Side by side with their attachment to the land of their birth, the sense of a long-lost home lies deep in the hearts of the Jewish masses, and they are drawn towards it by a longing expressed in heartfelt songs and prayers, in wishes and in hopes, not in rebellious efforts. But could the Jews by themselves, as a whole nation, or as scattered and divided masses, as a defenceless and persecuted minority, take up the realization of their cherished hope? Although it was an international political scheme, leading Jews would have to raise their voices and start the work if they wished to see its accomplishment. Sir William Robert Wills Wilde (1815‒1876) wrote:――¹ ¹ Narrative of a Voyage to ... the Shores of the Mediterranean, including a visit to ... Palestine, etc. Dublin, 1840, vol. ii., _pp._ 358‒363. “This extraordinary people, the favoured of the Lord, the descendants of the patriarchs and prophets, and the aristocracy of the earth, are to be seen in _Jerusalem_ to greater advantage, and under an aspect and in a character totally different from that which they present in any other place on the face of the globe. In other countries the very name of Jew has associated with it cunning, deceit, usury, traffic and often wealth. But here, in addition to the usual degradation and purchased suffering of a despised, stricken, outcast race, they bend under extreme poverty, and wear the aspect of a weeping and a mourning people; lamenting over their fallen greatness as a nation, and over the prostrate grandeur of their once proud city. Here the usurer is turned into the pilgrim, the merchant into the priest, and the inexorable creditor into the weeping suppliant....” “It is curious, ... to read the indications of fond attachment of the Jew to the very air and soil, scattered about in Jewish writings; ... ‘The air of the land of _Israel_,’ says one, ‘makes a man wise’; another writes, ‘he who walks four cubits in the land of _Israel_ is sure of being a son of the life to come.’ The great Wise Men are wont to kiss the borders of the Holy Land, to _embrace its ruins_, and roll themselves in its dust.”¹ ¹ The German Jewish weekly, _Der Orient_ (Leipzig, 1840, N 16), mentions “a Christian divine, Rev. William Filson Marsh (1775‒1864), who wrote to the then Chief _Rabbi_ in London, the Rev. Solomon Hershell (1761‒1842), about the necessity of a Jewish state in Palestine.” The following extracts are taken from _Der Orient_, a German newspaper. They seem to betoken a movement among continental Jews in relation to the late crisis in Syria:――