A Founder Of Israel

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28820, 14 February 1959, Page 3

A Founder Of Israel

The Diaries of Theodor Herzl. Edited by Marvin Lowenthal. Gollanez. 486 pp. Index. To Theodor Herzl the present nation of Israel owes its origin. He it was who worked out the master plan and then took the first practical steps towards its realisation. It is true that he himself did not enter the promised land. He died in 1904 in early middle age. But he was one of those of whom d’Annunzio remarked. “Thou couldst make even salt bear fruit. Moreover thy spirit turns abundance springs up." Theodor Herzl was a Hungarian Jew born in - Budapest in 1860. After a legal education at the Univeratty of Vienna, he devoted him•elt to writing plays and to journalism. In both these fields his

auccesses were moderate; but it was soon obvious that, although he was not in the same street as his friend, Arthur Schnitzler, he had alight touch and an eye for what was topical The turning point came in 1891. The Viennese “Neue Freie Presse,” sent him to Paris •s itsco[respondent, and his career may be said to have begun. Paris in the nineties provided the political stimulus and the Political education he needed. General Boulanger had just flashed like a meteor across the sky. In I®2 came that appalling exposure of corruption in high places, tommed up as the Panama scandal. The Dreyfus affair was soon to follow. Anti-semitism influenced People of all classes—the gilded elegants of the Jockey Club, intellectuals like Maurice Barres, politicians of the stamp of Leon Bourgeois, the men and women in me street, who screamed “Judas! Traitor!” to Dreyfus on January 5, 1885. The Dreyfus affair was the turning Point in Herzl’s life. Here **» the great event that crystalled his views on anti-semitism •nd the future of the Jews. “If

•uch things could happen," he *«>te, “in republican, modern, ovilised France a century after •he Declaration of Human Rights, the Jews had better look to them•“Jos for salvation in a land of meir own making.” In this mood, Herzl, in his room •t the Hotel de Castille, took up “** pen and wrote with a flourish 5® the first page of a new notebook. “The Jewish State. Book The." That was the beginning of a ~ies of diaries from which the Pcesent volume has been compiled. _ the years that followed, jmjl’s plans for acquiring the homeland—he speedily Z?d upon Palestine and never ■••yed from this choice—took

him from one end of Europe to the other. He sacrificed his family life, his health, his patrimony, to realise his ideal. His first practical purpose was to buy Palestine from the Sultan of Turkey, whose debts, it was thought, might incline him to welcome such a plan. Influential and wealthy Jews in the great European capitals were sounded, men like Baron Maurice de Hirsh, the railroad magnate, and, of course, the fabulous Rothschilds. They would not help, and Herzl turned to the ordinary people in the shop, the synagogue and the ghetto. He sought to interest the great ones among the gentiles in his project. The Prince of Wales, he scornfully remarks, he could not interest.' His audience with Pope Pius X lasted 25 minutes. In spite of all' Herzl could say, the Pope remained unconcerned. He kept on “repeating ‘Non possumus’ until he dismissed us.” . In Germany, 'however, Herzl was much more successful

There was still something divine about a king in 1899. For a man like Herzl to gain an audience with the Grand Duke of Baden required weeks, months of scheming. That he should ever be able to enter the presence of the Kaiser was almost inconceivable. But Herzl achieved all these objects and wrote of his experiences with wonderful vividness.

I felt as though I had entered the magic forest where the fabulous unicorn is said to dwell. Suddenly there st6od before me a splendid woodland animal, with a single horn on its head. Its looks, however, surprised me less than the fact that It existed. I had previously imagined the appearance but not the actual breath and life of this creature. And my astonishment grew when the creature began to speak in a kindly human voice and said, "I am the fabled unicorn." The moment I came In, the. Kaiser looked at me steadily with his great sea-blue eyes. He has truly Imperial eyes. I have never seen such eyes: they mirror a remarkable soul, bold and seeking. It is evident, though, that he is not indifferent to the impression he makes on others, particularly the first impression. It will be seen that there was an imaginative side to Herzl which not even years of incessant business could destroy. But this intelligence had also a cutting edge. Here is Izzet Bey. “At last Izzet appeared in the evil eyes of a beast of prey and a genial grin.” Lord Rothschild receives this little tribute: “I hadn’t waited longer than a minute when his Lordship came in, a good-looking, AngloJewish old gentleman. We sat down at a table, facing each other, and he started to set out his stock of nonsense. It would sound like a rope-dancer’s patter iiA were W

to record all the silly stuff he rattled off with great assurance.” But, when Herzl had got to the stage of negotiating with the Rothchilds the sands were running out for him. The nervous energy he put into conference, the fervour of his oratory, the concentration he brought to the immediate matter in hand, all this had its effect on a- system severely tested by heart trouble. The end came half way through 1904 when he died of pneumonia. In the delirium of his last moments, “he presided again at the congress he had created, beating the bedquilt with a phantom gavel and calling out "Ad loca! Ad local” In his will, be asked that his body be buried in Vienna, next to that of his father, "to remain there until the Jewish people will carry my remains to Palestine.” Finally “on August 16, 1949, his coffin was flown to the State of Israel, and the next day laid to rest on' a ridge facing Jerusalem from the west and honoured with the name oi Mount HerzL*'