This item originally appeared in the September 9, 1897, issue.

From a short essay on “Nationaljudenthum und Zionismus,” in Die Kritik (Berlin) for August 7, we learn that the movement for the reestablishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine has thus far resulted in the foundation, within the last ten years, of twenty-six flourishing villages, with a population of 9,000 peasants–a notable instance, probably without parallel in history, of a mercantlle city population turning suddenly into hard-working tilIers of the soil. The Jewish contributor to the Kritik attributes the success of the movement to the unheard-of idealism of which hls fellow-believers are capable, and to the enthusiasm with which the youth of his race has received the new ideas. These ideas of Jewish nationalism and of Zionism have both sprung from the conviction, which the last few decades have ripened, that a final assimilation of the Hebrews with the nations of western Europe is a practical impossibility.