It can thus be seen that it is futile at present to talk of the immediate establishment of a Jewish republic in Palestine. The very best that can be done and will be done is to prepare the ground economically, socially and culturally for the settlement of great masses of our people in the Holy Land. And it will be for the settlers to shape the future and to strive to realize the Zionist Ideal: A permanently secured homeland for the Jewish people in the land of its ancestors. Unless this big work is done, no power on earth can help us carry out our national political program, because states cannot be made but must develop organically. NATIONAL EXISTENCE AND NATIONAL HISTORIC LIFE What is the essence of the historic life of a people? This question has been on the program of the sociologist ever since society began to free itself from the hold of the state. Prior to the French Revolution, when society and the state were interlinked by thousands of strands, the belief was current that the national state--particularly, the well organized, centralized state--is the essence of the historic life of a people. It was thought that as soon as a special form of government was overturned the people would turn loose like a herd of wild men. Then came the French Revolution and laid the prestige of the state low. A national society began to organize, outside the state, and became a historic factor of its own account. It then became evident that the state was not the only essence of the historic life of a people, that there were other factors equally, or even more important, and that no national historic life could exist without them. Only a short time before the French Revolution, a French historian said that the Chinese nation, despite its living a national life, is only _existing_ in a historic sense, because it has no influence upon the historic process, and plays no part in the production of cultural values for the human race. In short, the Chinese nation lives outside the pale of history. Now then, if a people like that of China, numbering hundreds of millions of souls and living on its own soil under the auspices of its own government, is placed in the category of nations that merely _exist_, other nationalities of smaller numbers and having no national government are certainly not to be classed as historically living nations.