and emotional tempers must needs have recourse to the one and solitary agency that can work such marvels-to religion. The two doctors, however, disregard religion; their enterprise is therefore divested of all chances of success. The exodus of the Jews of to-day from Europe can only be made in a manner in no way different from that in which was achieved their exodus from Egypt some 3,000 years ago. A Moses is required; a man full of divine inspiration and an energy fraught with religious zeal. Religion is not, like feudalism or guilds, a mere phenomenon of the middle ages; it is an historic category, an indestructible factor of all national life, and, with the Jews, the factor of all the factors. The antisemitic Jews will keep aloof from Dr. Herzl's enterprise because they dislike the nationality which the doctor wants to perpetuate. The pious and loyal Jews will keep aloof from it because it disregards the religious element of Judaism.

The only way to social recognition left open to Jews, and more especially to that class of them which is more strongly inclined to stay in Europe, neither Dr. Nordau nor the other Zionists seem to be willing to contemplate. This way is clearly indicated by history; it may be learnt-if ever anybody learned anything from history-from the numerous sects or parties, classes or castes, that have in the course of the centuries risen from social degradation to social recognition. The lesson is simple. It spells fight. B fight is not

always meant actual bloodshed. What is always meant is unrelenting opposition to one's enemies, and readiness to sacrifice comfort and ease to ideals temporarily unprofitable. This is what the Jews ought to do; this is what, especially on the Continent, they, as a body, do not do; and it is for this wretched cowardice of theirs that they have called upon themselves, and rightly so, the contempt of the world. What is Zionism else than that better part of valour' which politeness calls discretion, but which truth brands as cowardice? There are no two ways about it; there is only one alternative: either Jews remain the old orthodox kind, contemned and contemning, or they get social recognition as real citizens of their several countries by honest, staunch fighting for it. Tertium non datur. Every other proposal is mere sham and fraud. They must follow the example, not of Moses Mendelssohn, but that of either the Polish orthodox rabbis or of Spinoza. Had the latter, although the sweetesttempered man known to biography, not resolutely scorned to mildly temporise and compromise, he would have written not a line of his Ethica, and the world would be poorer for it. If the modern and unorthodox Jews could muster one-tenth of the moral courage and heroism of that poor, phthisis-stricken Spanish Jew, they could bring about Zionism indeed, but here in Europe, and in a fashion infinitely more creditable to them and more desirable for Europe. Then Dr. Nordau might write a Regeneration of a positive value considerably greater than has been that of his Degeneration. With the utmost deference to one so successful and clever, we venture to say that it is not modern civilisation' that is so brimful of Conventional Lies,* 'Paradoxes,' 'Disease of the Century,' and 'Degeneration,' and other morbid substances; it is that backboneless new Judaism that, while trying to give the lie to nationality, or the greatest achievement of this century, gives the lie to itself and to all such as believe in militant Zionism.

6

EMIL REICH.

MOLES

I AM the man who hath seen a mole's eye glittering at him! Yes! It was on a day when we were on a roaming ramble in Roxburghshire, and sauntering about somewhere near Melrose. As we were peering about in a pleasant shady something or other, lo! I saw a mighty Scotchman plucking away from a moving piece of earth a tiny little human creature, dangerously full of curiosity, who was burning with a desire to find out what that diminutive earthquake meant. Coom awa'! coom awa'!' said the big giant [N.B. I do not pretend to be able to transliterate that barbaric dialect, the writing of which some deluded ones regard as a beautiful though difficult accomplishment]. 'Coom awa'! Et'll bite ye!' I made a grab at the embryo earthquake and clutched a baby mole! The giant, with all the signs of hysterical terror, started back, plucking the child from the impending perils that loomed so horribly near, but when he saw that I had the lovely little mole in my hand and was examining it minutely, was just a little reassured, and even bent over to look. 'Ah! weel noo!' said the giant in his barbaric and raucous form of speech, es et verry ferocious?' I said 'No,' and I showed him the strange little animal, clothed in a beautiful silver grey satin. The orbit of its eye had not yet closed up, as the learned tell me it does soon after the young mole is born, and there was the bright little eye exposed to mine and glittering with a quite indescribable glitter as I gazed. Whether there was any 'speculation in those orbs' I will not undertake to say, but I feasted on the strange sight, which I suspect hardly one man in a hundred thousand in Great Britain has seen; and having finished with this atom of subterraneous life, I gently laid it down in the centre of the earthquake, watched it give a sly little wriggle, and bestowed upon it my blessing, thanking the powers that be that I was not a 'collector,' and that I did not go about slaying things to put their shrivelled carcasses in a glass case, and gloat over my skill in lessening the sum total of animal life, which I like to think has its rich abundance of enjoyment while it lasts. Why should we murder the poor moles? Why should we sanction the murder of them? Why should we not protest against their being massacred wholesale?

When I was a child my nurse used to make my flesh creep by threatening me, when I was naughty, that I should be put in the bury-hole and be dug up by the resurrection man, and have my teeth sold to the dentist, to make sets of 'em for the fine ladies!' To be dug up by a resurrection man' was no uncommon thing in those days, or at any rate it had been common enough not very long before I was born, as a recent writer on this gruesome subject has shown. Of course a resurrection man was to my childish imagination the most grim of all conceivable ogres; but when it came to such frightful details of anticipation, as one may say, and I had to imagine the extraction of my teeth from my young jaw for trade purposes, and was moreover left quite uncertain as to whether this diabolical and ultradiabolical operation would be performed upon me alive or dead, can you wonder if I got to regard a resurrection man as a very prince of devils-an unearthly because an unearthing demon who would stop at nothing? But, when we come to reflect upon his crimes, is not a mole-catcher worse-very much worse-than the old-fashioned resurrection man? The old culprit at any rate waited to operate upon the buried dead he waited till his victim was cold in his grave. The other traps the living and catches him in his infernally contrived snares when he is all alive, oh!' has no pity, no shame, no remorse, and, when all is said and done, makes a contemptibly small profit by his trade of murder.

The district in which I pass my lowly life is just now suffering for its sins in the way of mole-slaying, by the natural operation of the divine laws, which grind slowly, though they grind exceeding small. There is a deeply rooted superstition prevalent among the peasantry that moles are only mischievous and destructive vermin. Nay, there is a little bunch or collection of idle superstitions acting to the discredit of the moles-for instance, that they bring rain when it is not wanted; that they haunt the churchyards and prey upon our forefathers; that they cause tremendous floods by burrowing through great embankments that keep back the sea from lands that, but for those banks, would be submerged; that their earth putts (such is the pronunciation of that obscure expression) are poisonous to the soil around them; and other such slanderous and malignant accusations. For there were days when men believed in the devil very much more firmly, and, I may add, more intelligently and practically, than they believed in the Heavenly Father; when evil was far, far more present with them than good, when 'blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands' were brought home to them with much more aggressive and unceasing menace and mischief than those gracious and beneficent forces which help to rid us of these manifestations of the malignity of matter; times when Nature was so tyrannous and man so weak, when the evil one was always haunting their infantine imaginations, and when