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There is only one aim worth pursuing these days in Ireland. Eliminating the "rainbow-chasers" (as we have come to call them), we want a plan which, when peace comes again to all the world, will bring peace also between Irishmen themselves and between Ireland and the Empire. Hitherto you have withheld responsibility from Ireland. For this reason you have been cursed with the evil absurdities of Ulster Covenanters on the one hand, publicly relying upon the Kaiser for help against you before the war, and of Sinn Fein on the other, actually receiving similar assistance from the same potentate since war began. Very soon you will have the choice before you again-force or freedom as the mainspring of Imperial policy in Ireland. The powerful articles by "An Irish Soldier" which have recently appeared in the columns of the Manchester Guardian supply a first-class series of object lessons on the policy of "how not to do it." You could actually observe force creating resistance, Dublin Castle creating Sinn Fein. What is the alternative? Once

again, Responsibility. It is the only possible road towards Irish peace at home or in her relations with you. Why should it fail here alone in all the world? Analyze it in its other applications. It is the public-school plan for making boys into men-Eton and Harrow prefects and monitors carry out their trust because they are responsible. It appears in the old and true joke that poachers make the best gamekeepers. It is the Baden-Powell way of turning hooligans into Boy Scouts. It is the school in which our naval officers are trained from their first day on board. It is the secret by virtue of which Borstal institutes and American prisons have begun to The Manchester Guardian.

make thieves and murderers into good citizens. Responsibility has brought Labor members into the British Cabinet. Responsibility has brought General Smuts shoulder to shoulder with Lord French. Responsibility created the loyalty of our Overseas nationalities—rebellious enough before they received the gift. It has been publicly announced as the policy to be carried out in India. It is one of the only two known forms of government, the other being irresponsible force, dictating from above what an irresponsible population must do, and all the world is in arms against its embodiment in Central Europe. Public responsibility of the plain man for his own government is the only power which is capable of dragging Prussian ambitions to the dust. Whether in his own soul, in his home, his business, or in his public life, civic or political, the spirit of men, self-disciplined and selfcontrolled, in small groups or in great, grows onward and outward through city, province, nation, or empire towards a world recivilized. The scale is nothing; the principle is everything. Whether your appeal is to a Boy Scout or a giant Empire, you appeal to fundamental facts deeply implanted in the very nature of mankind. Forgotten, neglected, or deliberately set aside in Ireland, these human factors in public welfare have been arrayed against you for centuries. They are imperishable. They will continue to stultify you to yourselves and before the world until you recognize them and begin to build upon them as your foundations. The stone which the builders rejected in Ireland will become the headstone of the corner in the future temple of Irish peace. Graven upon it will be the word RESPONSIBILITY.

A JEWISH PALESTINE.

It is certainly not too soon to discuss the future of the Holy Land, for the Jews, who have a historic and generally acknowledged right to this country, have displayed almost superhuman patience in their longing for national restoration. Ever since their dispersion, nearly two thousand years ago, from their ancestral soil they have not ceased to pray to be gathered once more within its borders from all corners of the earth. Early in the second century there was an armed attempt under a heroic leader, Bar Kochba, to regain possession of Palestine, but it was soon suppressed. Thenceforth the love of Zion found expression merely in a religious formin prayers and pilgrimages-whilst ever and again, in the gloom of the Middle Ages, it was fanned into flame by a false Messiah who heralded the return to Zion, and then abandoned his deluded followers.

But at various periods during the last hundred years ambitious efforts have been made to convert the traditional ideal into a practical reality. The great Napoleon himself, at a certain stage in his victorious campaign, dreamed of restoring the ancient land to its rightful owners; and the nineteenth century witnessed the promulgation of quite a number of schemes for the return of Israel to the

Holy Land. In England the most famous advocate of the idea was George Eliot, whose "Daniel Deronda" is an inspiring contribution to the subject. But no really practical measures were taken until the Zionist Organization was established in 1897 at a Jewish Congress held in Basle. That Congress-the first Zionist Congress was attended by over 200 representatives from all parts of the world, and it formulated its ideal in the

so-called Basle Program: "The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish People a Home in Palestine secured by public law."

Twenty years have passed since that first Zionist Congress was held, and although another dozen Congresses have taken place since the fourth, in 1900, was held in London-the organization is represented by thousands of societies in all countries of the globe, the Basle Program has not yet been realized. The leaders of the Zionist movement have had to encounter considerable difficulties. They required abundant financial resources and considerable political influence for the achievement of their task, but unfortunately both of these factors are concentrated in that section of Jewry which is anxious to become merged in its environment, and has no desire to see Jewish national life perpetuated.

It

But despite numerous and serious obstacles, not the least of which was the early death of its founder, Theodor Herzl, in 1904, the Zionist organization has achieved a great deal. founded a Zionist bank, the Jewish Colonial Trust, which should serve as the financial instrument of the movement, and which has a larger number of shareholders than any other company in the world. It also established the Jewish National Fund, which should acquire land in Palestine as the inalienable property of the Jewish people. Both the Colonial Trust and the National Fund were registered in England according to the Companies Act. Simultaneously with extensive propaganda throughout all the Jewries of the world, the Zionist organization inaugurated a systematic scheme of colonization-both rural and urban-in Palestine, and en

deavored to attract both Jewish capital and labor for its cultivation.

All these efforts formed only a good and hopeful beginning, and then the war broke out. The last three years have naturally witnessed a continuance of Zionist propaganda, but there has been a cessation of colonizing activity. Worse still, the young Turks, who originally appeared somewhat favorable to Zionism, have tried to suppress all manifestations of Jewish nationalism; and the Generalissimo, Djemal Pasha, actually threatened with death anybody who was found in possession of the artistic stamps-mere tokens-of the Jewish National Fund.

The future of Zionism is now bound

up with the war settlement, and Zionists in both hemispheres are earnestly hoping that this settlement will not only recognize their right to Palestine but will enforce it. One of the war aims of the Allied Powers is to secure for the small nations the right of self-determination in a land of their own; but although the rights of all other small nations have formed the theme of eloquent speeches by scores of statesmen, no official public utterance has yet been made on behalf of the Jews, who have waited longer than any other nation for the realization of their ideal. The Jewish question has troubled Government after Government for the last few decades, and although various international congresses have been held they lacked the courage to grapple with the problem. The time has now come

The London Chronicle.

when the question can be shirked no longer. The Jews have had to suffer bitterly enough during their centuries of exile and dispersion. The time has now come to make amends by restoring them to their country.

The great, nay, the preponderating bulk of Jewish Nationalists live in Russia, America and the British Empire, and it is therefore the obvious duty of the Governments of these countries to undertake, in combination with the other Allied Powers, the task of securing Palestine for the Jews. A lead is expected from the British Government, not only because it has always been regarded as the champion of oppressed races, but because it has already had official relations with the Zionist organization since 1902. In that year the Zionist leader, Herzl, negotiated with the British Government for a concession of land in the Sinai Peninsula, bordering upon Palestine, but the suggested territory was found to be short of water; and in the following year the British Government offered the Zionists a large tract in East Africa which, however, was found unsuitable. The British Government has now a signal opportunity of helping to realize the national ideal of the Jewish people by declaring its recognition of the Jewish claim to Palestine and promising its services for its enforcement. The waste lands of Judæa will be made fruitful again only by Jewish hands, and civilization will be enriched when the Jewish people is again enabled to live a natural and national life.

Israel Cohen.

BAD TEMPER.

It is impossible to read the recent life of Sir Charles Dilke without coming to the conclusion that public men are an extraordinarily bad-tempered

set. Almost everybody of importance who is mentioned in the biography has a vile temper. Gladstone, Chamberlain, Harcourt, Lord Randolph Church

ill, Queen Victoria, even the lazyfaced Lord Hartington who afterwards became the Duke of Devonshire-all of them are as "touchy" as children and burst into rages or tantrums on the slightest provocation. Dilke himself is one of the few imperturbable figures in the book. Sir Eyre Crowe was struck by the "Roman attitude" of Dilke at the tragic crisis of his life, and Dilke always comported himself with a certain Roman gravity in his political career. He seems to have lacked that element of irritable egotism which is the fruitful parent of bad temper. "I believe," he said to Harcourt in 1880, "I am the only English politician who is not jealous." Harcourt, we are told, "laughed very much," and said: "We all think that of ourselves." "I mean it," replied Dilke. Poor Harcourt himself was the victim of an abominable and jealous temper. Hell hath no fury like a politician scorned, and Harcourt to the end labored under the feeling that his services were in danger of being insufficiently appreciated. When he was fighting Lord Rosebery for the succession to Mr. Gladstone, he wrote to Labouchere: "Hell would be pleasant compared to the present situation." He was equally violent and much given to swearing, however, as a Cabinet Minister in the eighties. At a Cabinet meeting in 1883, he raged so ferociously against the Irish that "at last Lord Carlingford, although an Irish landlord, cried out 'Your language is that of the lowest Tory.' On another occasion, when the Unionist hopes of victory in a snap division in a thin House had been foiled, Harcourt "said savagely across the table: 'So that damned dirty trick has failed!" Sir William Harcourt, we fancy, is represented as having been perfectly furious more frequently than any other politician who appears in the Dilke biography.

But he was not a solitary fury. He was a fury in a troop of furies. "We looked forward to what the schoolboys call 'a jolly blow-up' when Gladstone should return," wrote Dilke on one occasion, when Gladstone had been in France and announcing in a newspaper interview changes of policy of which his colleagues knew nothing. Certainly, the history of the 1880 Cabinet is the history of one "jolly blow-up" after another. One of the questions that brought Gladstone into conflict with the Queen was as to whether it was his duty to mention all these "blow-ups" in his reports to her. Mr. Gladstone, Dilke recorded in his notes,

always held that the Queen ought not to be told about dissensions in the Cabinet; that Cabinets existed for the purpose of differing-that is, for the purpose of enabling Ministers who differed to thresh out their differences -and that the Queen was only concerned with the results. . . . But the Queen naturally . . . hates to have personal differences going on of which she is not informed.

One sympathizes with Queen Victoria. She must have taken special pleasure in the spectacle of detestable Liberal Cabinet Ministers drawing hat pins on one another.

If we cannot keep our eyes off a dog fight, how much more difficult it is not to be interested in the snapping and snarling of Cabinet Ministers, the leaders and governors of nations! There is an old slut of a cook in Gorky's reminiscences who confesses, "What I love most in the world is a fight. I don't care what sort of fight it is cock fights, dog fights, or fights between men-it is all the same to me!" And Gorky tells us, "If she saw cocks or pigeons fighting in the yard she would throw aside her work and watch the fight to the end, standing dumb and motionless at the win

dow." She used often in the evenings to say to Gorky and his cousin: "Why do you sit there doing nothing, children? You had far better be fighting." There is something of the cook's malicious passion in most of us. We are much more interested in Cabinet Ministers and other people when they fly out at each other than when they dwell together like brethren in unity. The dull man comes to life for us in the sharp reality of a bad temper. Even Lord Hartington emerges from the wood, a recognizable human being. One likes to picture his heavy, resentful face on the occasion on which, true to the interests of his class, he was fighting against an agrarian Bill in the Cabinet, and Gladstone, anxious to learn how the Bill would affect Scotland, said, "I wish Argyll were here." "I wish to God he was," cried Hartington, knowing that the Duke would at least have sided with him as a fellow-reactionary. Hartington, according to Dilke, was exceedingly angry at this Cabinet meeting because he was not supported even by the other landlords. He "was simply ferocious, being at bay. He told us that Lord Derby was a mere owner of Liverpool ground rents, who knew nothing about land." Hartington showed his bad temper again when Dilke, though a Cabinet Minister, refused to vote against the Woman's Suffrage amendment to the Franchise Bill. "Hartington," wrote Dilke in his diary, "is very angry with me for not voting, and wants me turned out for it. He has to vote every day for things which he strongly disapproves, and this makes the position difficult." To read these comic revelations of resentments, huffs and irritations is to realize that the novel-the irresistible comedy of political life still remains to be written. What a wealth of minor passion and minor passion is always comic passion-appears in Harting

ton's postscript, quoted by Chamberlain: "Thank God we should soon be out of this damned Government."

Queen Victoria did not give herself away in her bad temper to this extent. She was testy rather than furious in her anger.

She never swore aloud.

One can see, however, how difficult it often was for her to restrain herself in presence of the ill-deeds of her Ministers. One can read temper in the telegram she sent to Harcourt when he ordered the release of Davitt: "I can scarcely believe that Davitt, one of the most dangerous traitors, has been released without my having been consulted." She was angry, too, when Chamberlain made his famous, "They toil not, neither do they spin" speech about the House of Lords. She was angrier still when, at the meeting held to celebrate a certain anniversary, Chamberlain said that "the representatives of Royalty were absent, and nobody missed them." When Chamberlain was told that the Queen would probably complain about his speech, he said: "If she does, I shall most likely

deny her right

to criticise my speeches." He, too, had a pretty temper. The fact is, the Queen and Gladstone had both the bad temper of despots, and nearly everybody else had the bad temper of people who could not endure despots. "Talk of two Kings of Brentford!" Dilke wrote in his diary. "This Cabinet has to serve two despotic monarchs -one a Tory one, at Osborne, and one a Radical one, at Cannes" (where Gladstone was at the moment). Had it not been for the despotism of Gladstone and the bad temper induced by this in Chamberlain, the history of these islands might well have run a different course. Chamberlain had never been an out-and-out Home Ruler, but his sympathies with Parnell and radical solutions were such that he was all but predestined to

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