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‘And do you trust the P.P.P.?’ his companion asked him. ‘I tell you, Nathan, that only in the Progressive Democratic Party, with its belief in the equality of all nationalities—-‘

‘If you want a Party free from anti-Semites,’ David intervened desperately, ‘you must join the Samoo—-‘

‘I fear you will get no recruits here,’ interrupted the Bundist, not unkindly. He added with a sneer: ‘These gentlemen of the P.P.P. and the P.P.N. and the P.P.D. are all good Poles.’

‘Good Poles!’ echoed David no less bitterly. ‘And the Poles voted en bloc to keep every Jewish candidate out of the Duma.’

‘Even so we must be better Poles than they,’ sublimely replied the member of the P.P.P. ‘We are joining even the Clerical Parties of the Right for the good of our country. And now that the Party of National Concentration—-‘

‘Go to the Labour Parties,’ advised the P.D. ‘There you may perchance find sturdy young men with the necessary Ghetto taint.’ Of the four great Labour Parties, he proceeded to recommend the P.S.D. as the most promising for David’s purposes. ‘Not the Bolshewiki faction,’ he added, ‘but the Menshewiki. Recruits might also be found in the Proletariat or the P.P.S.—-‘

‘No, I’ve tried the P.P.S.,’ said David. ‘But at any rate, gentlemen, since you must all see that the defence of our own lives is no undesirable object, a little contribution to our funds—-‘

A violent chorus of protest broke out. It was scarcely credible that only four men were speaking. All explained elaborately that they had their own Party Funds, and what a tax it was to run their candidates for the Duma, not to mention their Party Organ.

‘You see,’ said the Bundist, ‘your only chance lies with the men of no Party, who have only their own bourgeois pleasures.’

‘Are there such?’ asked David eagerly.

A universal laugh greeted this inquiry.

‘Alas, too many!’ everybody told him. ‘Our people are such individualists.’

‘But where are these individualists?’ cried David desperately.

As if in answer, the bovine proprietor, encouraged by the laughter, crept in again.

‘You still here!’ he murmured to David, taken aback.

‘Yes, but if you’ll give me a subscription for Jewish Self-Defence—-‘

‘Jewish Emancipation!’ cried the fur-dealer. ‘Why didn’t you say so at first?’ He put his hand in his pocket. ‘That’s my Party–or rather the National Group in it, the Anti-Zionist faction.’

The stern Bundist laughed. ‘No, he doesn’t mean he’s a J.E. even of the other faction.’

His father-in-law took his hand out of his pocket.

David cast a rebuking glance at the Bundist. ‘Why did you interfere? Perhaps my way may prove the shortest to Jewish Emancipation.’

His hearers smiled a superior smile, and the fur-dealer shook his head. ‘I belong also to the Promotion of Education Party–I am for peaceful methods,’ he announced.

‘So I perceived,’ said David drily.

To be rid of him, the Bundist gave him the address of a man who kept aloof from Polish politics–a bourgeois cousin of his, Belchevski by name, who might just as well be killed off in the Samooborona.

But even Belchevski turned out to be a Territorialist. David imprudently told him he had seen his fellow-Territorialist Grodsky, who had half promised—-

‘Associate with a brainless, bumptious platform-screamer!’ he screamed. ‘He’s worse than the hysterical Zionists. It is a territory we need, not Socialism.’

‘I agree. But even more do we need Self-Defence.’

‘The only Self-Defence is to leave Russia for a land of our own.’

‘Five and a quarter million of us? Why, if two ships–one from Libau for the north, and one from Odessa for the south–sailed away every week, each bearing two thousand passengers, it would take over a quarter of a century. And by that time a new generation of us would have grown up.’

The Territorialist looked uneasy.

‘Besides,’ David continued, ‘what new country could receive us at the rate of two hundred thousand a year? It would be a cemetery, not a country.’

The Territorialist smiled disdainfully. ‘Why didn’t you say at first you were a bourgeois? The unconditional historic necessity which has created the I.T.O. may drive at what pace it will; enough that as soon as our autonomous land is ready to receive us, I intend to be in the first shipload.’