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No. 1. — Vienna, January 7, 1898. — Vol. II.

A Reckoning.

By Spectator.

Eduard Glaser, burgher Arabist and desert-wanderer in Munich, cannot resist the craving to come to terms with Zionism. He satisfies it across four whole columns of a Berlin paper; but whatever, in this Petraean endlessness between sand and stone, is worth the keeping can be carried off by a single gust of wind. Eduard Glaser, the Arabist and desert-wanderer of the Taunstraße in Munich, maintains, namely, that Zionism is, consciously or unconsciously, an English instrument for the blowing-up of Turkey and for the founding of a buffer state which, in the British interest, should secure the overland route from the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean to India; that Zionism is therefore anti-Turkish, anti-Russian, anti-French, and harbours within it the danger of a fresh unrolling of the Oriental Question. For the rest, Eduard Glaser is willing to allow the poor Jews, martyred by antisemitism, a "place of refuge," a "modest but sufficient Jewish colony," without, however, betraying where, in his good opinion, it is to be accommodated. Only from the words, "Here, too, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire can help," does it appear that he has no notion whatever of what Zionism strives after, and that he would therefore have done better to renounce the glory of a slayer of Zionists and to content himself with the modest laurel of the Arabist.

It might accordingly seem superfluous to concern oneself with this newly-risen adversary of Zionism, who, in retailing his pot-house politics, mocks himself and knows not how. Eduard Glaser is, however, typical of the anti-Zionist dragon-slayers, and therefore it is worth the trouble to single him out from the crowd and to demonstrate upon him that the national Jew has cause to beware of no one more than of the so-called assimilated Jew. For the "assimilated" Jew is at bottom by no means so hard-hearted as to begrudge the poor Russian and Roumanian Jew — always only those! — a better shelter somewhere and somehow; only he must not himself be incommoded thereby, nor be held to any sacrifice of his comfortable living, his civic humiliations, his prospects of titles and decorations. The assimilated and the Zionist Jew stand, if a historical comparison be permitted, side by side, as of old the Germans of the Confederation of the Rhine and the national Germans; while the former endured with voluptuous pleasure the foreign dominion under which dukes became grand dukes, electors kings, and money-changers world-bankers, the national Germans, amid lamentation and peril, made ready the liberation. The assimilated Jew ducks his head, pockets the digs in the ribs and the kicks, but becomes withal a Baron, a Knight, a Court Councillor; the Zionist Jew wishes to be nothing but a man possessed of rights, and because such a one is not to be conceived without a soil of his own, without a homeland and the feeling of a homeland — which every new day drives home to him bloodily anew — the Zionist reclaims the land of his fathers as his historic home, as his inheritance, to which his claim can never lapse by prescription, because it has never been surrendered. One should think that in a man who springs from the circle of the Prague Altneuschul — and Eduard Glaser is such a case — the memory could not have faded of the fate that is prepared for the Jews per vim and per nefas, and which Zionism strives to mitigate. But the so-called practical politicians, among whom Glaser counts himself as an "assimilated" Jew, are not accessible to motives of a higher order, to motives of national pride, of moral revolt against disgrace and wrong; and nothing in this regard is more characteristic of them all than the notion which Glaser forms of the "leading spirits" of Zionism. They can, he opines with an insinuation, remain at the head of Zionism even when it has nothing more to do with Zion. So that is it! "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither," the Jew has vowed these two thousand years; and now, when the vow is preparing to become hope, and perhaps fulfilment also, it is cried after those who point the way that they have no other ambition than to stand at the head of a movement. Truly, here the Goethean verse does fit:

"The spitz-dog barks from out our stall
And ever would attend us,
Yet of his voice the clamorous call
But proves that we are riding."

It is not, however, a matter of holding up a mirror to Herr Eduard Glaser. Zionism is too proud and too strong to make an example of every yelper and every pot-house politician. Protest shall be lodged only against a double denunciation of which this latest champion of the anti-Zionists is guilty, because it is calculated to slander and to discredit Zionism. This double denunciation is addressed to Turkey and to the European mistrust of England. In Constantinople the suspicion is to be aroused that Zionism is transacting the business of England and that Turkey