preëminently to a zealous and tireless advocacy of the uniting of the already existing Jewish colonies in Palestine with those who until now have given them their aid and who of late have inclined towards the withdrawal of their support from them. The Zionists have also prepared the way for founding factories in the Holy Land, which will give employment to the Jewish workmen there, and have assured, by according a yearly subvention, the future existence of the model Hebraic school in Jaffa, which was about to close its doors for want of funds. They take care that the existing and promising beginnings of a Jewish colonization shall be looked after and maintained till the movement will be possible on a large scale.

"(2.) The organization and knitting together of the whole Jewish community by the means of proper local and general institutions in accordance with the law of the different countries."

The Zionist Jewish community is at present organized in both hemispheres in about nine hundred societies, which display great activity. In the matter of organization covering the whole of Jewdom, Zionism possesses national federations of its societies,—the "great" and the "smaller committee of action," and the congress which maintains a permanent secretarial office in Vienna. The cost of this apparatus is covered by the voluntary yearly offerings of the Zionists, to which offerings the name of the old Jewish coinage is applied, and which accordingly are known as "shekels,"—their amount being in America forty cents, and in Western lands a unit of the coinage (one mark, one franc, one shilling, etc.). The payment of the shekel gives the right of vote for the congress. Zionism possesses its official organ, "Die Welt," published in German in Vienna. Its ideas are further set forth in about forty other periodicals in the Hebrew, German, Russian, Polish, Italian, English, French, and Roumanian languages, and in the Jewish-German and Judeo-Spanish jargons. Its American organ is the periodical, "The Maccabæan." It has founded numerous schools, Toynbee Halls, and educational institutes, and has recently begun to acquire a share in the administration of the Jewish communities, in order to devote their resources, more than has heretofore been the case with the anti-national or unthinking leaders, to the promoting of national Jewish instruction, education, and culture.

"(3.) Strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national consciousness."

The Zionist societies use every effort that the members and the Jewish masses in general may know the history of their nation, and become acquainted with the sacred and profane literature in the Hebrew tongue. They teach the Jews to hold their heads high, to be proud of their descent, and to despise the Anti-Semitic lies, calumnies, and insults. They care, in the measure of their strength, for the amelioration of the hygiene of the Jewish proletariat, for its economic improvement by means of association and solidarity, for well-directed education of children, and for the instruction of the women. They give the young students a goal for their efforts and an ideal in life. They preach the duty of leading a faultless, spiritual life, the rejection of a crude materialism, into which the assimilation Jews, on account of the want of a worthy ideal, are only too apt to sink, and strict self-control in word and deed. They found athletic societies in order to promote the long neglected physical development of the rising generation. They give a new impulse to the celebration of Jewish historical feasts and memorial days. In many instances they even make themselves outwardly conspicuous by wearing insignia. The Zionist regards it as contemptible to conceal his nationality. He wishes to be recognized as a Jew, and as he always behaves himself in a natural, unaffected way, plays no comedy of imitation, wishes to deceive nobody about his extraction and identity, intrudes upon no one under a false flag, his relations to his Christian neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, truer, more frank and dignified than those of the assimilation Jew, who makes painful and useless efforts, which disgust every Christian possessing a modicum of good taste, to hide the fact that he is a Jew.

"(4.) Preparatory steps to obtain the consent of the governments necessary to achieve the aims of Zionism."

Several of the governments whose opinion will eventually be decisive in the matter have been, by means of memorials, reliably informed of the aims of Zionism; and there has been no want of very important encouragements and promising expressions of sympathy with its tendencies.

For the moment the committee of action is trying to obtain from Turkey a charter for the colonization of such land in Palestine as can be disposed of, and which at present is lying waste, and for the opening of its neglected resources. The exploiting of such a charter is not possible without considerable sums of money. In order to be armed financially for the time that Turkey will accord such a charter, the second Zionist congress (1898) decided to found a national Jewish bank institute, the "Jewish Colonial Trust," with its headquarters in London. This resolution was carried out the following year (1899). The bank has been brought into being. Its capital in shares is two million pounds sterling. It can, by the statutes, start business when one eighth of this capital, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling, has been actually paid up. This has already been done.

Another financial instrument of Zionism is the "National Fund," created by the fifth congress (1901), which is raised by voluntary subscription and which is to amount to two hundred thousand pounds sterling. The half of this sum is to be devoted to the purchase of land in Palestine, the other half to remain an intangible common property of the Jewish people, which will by means of compound interest and gifts continually increase, so that at important junctures the interest may be used for great national purposes.

V.

I have taken pains to show, in as brief and as objective a manner as possible, what Zionism is, what it desires to do, how it came into being, and how it has developed up to the present. I have also repeatedly mentioned that its most violent opponents have arisen from the Jewish community.

Many of them content themselves with libeling and insulting the leaders of the Zionist movement. This kind of hostility they who are vilified can afford to despise. Men who, without expecting the slightest advantage to themselves, out of the purest, most unselfish love for the unhappy ones of their race, out of reverence for their forefathers, out of a general spirit of philanthropy, have made the greatest sacrifices in money, time, strength, and health, in order to elevate their people and to free millions of innocent, persecuted men from the bitterest misery, have the right smilingly to shrug their shoulders when irresponsible fanatics or pitiable paid scribes reproach them with self-interest or with vanity.

Besides these opponents of a lower type, there are others who do not merely lie and slander, but also seek to argue. They delight in comparing the apostles of Zionism with the false Messiahs like the notorious Sabbathai Levi, who have appeared only too often in Jewish history, and who have always done the greatest mischief to the Jewish people they have deceived. To compare Zionism with the vagaries or impostures of false Messiahs of the Sabbathai Levi kind, presupposes great foolishness or great bad faith. Zionism is precisely characterized by the complete absence of any mystical element.