Before you, a camp of the frontier | To journey, pray, the heart will run What is my song, my brother? | And let us rise, my brother, Who kissed fire on ash | To fight, to roar, to pave From your secret, O living God. | And to build for the living God!

There the living God paved a path Upon the Hebrew spirit! There the living God by [His] right hand Upon a soul of judgment and might!

On the day of the Hebrew Battalion.

7. On the Day of the Hebrew Battalion

At the end of August 1917, a short notice appeared in the official English newspaper about the establishment of a Hebrew battalion. This short notice cost a number of dozens. For the most part, this was a war of opposition against the Jews here as well, and more than that – against the Jewish youth. Had the Hebrew youth accepted the idea of the battalion properly, as "a whole," it would have brought "as a whole" the prepared sentiment for an outbreak of a Hebrew army for the purpose of the return of the Land of Israel, then there would have been no value to the opposition of the elders of Klal-Yisrael in England, as well as the assimilationists and others. For the government needed soldiers—on the one hand, and [faced] internal opposition for the benefit of the Allies—on the other, and it had no time to deal with the mood of the Jewish "elders." Generally, for the leaders of the recruitment movement, the opposition was the last concern. The first and most important concern was the youth. The time found the youth—all of them—ready; and the will to fight for their homeland, their reason and origin, like the rest of the nation, was for them strong, absolute, and difficult to break.

I do not say this for the sake of criticism - it is too late now to criticize the situation of a previous generation -