Die Welt

Appears every Friday.

Editorial Office and Administration: Vienna IX., Türkenstraße 9. Telephone No. 8803. Communications are to be addressed not to individual persons, but to the Editorial Office or the Administration: Vienna, IX., Türkenstraße 9. Unstamped letters are not accepted, and manuscripts are not returned. Advertising rates: the four-column petit line, 10 kr. Single numbers, 15 kr.

Subscription rates: Austria-Hungary: half-yearly 3 fl. = 6 Kr., yearly 6 fl. = 12 Kr.; for abroad: Germany yearly 13 Mk. 70 Pf., half-yearly 6 Mk. 85 Pf., England yearly 14 Shg., half-yearly 7 Shg., Russia yearly 7 R., half-yearly 3 R. 50 Kop., Switzerland, France, Italy, Turkey, Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, Egypt yearly 17 Frcs., half-yearly 8 Frcs. 50 Cts., America yearly 3 Doll. 40.

No. 34. | Vienna, 26 August 1898. | Second Year.

To our Friends!

The next number of our paper (No. 35) will appear in enlarged compass, with the detailed Congress report and illustrations.

We shall arrange for a larger printing, but can nevertheless take account only of those orders which reach us in good time, that is to say, by Wednesday, 31 August.

The Administration.

The Congress.

For the second time the representatives of the Jewish people are assembling at Basle. To us, who last year brought the first World Congress of the Zionists into being amid difficulties without number — to us the occasion brings a solemn and also an anxious mood. For a work laboriously begun is to be carried further, and not only to be built upon, but what has been begun is also to be preserved from destruction.

This year we have comparatively less need than last year to guard ourselves against misunderstandings on the part of non-Jews. It has, on the whole, become known everywhere what the Zionists want and of what nature the gathering at Basle is. Last year we still had to protect ourselves in advance against the most foolish suppositions. We had to say expressly that we do not wish to conclude any international league for the combating of our Christian fellow-citizens, and that neither do we mean to set up an organisation which is to span the globe and make it subservient to Jewish influence. This year we assuredly have no further need of such declarations. A man would have to be deliberately intent upon telling the truth if he came forward with such imputations. It is by now known everywhere that the Zionist Congress is merely the place of a public discussion which seeks, by loyal means, to remove a distress felt on many sides, the extraordinary distress of an entire people.

At the first Congress these deliberations took place with an earnestness and a dignity fitted to awaken the sympathy of wider circles for us. There were no confused, impetuous speeches; the complaints about the condition of our brethren, in so many places unhappily desolate, were without rancour, but also without maudlin lamentation. Whoever followed without prejudice the debates of the Jews assembled at Basle had to say to himself that every single man imposed upon himself a seemly reserve befitting the place and the occasion. Every member of the Congress felt that what was here at stake was the founding of an institution of infinite importance for the whole nation, and that the representatives of the so much assailed Jewish people, above all others, must observe a blameless demeanour in public assembly and debate. Thus, still without any formal rules of business, without any of the disciplinary means that so often become necessary in other deliberating bodies, a truly good tone established itself unconstrainedly at the Congress in Basle. Out of this voluntary submission to the law of the assembly — a law not prescribed at all, but only felt with equal strength by all — arose those fine and fruitful debates which will be to the perpetual honour of the first Zionist Congress. Certain differences of principle there were, to be sure; but they were brought forward in a seemly manner, without personal attacks, and without giving to those outside the ugly spectacle of discord among brethren. From all this arose the grand, unforgettable general mood of the Congress, which contributed so much to raising the standing of our movement and to spreading it throughout all the world.

A year has passed since the last word of the fundamental Congress of Basle died away. It was full of toil and care for the administrators of Zionist affairs appointed by the Congress. They have worked to the best of their powers, and will now render account to the Congress and ask for their discharge. We do not wish here to anticipate the report, whose details the Congress will discuss; but this much may nevertheless be said, that it was a year of mighty extension and strengthening of the Zionist idea. The movement was consolidated and acquired a considerable number of important organs. All this did not come about of itself, but was accomplished amid difficulties of many kinds. The whole administration was set up in an orderly, duly accounted manner,