The Zionist theory is that Israel would benefit if of its many millions (some twelve millions, counting those of the partly Jewish fringe, who are sufficiently Jewish to make one with the race) a core--say a tenth--were to have a fixed territorial "city," a country of their own, a habitation. This country, wherever it might be chosen, should be, as far as possible, a purely Jewish State: "as Jewish," one of its exponents has said, "as England is English." Now, suppose the place chosen were (to-day we may say "had been") an empty or almost undeveloped country, and supposing the Jews had found that their own people could bear the expense of reaching that place with sufficient capital, and of colonizing it in large numbers. Supposing a small State of a million to a million and a half inhabitants to be thus formed, to be wholly Jewish in character, and independent in the fullest sense. The question immediately arises: _Would the Jews throughout the world be:--_ (a) _permitted to regard themselves as citizens of that State?_ (b) _regarded in any case as citizens of that State, whether they willed or no, and registered as such, with or without the consent of the registered person?_ If not, what would be the status of the Jew outside this territorial unit, which he had chosen to be much more than a symbol of his national unity--its actual seat and establishment? That is the question which, so far as I have watched the discussion, everybody hesitates to face; yet that is the question which will have to be faced sooner or later as the main political crux of the whole affair. Observe that there is no question of establishing a State wherein the whole or even the great mass of the Jewish people shall reside. No one would repudiate such an idea more vigorously than the chief pioneers of Zionism. The great mass of Jews would, of course, ridicule it as impracticable and refuse it as extremely undesirable. They live and they desire to live following their present interests in the nations among whom they are dispersed. They live and they desire to live the semi-nomadic life, the international life, which has become theirs by every tradition, and which one might now almost call instinctive in them. Also the greater part of them desire to pursue those careers which go with such a life, especially the careers of negotiation and of intermediary work. They not only feel the advantage of such a position, they also feel a need and appetite for such a condition. Whatever form Zionism might have taken before it appeared in its present experimental form, whatever was said of the theory in the past, _this point_ was always capital: