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A captain is not like a sailor, [relying on] the humble counsel of the compass. And at times, a light has misguided the captain, whose compass has lost its magnet and can no longer point to the star.

But I concede these words of mine. However, a flywheel is not required to pull one to despair and recreation, but simply—because something has broken down or shattered in the machine, and this is not the reason for the compass to turn into a gramophone and cry: Ha ha! The war for your souls is lost, you mice!

The compass of tragedy does not make a joke: Indeed, Mr. B told us the gates are locked and all the work of the Hachshara seems lost—and we sought ways to renew the external direction—to renew things so that the gates will open, and secondly—for this also, to press forward in your work in the Hachshara, in the preparations for settlement—even if it is impossible to promise that this will happen swiftly and soon. The Land of Israel needs not only twenty-year-old pioneers, and twenty-five-year-olds as well, and thirty-year-olds—quite the contrary. And if an ideal is not worth zero, for which you would aim and work like Jacob our Forefather and Rachel our Foremother, then—go in peace and do not speak of ideals.

And I must tell you something else, which will sound even less formalistic to you: The Land of Israel needs not only pioneering spirit, the Land of Israel also needs capital. And where is that holy scripture which says that he is not the pioneer, and that for the sake of settlement one must always collect donations in America? Is it not the most beautiful of all pioneering and Zionist ambitions to bring to the Land of Israel not only my hands but also my own foundation fund?

I know—you thought: "Here," to fuss over pennies like a bourgeois? And what will become of the sacred romanticism? And the spirit of commerce? Etc., etc. What will become of it, I do not know, nor do I worry about it. The well-known romanticism