Bible and Sword

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Here it is not necessary to go into the internal history of Zionism. Its goal was stated by the first Congress under a four-point declaration of principles known thereafter as the Basle Program. “The aim of Zionism,” it proclaimed, “is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.”

  Meanwhile it became evident from Herzl’s experience at Constantinople that the Sultan was hardly prepared simply to hand over the sovereignty of Palestine to an emissary who, for all his dignity and aplomb, had not two farthings of grand dukes’ gold to jingle in Turkish ears. It was obviously necessary to gird every effort for another attempt to bring in the rich and influential Jews. Until the shares of the proposed Bank or Colonial Trust were subscribed there would clearly be no co-operation from the Sultan. Herzl would have “sold his soul to the devil” for success in floating the loan, he privately recorded. In London, where he believed the financial key was to be found, leaders of the Jewish community, who had begun to have an uneasy feeling that Herzl might possibly be on the right track, were earnest with advice but timid with funds. They would go no farther than an offer to come in if he could first get Baron de Rothschild on the governing board and a check for ten million pounds from the I.C.A. The Baron, whom Herzl tried to persuade to take over active leadership of the movement on condition that he give up piecemeal colonization in favor of the principle of a national state into which Jews could immigrate by right, backed away. “He was a nationalist with a distrust of the nationalist movement and of the people,” Weizmann once said of the Baron. “He wanted everything to be done quietly.”

  The hesitancy of the great only served to convince Herzl that his earlier sense of destiny was correct and that he himself was the inevitable leader. “I always feel posterity glancing over my shoulder,” he noted in his diary. And he was learning fast. He began to realize that Zionism had to become “a movement of the poor” and find its support in the unemancipated Eastern Jews who “were not tortured by the idea of assimilation.” He neither knew nor understood them, but he recognized that if he were to lead it would have to be at the head of an army of “beggars and cranks.”

  Yet he could not get over his fondness for the “portals of royalty” or the belief that he could somehow bring down the state as a gift from above through frock-coated interviews with diplomats, bankers, and prime ministers. A fictional portrait that almost seems to have anticipated Herzl is the exuberant Pinchas in Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto.

  “We shall no longer be dumb—we shall roar like the lions of Lebanon. I shall be the trumpet to call the dispersed together from the four corners of the earth—yea, I shall be the Messiah himself,” said Pinchas, rising on the wings of his own eloquence, and forgetting to puff at his cigar.…

  “Hush, hush!” said Guedalyah, the greengrocer. “Let us be practical. We are not yet ready for the Marseillaises or Messiahs. The first step is to get funds enough to send one family to Palestine.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Pinchas, drawing vigorously at his cigar to rekindle it. “But we must look ahead. Already I see it all. Palestine in the hands of the Jews—the Holy Temple rebuilt, a Jewish State, a President who is equally accomplished with the sword and pen,—the whole campaign stretches before me. I see things like Napoleon, general and dictator alike.”

  “Truly we wish that,” said the greengrocer cautiously. “But tonight it is only a question of a dozen men founding a collecting society.”

  Herzl did sometimes tend to “see things like Napoleon.” He was concentrating now on the Kaiser, whose forthcoming visit to the Holy Land was the talk of the hour. Could the Kaiser be brought to use his influence with the Sultan, title to Palestine, or at least a charter for colonization, could be won at a stroke. Herzl, whose mind leapt to short cuts, was convinced that he could carry it off. Through the Grand Duke of Baden, uncle of the Kaiser and a fervent, prophecy-minded advocate of the cause, he was lifted to feverish hopes by the report that the Kaiser was favorably inclined to become protector of a Jewish emigration to Palestine and had consented to receive Herzl at the head of a Zionist delegation in Jerusalem. “The Kaiser has informed himself thoroughly on the matter and is full of enthusiasm.… He believes the Sultan will accept his advice,” the Grand Duke told Herzl. An hour’s interview with the Kaiser himself at Constantinople confirmed the Imperial interest, despite the frowns of von Bülow, the foreign minister. Next, in Palestine at a prearranged meeting outside the Mikveh Israel colony, the Kaiser rode up, guarded by Turkish outriders, reined in his horse, shook hands with Herzl to the awe of the crowd, remarked on the heat, pronounced Palestine a land with a future, “but it needs water, plenty of water,” shook hands again, and rode off. Finally came the culminating moment of the formal meeting at Jerusalem (where a special entrance had been broken through the Jaffa gate so that the Kaiser could enter the Holy City without dismounting). The interview took place, but the Kaiser was vague, offhand. Herzl’s written address had been blue-penciled in advance and all mention of the charter deleted.

  Herzl had pinned all his hopes upon the Imperial communiqué, which he had envisaged as a public espousal of his cause by the most powerful man in Europe. Instead it omitted any mention of Zionism, merely referred lightly to a “Jewish deputation” and expressed nothing more than His Majesty’s “benevolent interest” in general agricultural improvements in Palestine “as long as these were conducted in complete respect for the sovereignty of the Sultan.” For Herzl it meant a total fiasco. But with that gift for seeing double that kept him going after each defeat, he wrote in the midst of his black despair that the Jewish people in the long run would have had to pay “the most usurious interest” for a German protectorate.

  The shattering effect of his failure turned Herzl, not all at once, but slowly, toward England. In the interval there were four more years of unremitting efforts—of more congresses, petitions, diplomatic negotiations, speeches, mass meetings; and there were three more trips to Constantinople at the behest of money-hungry Turkish ministers. In a personal interview with Abdul Hamid in 1901 the Sultan agreed, if the Jews would take over the funding of the Turkish debt, to permit them to colonize—but in scattered settlements only, as Turkish subjects without a charter, and in Mesopotamia, not Palestine. “Small, shabby, with a badly dyed beard, long yellow teeth, ill-fitting colored shirt-cuffs, bleating voice, diffidence in every word, timidity in every glance—and that man rules!” Herzl wrote of the Sultan in disgust. He went home, forced at last to admit to himself that nothing useful could be got from the Turk at this time.

  But in 1900 the Fourth Congress had been held in London and the Jewish National Fund at last established, though short of the capital of two million pounds that Herzl had thought essential. Speaking in one of those flashes of prophecy that seemed to visit him as if from some outside source, he foretold that “From this place the Zionist movement will take a higher and higher flight.… England the great, England the free, England with her eyes fixed on the seven seas, will understand us.”

  The possibility that a way station to Palestine might have to be sought, while waiting for the further indigence or final collapse of the Turkish Empire, now absorbed his attention. An old idea recurred, centering on Cyprus, from which he had once, in a flight of fancy, dreamed of the Jews’ taking back Palestine by force. El Arish or elsewhere in the Sinai Peninsula, known then as Egyptian Palestine and in the Bible as the “Brook of Egypt,” were other possibilities. Both were occupied by England. Meanwhile pogroms in Rumania, sending a bloody trail of refugees across Europe, added to the urgency. A homeland must be found. For all the Kaiser’s melodramatic ambitions, it was England after all that actually stood on the frontiers of Palestine. England was, Herzl had once written in one perfect, phophetic sentence, “the Archimedean point where the lever can be applied.”

  At that moment England was undergoing pressure to restrict Jewish immigration out of fear of cheap labor competition. A royal commission had been appointed to investigate a
nd recommend a policy. Lord Rothschild, whose seat in the House of Lords marked the final victory of emancipation in England, who was a director of the Bank of England and the leader of English Jewry, was a member of the commission. Long antagonistic to Herzl, whom he repeatedly refused to meet, he now saw a use for him. If the colonization project could be got going, it would absorb the refugees from Eastern Europe, deflecting even that small number that headed for London, and would prevent the royal commission from recommending restrictive legislation. Herzl was summoned to the presence. If invited to testify before the commission, what would he tell them? Rothschild demanded.

  “I want to ask the British government for a colonization charter,” Herzl shouted to his hard-of-hearing host.

  “Don’t say Charter. The word has a bad sound.”

  “Call it what you like. I want to found a Jewish colony in British territory.”

  “Take Uganda.”

  “No, I can only use this—” And because there were others present he wrote on a scrap of paper: “Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian Palestine, Cyprus.” “Are you in favor?”

  Lord Rothschild considered. Then, with a pleased smile, he replied: “Very much.” He asked for a written prospectus to submit to the colonial minister, Joseph Chamberlain, with whom he promised to discuss the matter.

  At that moment “Pushful Joe,” the screw manufacturer from Birmingham, dubbed by the public the “Minister for Empire,” was the most powerful man in England. The foxlike face, the monocle, the orchid in the buttonhole dominated Westminster, captured the populace, symbolized the peak of imperial self-satisfaction as the nineteenth century turned over into the twentieth. Queen Victoria’s sixtieth jubilee in 1897, marked by the loyal presence of colonial and dominion delegates from all over the globe, thrilled Britons with family pride. The Boer War, despite the bitterness of the “Little Englanders” or “pro-Boers” as Chamberlain labeled the opposition, and though hardly a victory to be proud of, carried the triumphal march forward. Chamberlain, the inventor of business imperialism, had opened a vision of the Empire as a vast undeveloped market that if properly exploited (hence his crusade for Tariff Reform), would raise wages and profits for everybody. “Your hope of continuous employment depends upon our foreign commerce,” he would say, adding that the future of the country depended not only on maintaining the Empire but: “in taking every wise and legitimate opportunity of extending it.”

  The credo of the time was a happy conviction of England’s God-chosen destiny to rule what Kipling called the “lesser breeds without the law.” “Take up the White Man’s Burden,” Kipling proclaimed, while the official laureate, Alfred Austin, celebrated England’s noble task “to harvest Empire, wiser than was Greece, wider than Rome!” No less fervent than the poets, Chamberlain, the man of affairs, agreed that England’s “national mission” was to become “the predominant force of world history and universal civilization.” It was England’s obvious duty to extend her rule as wide and as fast as possible for the mutual benefit of conquerors and conquered. The natives, in the course of receiving the benefits of Christianity and civilization would buy Manchester cotton goods, Sheffield and Birmingham export articles in large quantities. This was the lesson that “Birmingham Joe” taught and that English manufacturers, merchants, and workers delighted to learn. In the warm summer rays of the Imperial sun they experienced the delightful sensation of doing the “right thing” and finding that it paid.

  With Chamberlain as its prophet, Lord Cromer in Egypt, Lord Milner in Africa as its instruments, Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener leading the Army as its heroes, and the unfortunate Liberals its unregarded Cassandras, expansion held the day.

  The center of this swirl of power was not 10 Downing Street, but the Colonial Office, where Chamberlain, who had risen to fame at the Board of Trade, now chose to reign. Old Lord Salisbury had retired from the premiership in 1902 after successful conclusion of the Boer or “Joe’s War,” as the Prime Minister privately styled it. He had been succeeded by his nephew, Arthur Balfour, a scion of the Cecil family, which had waited four hundred and fifty years since the two Cecils, father and son, ruled England under Elizabeth, to produce again two successive prime ministers. Mr. Balfour, tall and willowy in his tennis flannels, was the very antithesis of Mr. Chamberlain. He was an aristocratic high-brow, a profound skeptic, and a philosopher who inherited not only his uncle’s leadership of the Conservatives but also the qualities for which Lord Salisbury had been called “the most intelligent Englishman of the nineteenth century.” There were many who thought that Mr. Chamberlain deserved the premiership rather than the younger Balfour—including, one suspects, Chamberlain himself. He maintained the contrary, insisting that he wanted only to continue at the Colonial Office.

  How did it happen that this man should take an interest, casual though it was, in finding a homeland for the Jews? Biblical prophecy was of no concern to Birmingham Joe. Nor was he moved by humanitarian considerations or a sense of moral debt to God’s ancient people. If anything, judging by a painful indiscretion reported by the Times correspondent, Wickham Steed, he was, to put it politely, unsympathetic. Steed, on one occasion in Rome, arranged a luncheon to bring Chamberlain together with Baron Sonnino, the Italian finance minister, by birth a Jew. Suddenly, over a gap in the general conversation, he heard the clear voice of Mr. Chamberlain, whose favorite subject was the special endowments of the Anglo-Saxon race, saying to Sonnino: “Yes sir, I have been called the apostle of the Anglo-Saxon race, and I am proud of the title. I think the Anglo-Saxon race is as fine as any on earth.… There is in fact only one race that I despise—the Jews, sir. They are physical cowards.” While Steed kicked the Colonial Secretary under the table, Sonnino had taken up the challenge and was defending the Jews hotly. Later, after the company had disbanded, Chamberlain said to Steed: “Thank you for the friendly kick. It hurt, but I twigged, and now we have had it out.”

  Two years after this incident Chamberlain, following three meetings with Herzl, agreed to the proposition of Jewish colonization in Sinai if the Zionists could obtain the permission of the authorities in Egypt and, when this failed, himself proposed an offer of territory, with internal autonomy, in East Africa. England thus became the first country to negotiate officially with the Jews as a political entity and the first to make them an offer of territory. Granted that the land was not particularly suitable nor the offer a very generous one. It aroused passionate rejection from a large section of Zionists, was resented by English colonists in Africa, and, really favored by no one, was eventually allowed to lapse and die unmourned. But it was made at a time, following the Kishinev massacre in Russia, of desperate need. And in recognizing the Jews as a people it marked the first step in their relations with the outside world, toward regaining the nationhood lost nearly two thousand years before.

  Chamberlain knew nothing of that and cared nothing. But as he listened to Herzl’s always sweeping prognostications he quickly saw in them one of those “legitimate opportunities” for extending the British Empire. He saw in the Jews a ready-made group of European colonizers available to settle, develop, and hold all but empty land under the British aegis. From the private papers accessible to his official biographer Chamberlain’s thinking on this issue has been described not only as an interest in acquiring colonizers “for the development of what was virtually British territory,” but also colonizers who, from a base in Sinai, “might prove a useful instrument for extending British influence into Palestine proper, when the time came for the inevitable dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.” When the project was switched to East Africa Chamberlain’s interest remained basically that of filling conquered territory with useful settlers beholden to Britain.

  To pretend, as does Mr. Julian Amery, author of the concluding volume of Chamberlain’s official biography, that Chamberlain was both “prophet and pioneer” in his brief brush with Zionism or that he was the “first among British statesmen” to see in Zionism both an end to the ancient Jewish pro
blem and a means for advancing British interests, or that he was the originator of an idea that Balfour later took over, is absurd. A host of pioneers from Cromwell’s day through Shaftesbury’s preceded Chamberlain, even if he (and his biographer), as seems quite likely, were unaware of them. Balfour’s interest stemmed from his earlier tradition, not from Chamberlain. Balfour was, of course, prime minister at the time of the Colonial Secretary’s offer to Herzl. “I did my best to support it,” he later recalled. But though it was well-intentioned, though it had many merits, it “had one serious defect. It was not Zionism.”

  Herzl found this out for himself. A few months before his death he wrote in his diary an account of an audience with King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, during which he reminded the King that Napoleon had wanted to resettle the Jews in Palestine. “No,” said the King, “he only wanted to turn the scattered people of the world into his agents.”

  “That,” replied Herzl, “is an idea which I also found in Chamberlain.”

  But two years earlier, after the failure of all his efforts at Constantinople, what a sudden surge of hope had returned when he was informed that an interview with England’s Colonial Secretary had been arranged! Before his departure for Constantinople in July 1902, summoned there by the Sultan for more fruitless haggling, he had left with Lord Rothschild an outline of the El Arish and Sinai projects, with a separate letter in which he said: “To avoid all misunderstanding now and for the future, I wish to make it clear that I have submitted this plan only because you are against Palestine.… But … a great Jewish settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean strengthens our position in regard to Palestine.”