The Zionists replied: “We want to live. We know better than you do what we are able to do, and how we ought to influence mankind; but we do not wish to abdicate, we do not wish to be destroyed like a broken vessel, whose contents have run out and have drained into the soil without leaving a trace. We do not want to be lost like a falling star, which for a time had shone brightly in space, only to sink into nothingness. Our star is not yet dead. Our ambitions are not very high, but they are based on reality. We do not want to be an exception, and we want to be excused from such a ‘priesthood.’ We want to create a sound settlement, a strong centre where we can develop our own nature and our character to the highest and purest perfection. Should the world wish to learn from us and accept our influence, we shall place no obstacles; on the contrary, we shall be glad of it. But to drag ourselves from place to place, to be the scapegoat of every ‘_Azazel_,’ and the sacrificial lamb for every calamity, to mix everywhere with others, to lose more and more that which is our own personality, and to imagine that we are a sort of schoolmaster for everyone――for such imposture we are too honest, for such megalomania we are of too normal a mentality, and, morally, too modest. We do not want to be driven _ad majorem Dei gloriam_ (for God’s greater glory) or to be intermingled with others. We do not want to be like the goose that was offered the choice of being either roasted, stewed, or boiled. Neither do we wish to have lavished upon us the pity given to old people, because it is certain that they will not for long continue to disturb the peace of the living. We are old, it is true, but on that account we are experienced. From Pharaoh and Balaam to the foreign Antiochus [Epiphanes] (_ob._ 164 _b.c.e._) and our own Jason,¹ from the Hellenists to the modern Assimilationists, we have been constantly invited, as the spider invited the fly into her parlour, just to get it entangled in her web and afterwards to suck it dry. No! a thousand times no! And if you say the Land of _Israel_ is of no value to any one, then you are not speaking in our name! Speak for yourselves alone! For you the Land of _Israel_ means perchance only a cemetery, a legend, an amulet, an archæological relic; for us its every pebble and grain of sand is beloved, not only in a spirit of worship and of inactive enthusiasm, but also as a necessity to our life labour. And if you believe that the Jewish people are of a similar species to the Mammoth and the Megatherium, which have been devoted to extinction, then please speak only for yourselves! Perhaps the sense of Jewish nationality in you has gone to sleep or has even died entirely. That is your own affair, a personal question which you have to fight out with your own selves. In us it is alive, suffering, fighting, clamouring! Zionism is the movement of the Jewish people to reconstitute itself and to collect