words, made international in character, similar to the maritime customs and salt administrations. In drafting such a plan I can think of no better model than Mr. Knox's proposal about railways in Manchuria, advanced in 1909, as to the principle it displays.

To finance the various liquidations embraced in this case of China, and the administrative reforms which it contemplates, will require some hundreds of millions of dollars. Much of this sum would be used to retire debts now existing, and the remainder would be used to promote constructive measures. In this connection it is pertinent to point out that among large nations China is to-day, next perhaps to the United States, in the most solvent condition fundamentally. By this I mean that her debts, as compared with her realizable resources, are comparatively small. Unfortunately, however, it is not feasible now to entrust the Chinese Government with the exclusive administration of the country's fiscal affairs. The disturbed and divided condition of the country, the lack of modern administrative technic, and other causes combine to detain China as yet in the class of nations not quite able to dispense with outside help. Almost all educated Chinese, except a few of the radical Young China party, now openly say that China is at present incapable of straightening out her affairs, and that she needs foreign help. They want this help to be temporary, and given with a view to making China eventually able to dispense with it altogether. They realize that such foreign help will of necessity carry with it a degree of foreign assistance and supervision in China's administration, and they are ready to accept this. In view of the semi-dependent state of many nations that were recently proud and powerful, sensible Chinese begin to see that it would be a false and foolish pride that would pretend that China is independent of foreign influence, counsel, and aid.

But with regard to this matter of foreign financial and administrative aid and supervision there is one condition that is

absolutely essential to make it acceptable to the Chinese. This condition is that the United States will be an active participator, if not the recognized leader, in its organization. It is safe to say that no international consortium that does not include the United States, or any plan that does not receive the approval and coöperation of America with respect to China, will now be acceptable to Chinese.

A careful analysis of the foregoing articles and the methods by which they of necessity would become practicable at once suggests the thought that such a settlement will in some respects extend foreign authority in China rather than diminish it. This is true. But foreign friends of China, and also enlightened Chinese, ought frankly to face the truth, that in order to deliver China from foreign quasidomination it is necessary to use foreign administrative efficiency. We have this paradox, that to diminish foreign intervention in China's administrative processes it is first necessary to increase it. But the new conditions would be very different from those that have burdened China for the last half-century. They would differ not only in form and application, but in purpose. An enlightened foreign assistance, under the ægis of a league of nations, having the object of restoring China's complete administrative and fiscal autonomy by educating Chinese in modern methods and tranquilizing the country, would carry a real hope for that people and a real benefit to the world.

Article Number 11 of my list scarcely permits of qualification or extenuation, as most of the other articles do. It refers to a condition that is an open and flagrant outrage upon China, the usurpation in large regions of her administration functions, and their restriction under the intimidation of foreign military occupation. First introduced by Russia in connection with the policing of the Chinese Eastern Railway zone, the system was greatly extended by Japan when she by conquest secured the reversion of Russia's rights in southern Manchuria, and later extended over nearly the whole of Shan-tung province adjoin

ing the German leasehold of Kiao-chau. This system has even been implanted in the heart of China by Japanese police supervision of coal- and iron-mines and plants in the Yang-tse valley, and by the installation of a Japanese garrison in permanent barracks at Hankow; and the beginnings of the system have recently appeared in Fu-kien province.

Put succinctly, China's petition to the conference amounts to an appeal to be delivered from the old system of predatory penetration by imperialist nations, and to be allowed, and helped, to work out a peaceful national destiny on democratic lines. Lest I might be accused of purposely failing to mention those matters, I will say that there is much to be criticized in China's conduct as an Allied belligerent, and that the Chinese themselves are to blame for many of their country's ailments and misfortunes. But to strike the balance of those issues would require an exposition of the parts played by foreign intrigues in China's politics.

Taking the case of China in toto, it presents almost an ideal test to apply the announced principles of the major nations in prosecuting the war and in making the peace. It contains as yet no extraordinary difficulties, as the case of Russia does; no conglomeration of national and racial problems, as middle Europe does; no such festering caldron of jealousies and hatreds, as the Balkan question does. Yet in the last twenty years China has been developing into a combined Russia, middle Europe, and Balkans, with the antagonistic ambitions of several powerful nations concentrated on a struggle to control her, or to possess the lion's share of her remains. What this situation leads to in international affairs has been sufficiently demonstrated by recent events. If China's case does not get sympathetic attention and just treatment by the peace conference, it will not be possible for any one who knows the realities of world politics hereafter to hear their altruistic professions without putting his tongue in his cheek.

T

HE array of arguments advanced by Herbert Adams Gibbons against Zionism in the January number of the CENTURY MAGAZINE may be summarized under three headings: First, the Zionists have no right to favor British sovereignty over the Holy Land and to reject "any form of dual or multiple political control over Palestine." Together with the British, "they do not appreciate how the French feel about Palestine and Syria," and overlook the fact that "French Catholics and French imperialists are determined that Palestine shall not be British." Second, the great powers have no right to determine the fate of Palestine. In accordance with the principles enunciated by President Wilson, the destinies of Palestine must be left in the hands of the Palestinian Arabs. "Palestine is theirs." Third, the Zionists are altogether wrong in claiming a state or a commonwealth. "Why Palestine? Why a distinct nationhood for the Jews?" Why do the Zionists fail to comprehend "the words of the Palestinian Jew who said, 'My kingdom is not of this world'?"

I believe I shall follow a more logical line of reasoning if I apply myself to the last fundamental argument first and take up the others later.

"Why Palestine? Why a distinct nationhood for the Jews?" Mr. Gibbons, who is in the habit of quoting his Jewish friends, tells us that some of them had warned him against writing on Zionism, since, as a Christian, "he can have no conception of what Zionism means to the Jew." The Jews who spoke to him in this manner were entirely mistaken. From its very beginning Zionism has had a large. number of Christian friends, thinkers,

writers, and statesmen, among them men like ex-President Roosevelt and President Wilson, who have shown that Christians are well able to comprehend "what Zionism means to the Jew." The recent book by Dr. A. A. Berle, formerly professor of applied Christianity in Tufts College, on "The World Significance of a Jewish State," is a striking illustration of the ability of a Christian to appreciate the message of Zionism in all its depths and implications.

A misconception of Zionism is glaringly betrayed in several passages of Mr. Gibbons's article, in which the author confesses to be at a loss to explain why Zionism seems, on the one hand, "mystical and spiritual," why it is "from Alpha to Omega a spiritual movement," and why, on the other hand, it emphasizes the temporal aspect, and advocates "a distinct nationhood for the Jews." Without being aware of it, Mr. Gibbons has touched the vital spot of Zionism, and, for that matter, of Judaism. ter, of Judaism. This is not the place to enter into theological or historical disquisitions; yet this much may be said, that the fundamental characteristic of Judaism which distinguishes it from Christianity is the very fact that, while anticipating Christianity by hundreds of years in proclaiming the great spiritual message of the kingdom of heaven based on the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, it refuses at the same time to accept "the words of the Palestinian Jew who said, "My kingdom is not of this world," insisting that the kingdom of heaven must be realized right here in this world, in the forms of human life and through human agencies. The prophets of Israel, who were the first to formulate the concept of one God and one humanity, be

lieved at the same time passionately in the racial integrity of their people and in the absolute necessity for this people to express itself through the agency of an organized community life; that is, a commonwealth or a state. The Jewish prophets were not mere metaphysicians or theologians; they were "mystical" and "practical" at one and the same time. They were both universalists and nationalists, believing in the realization of the universal ideal through the channel of national existence. From this point of view the Jewish state appears both as a spiritual and as a material aspiration. It is not an end in itself, an agency for political aggrandizement and the injustice and oppression that goes with it, but it is a means to an end, the physical vessel for a spiritual content, the material agency for the consummation of the great ideals of justice and righteousness. The founders of the second Jewish commonwealth applied this prophetic doctrine to life when, in laying the corner-stone of the second temple, they declared, through the mouth of the prophet Zechariah, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts."

This fundamental attitude of the Jewish people toward its commonwealth has been essentially retained and developed by modern Zionism. True, Zionism includes among its rank and file as well as among its leadership many Jews who have drifted away from the religious moorings of Judaism. Yet, though refusing to acknowledge the metaphysical basis of the prophetic ideal, they passionately cling to the ideal itself. To them, too, Zion is primarily an opportunity for the Jewish people to express itself in accordance with its ancient ideals and aspirations. They realize that, while modern Jewry has made great material progress as a result of Jewish emancipation, and while it has. contributed far more than its share to the spiritual life of the nations in which the Jews live, it has done very little for its own distinct culture and spiritual develop ment. They point to the fact that, to mention a concrete example, while the

art.

Jews have furnished an amazingly highquota of musicians and artists to the world, they have failed to develop a distinct Jewish music or a distinct Jewish The Zionists, therefore, are forced to the conviction that if the Jewish people is to remain true to its highest interests, it indispensably needs a center in which it may have a chance to develop its ideals and to express itself in its own manner of life and thought, and thereby add its distinct contribution to the spiritual treasury of mankind.

Mr. Gibbons is entirely wrong when, possibly misguided by the information of his de-Judaized friends, he repeats the platitude that Anti-Semitism is the source of Zionism, and that the latter, therefore, has no right for existence in the new world order in which all Jewish disabilities are to be abolished. Instead of abstract arguments, let me state a concrete fact: the first public act of Russian Jewry after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, and after the declaration of the Kerensky government granting full civil rights to the Jews of Russia, was to convene a Zionist congress in Petrograd, which was held amidst extraordinary enthusiasm in May, 1917. The six million Russian Jews, while pledging their joyful allegiance to the new Russian republic, reiterated their demand for a national Jewish center in Palestine.

Mr. Gibbons is anxious to know "what Zionism means to the Jew." Let him study Jewish history and not rely upon the misleading information of his un-Jewish Jewish friends, and he will perhaps get an inkling of the extraordinary, nay, unparalleled position which Palestine occupies in the Jewish consciousness. He will then learn that the handful of Jews in Palestine of nearly 2000 years ago formed the only nation which, at the height of Roman power, dared to resist the invincible legions of Rome for four years, and made far greater sacrifices in the defense of their country than even did the heroic Belgians during the onslaught of the German hordes in the great World War, a patriotism so overwhelming that,

as a Roman historian informs us, many Roman soldiers deserted their ranks and joined the defenders of Jerusalem to die with them a glorious death. He will learn of the rebellion of Bar Cochba, in A. D. 135, in which the sadly reduced remnants of the Jewish people lost nearly a million men in another endeavor to regain their independence. He will also learn that when the Jews had been politically crushed by superior strength, they yet remained unshakably faithful to the passionate pledge of their psalmist: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." The entire consciousness of the Jew and his whole mode of life and thought have been permeated, to an extent which finds no parallel in the history of mankind, with the hope and the longing for the restoration of his homeland. Three times a day the Jew has prayed for the reëstablishment of Zion. In joy and in sorrow he has remembered its past glory and dreamed of its future splendor. At midnight he sat down on the ground, putting ashes on his forehead to weep for the destruction of Jerusalem and to pray for its rebuilding. And when he went to his eternal rest, his eyes were covered with the dust that was brought from the holy ground.

I know full well what Palestine means to the Christians. I know what it means to the Russian peasants, for whom Mr. Gibbons shows justifiable sympathy. know also what Palestine means to the Mohammedans. But neither the Christians nor the Mohammedans can even remotely compare with the Jewish people in its undying affection for the land of its promise. To the Christians and Mohammedans Palestine is, after all, the land of the past, of a great and hallowed past, but, nevertheless, a past. To the Jew it is esssentially the land of the future. To Christianity and Islam Palestine represents a number of "holy places" which are connected in their memory with incidents in the life of their founders, and Zionism respects and scrupulously heeds.

these sentiments. But to the Jews Palestine has remained, as it is still called by them, Eretz Yisroel, "the Land of Israel."

Mr. Gibbons flies the facts directly in the face when he questions the loyalty of the Zionists of Zion, and declares that "in Zionist congresses delegates have frequently advocated making the United States 'the promised land,'" or that "Zionist congresses have discussed seriously setting up Zion in other places than Palestine." I have attended many of the Zionist congresses in person, and have read carefully the proceedings of every one of them, but I can not think of a single fact that would give Mr. Gibbons even the shadow of a right to make that charge. Though Jews all over the world love the United States as the land which has carried into reality the ideals proclaimed by their lawgivers. and prophets thousands of years ago, and as the haven of refuge for many of their persecuted brethren, there has not been a single mention at the Zionist congresses of the United States in the rôle of a national center for the Jewish people.

When, at the Third Zionist Congress, in 1899, one of the Zionist delegates suggested that the Jews use the island of Cyprus as a stepping-stone to the Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, he was not permitted to proceed, and his resolution did not even come up for a vote. When at the Sixth Zionist Congress, in 1903, Dr. Herzl, under the effect of the terrible Kishinef pogroms, which had taken place a few weeks before, laid before the congress a communication of the British Government offering the Jews a Jewish commonwealth in Uganda, in East Africa, the Zionist delegates, despite Dr. Herzl's solemn declaration that Uganda should never and could never substitute Zion, and Dr. Nordau's masterly plea that Uganda was merely to serve as a Nachtasyl, refused to listen to their beloved and otherwise implicitly trusted leaders. Out of regard for the British Government and the motives which prompted their offer, the congress, after a memorably passionate debate, finally decided by a majority vote to grant the request of the Zionist leaders that a