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No. 11.
Vienna, 13 March 1903 — 14 Adar 5663.
7th Year

Achad-Haam on "Altneuland".

By Max Nordau.

When I had read Herzl's novel "Altneuland", I felt impelled to declare aloud all the good I thought of it. I should gladly have shown in detail how enthusiasm for the subject and a high literary gift are able to renew the somewhat uncertain, somewhat questionable poetic genre of the Utopia; to transform the human bearers of the fable, who as symbols must in the nature of things be somewhat shadowy, into individualised characters and fill them with sparkling life; to replace the icy didacticism inseparable from a Utopia with a refreshing poetic warmth; and to lend a mirage of the imagination an astonishing semblance of reality. I should also have wished to point out what intellectual labour, at once boldly creative and soberly calculating, lies in the details of the institutions, depicted in perspective, of the Jewish commonwealth imagined as risen anew in the land of the fathers. A kind of modesty, which every finely constituted person will understand, determined me to deny myself this satisfaction. The bonds of friendship which unite me with Herzl are well known. Neither he nor I can count upon justice, let alone upon goodwill. I feared that hostile malice would sneer at log-rolling, and I was not brave enough to shrug my shoulders at it in advance. Nor did I fear it for myself, for I do not let the baseness of fellows who act in bad faith touch me; I shrank from it for the sake of Herzl, who might be wounded were it insinuated that he had solicited friendly services of me.

A critique, however, in which Achad-Haam has vented his spleen upon the book and its author, determines me to overcome my reserve. There are attacks against which a high-minded and proud man cannot defend himself, but which must nevertheless be repelled and expiated if the sense of justice is not to be too grievously offended. My friend Herzl will therefore forgive me if I settle accounts with his critic.

Let us see what Achad-Haam has to reproach "Altneuland" with.

It is improbable that things will come to pass as "Altneuland" relates them. Twenty years are too short a span for the events that are depicted.

This objection is not worth the trouble of refuting. In the face of predictions any shallow pate can give himself superior airs. Herzl represents events which, in his view, may come to pass if his premises hold good. Achad-Haam knows better. He knows the future precisely. He is able to state to a hair what will happen in twenty years and what will not. Whoever holds him for an infallible prophet may believe him. Whoever, on the other hand, doubts that any mortal enjoys infallible gifts of prophecy will merely marvel at the effrontery with which Achad-Haam, in the name of his own foresight, declares false the foresight of Herzl, which is surely at least equally well founded.

It is not possible to prevent speculative driving-up of prices by the rapid buying-up of all purchasable land; on the contrary, these sudden and comprehensive purchases of land must themselves send prices soaring.

Whoever knows the history of the founding of the Trusts knows that simultaneous, sudden, discreet negotiations and contracts with all the owners concerned are the tried means of preventing understandings among them and immoderate demands in price. But how should Achad-Haam know what a Trust is and how it is made?

"It is not altogether clear how the New Society contrived to acquire sufficient land for the millions of Jews who had streamed together from all the world, if the whole of the grain-land which was formerly in the hands of the Arabs — that is to say, the greater part of Palestine altogether — remained thereafter undiminished in the hands of the Arabs."

To Achad-Haam this is, understandably, not altogether clear. To every other reader it is quite clear. To-day only that land counts as grain-land in Palestine which repays the growing of grain by Arab methods. All