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No. 30. Vienna, 29 July 1898. Second Year.
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The Administration.
Zionism in Italy and Elsewhere. By Cesare Lombroso (Turin).
When I first heard Zionism spoken of, I felt an inclination to laugh, and the smile did not depart from me even when documents came before my eyes that would have made any other man wiser — such as the fine articles of Nordau and Herzl.
The first doubt of the correctness of my view came to me on the journey between Moscow and Warsaw, upon that stretch where every station is strewn with veritable herds of poor Jews who are struggling for their lives and who, to that end, cling fast to the first modern implement, the railway. In a carriage a young Polish physician, a Jew, addressed me, and after he had questioned me as to my opinion of Zionism, after he had seen my smile, his face darkened as though he had received a blow in the face.
"You have not seen the thousands upon thousands of victims who struggle in vain for their lives, who possess neither a fatherland nor goods, nor the means of procuring them, whose crime is their faith," he answered me. I pressed the young Jew's hand. "I am accustomed to respect all opinions, if they are noble," I said. "I respect yours also, even though I do not yet share it; but I shall reflect upon it hereafter." And sure enough, a few days ago a young Jewish propagandist laid before me documents which prove that what had appeared to me a fairy-tale for fanatics has already made a fair beginning toward execution; that the chief difficulty — namely, that of finding people accustomed to agricultural labour and therefore able to accommodate themselves to it — has been very sensibly overcome by rearing young people for that purpose; and that those colonies have at last arisen after the most modern methods. The strong and early-ripened culture of those colonies promises rich fruits, and education is there so ordered that agricultural labour does not exclude the literary and the scientific. Thus Zion promises to offer the example of a new population which unites with the ancient traditions all modern resources, and which succeeds in making converge all those hidden forces developed in the Hebrew race through the centuries and through misfortune. Now that I have comprehended the whole magnitude of my error, I explained it to myself readily, even though I did not justify it. The inhabitants of Western Europe, at least those of France and of Italy, where the Jews form a small element of the population, where they enjoy all civil and political rights completely, where they meet with no antipathies nor can meet with any, nor have cause to meet them — these forget the Biblical tradition entirely, as one forgets a nursery tale, and let all that political passion converge which the Hebrews have ever in their blood, through which they became one of the most patriotic peoples of the ancient world, through which they give the example of the most extraordinary political fanaticism, in that they rose twice with a handful of men against the Roman Empire. Thus they converge, I say, in favour of the land in which they live, to which they give famous martyrs, for which they feel the twofold love of the neophyte and of the patriot. But have these, because they fare well and because they have found a fatherland, the right to forget that they possess brothers who fare ill, who have no fatherland? Have these the right to forget how many thousands, how many millions of men are exposed to mockery and to persecutions, merely for the most noble fact that they possess a faith? May it be forgotten that Zionism can become a cradle for these men without a country, a hope for all, and a sure answer to all who accuse the Hebrew of being good for nothing save the scraping together of money by intrigue and usury?
For this reason I have convinced myself that I was likewise in error when I mocked at the ideas of Zionism. If they are carried further in the present manner by eminent men, they promise that we shall see a new people come forth, happy, mighty in spirit and in energy, which of the old