Why did the Jewish people suffer two thousand years under the dispersion and why did they not try during this long period to re-establish their political sovereignty in the land of their ancestors? Even the best of our thinkers ascribe this national default and political apathy to a sort of lethargy of which the Jews were apparently the victims. To many a Jewish thinker, Ahad Ha'am not excepted, the past two thousand years of Jewish existence appears to be planless and one great historic confusion; but on looking closely at developments, one will come to recognize that not because of lethargy, but because of given historical conditions, the Jewish people could not up to our times have attempted to re-establish their national sovereignty in the land of their forefathers. More than a thousand years after the downfall of western Rome, Mediterranean civilization, though degenerated, remained supreme and was identical with civilization at large. The chief move of its centre from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the consolidation of a new center was accomplished only after a struggle of nearly five hundred years. So long as Atlantic civilization was not supreme and so long as the fight for its supremacy was not finished, the political re-establishment of Judea, closely connected with the settlement of the solution of questions arising out of the fight for the Atlantic and all that there is to it--the individualization of international politics, the preservation of the small nationalities, their political restoration, etc.--could not be taken up and no serious attempt to re-establish the Jewish nationality in Palestine could be made by the Jews or other nations interested in the settlement of the Jewish question. For these reasons, the re-establishment of Judea, as one of the post-bellum problems, is as historically logical now as was the downfall of Judea a historical necessity two thousand years ago. There are no blind chances in history, nor are there stagnant moments in history. History has its reasons, which, however, reason often fails to understand. LAND AND PEOPLE