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No. 23. | Vienna, 8 June 1900. | Fourth Year

The Fourth Zionist Congress.

✡ The Fourth Congress has been summoned to London. For three years in succession our deliberations have taken place at Basle, and although we are full of gratitude towards that beautiful free city, in which we were received so kindly alike by the authorities and by the population, the leaders of the movement have nevertheless believed that this year we ought to go to London.

In these three years the participants in the Congresses have made the gratifying observation that those who were present at our deliberations, Christians as well as Jews, were won over to our cause almost without exception. Whoever comes to know Zionism at first hand, from his own observation, yields himself captive to it: that is a fact confirmed by many examples. At the Congresses one sees and hears that we are striving after something good, something just, something great. That has an irresistibly winning power with all honest people. Nor has it been a rare thing for opponents of our movement, who had come to Basle in order to scoff and to procure fresh arguments against us, to be converted upon the spot and to depart as ardent adherents of the Jewish national ideal.

Under such circumstances it could not but commend itself to exert the winning power of the Congress upon a larger field than has hitherto been the case. London, the city of five millions, is an immense centre of intellectual, political and economic currents. He who speaks to London speaks to the whole English world of culture. Speeches find quite another echo there than in a Swiss town. The press of London has the mightiest circle of readers upon the whole inhabited earth; and if to-day we remember with deep gratitude the goodwill and the excellent objectivity which our Congresses met with from the Basle newspapers, then the hope is perhaps not unfounded that the great London journals also will meet us in like manner under the impression of the facts of the Congress. Thereby an infinite deal would be gained for the world-wide publicity of our movement. Since what we purpose is just, we do not shun publicity, but rather gladly seek it out.

Already a very remarkable sign is to be noted. One of the leading anti-Zionist papers, the "Jewish Chronicle" in London, greets the news that the Fourth Congress is to be held in that city with a thoroughly friendly article. We are far from those times when a storm went through the Jewish community of Munich, when we wished to summon the first Zionist Congress to Munich. The Bavarian Jews scared the Congress away out of Bavaria.

We wrote at that time in this paper:

"We cherish the firm confidence that the course of the Congress will fill public opinion with sympathy for our cause. It is indeed not the affair of the Jews alone when calm men attempt to solve the Jewish question in a peaceful and honourable manner, and frankly beg the co-operation of all political factors in this work. And we hope further that this Congress, which is to-day frightened away from Munich, will in time to come redound to the historic honour of every city that harbours it."

Now, a paper which has in truth never spared us Zionists, which has unhappily at times also granted our opponents room for the incorrect rendering of facts — evidently without knowing that they were incorrect — such a paper bids the Zionist Congress welcome in London. That is a symptom not to be underrated, and we record it with that brotherly readiness which we have kept in reserve — even in the days of the hottest strife — for our Jewish opponents, who are yet to be better informed. When the "Chronicle" further opines that the contact of the English Jews with their non-English brethren, brought about by the Congress, will redound to the profit of both parties, we associate ourselves with that expectation from a full heart. We go even further, and believe that the non-English Jews will have by far the greater gain from this meeting, in that they the good English forms of intercourse, the loyalty of all discussions, the advantages of a ripe