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The Fourth Zionist Congress.

Speech of Dr. Alexander Marmorek.

(Delivered at the afternoon sitting of the first day.)

Ladies and Gentlemen!

To me has fallen the painful and difficult task of rendering you a report upon the condition of our Roumanian brethren. We do not wish, upon this our tribune, to indulge in empty protests and lamentations. Our lamentations cannot reach the guilty, nor can our protests alter their manner of acting. We would rather force back our deep grief and, with a calm mind and objectively, inquire into the cause of a catastrophe which, since the days of the Spanish drama, has hardly seen its like in the history of a people so rich in sufferings, and likewise depict for you the mournful present. Men who do not occupy themselves professionally with Jewish affairs have indeed foretold that down yonder in the East a volcano was near to eruption; but the ghastly truth, whereof the whole world is witness with us, surpasses the most terrible apprehensions. With the waves of the poor emigrants the Jewish misery rolls anew over the whole earth, shakes the Western Jews out of their childish slumber, and, against their will, draws the tighter that bond of national unity which they pertly strive to deny.

Zionism did not await the hour of mourning before turning its attention to these most unhappy of men; but now that this hour is come, it doubles its powers, multiplies its exertions tenfold, and repeats withal the warning call for unity among the scattered sons of our people, for common help, for brotherly standing together, in order to alleviate the present suffering and to face, armed, that which is to come, and which, alas, will come. But the deeper the representatives of Zionism penetrate into the abyss of this misery, the more are they shaken by the tremendous contrasts which have there revealed themselves in the character of our people: on the one hand steadfastness, faithful national consciousness, true brotherly love; on the other, however, a cowardly slackness which raised itself to an effort of strength only when it was a question of keeping the unfortunate at a distance, of thrusting them back into their comfortless misery; shameless brutality towards the weak and the oppressed, nay, treachery against one's own flesh — manifestations which have set a brand upon the Jewish brow. (Cries of "Shame!")

How comes it, Ladies and Gentlemen, that in Roumania the old plague of the Jews has suddenly grown to this height and has led to the events of our own days? How comes it that a people languishing in dull poverty, seized by a frenzied horror, by panic terror, forsakes all — the land of its birth, the graves of its forefathers, the scenes of its youthful memories, the habits grown dear to it — to go forth to meet an uncertain future, an economic misery perhaps not less than the present, hunted, driven out, scattered? If these Roumanian Jews, who from time immemorial have had to suffer so grievously in their fatherland, morally, bodily and economically, suddenly grasp the wanderer's staff in such numbers, then something extraordinary must have come to pass, which not merely a few, but thousands upon thousands, not merely the poor and the beggars, but the well-to-do also, not merely the small artisans