Die Welt

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No. 48. | Vienna, 30 November 1900. | Fourth Year

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After the Election.

The Vienna Zionists and their allies have won a great electoral success: two seats fell to members of the old Communal Board whom we too had placed upon our list, because they regard our endeavours with sympathy. Five seats the Communal Board retained by the slender majority of some 200 to 400 votes; two seats we won for the candidates of our own list. The elections of the district delegates to the Communal Board naturally had a similar result. In several districts our list was victorious; in others our candidates go to the second ballot with the prospect of certain success; in the remaining districts the official list won by a slight majority.

If one would rightly estimate the greatness of our success, one must above all keep before one's eyes the fact that the Zionists entered the electoral struggle for the first time. How many advantages the "official" party had over us! We took the field equipped with nothing whatever but our vigorous idea, which was to win voters for our candidates. Yet how greatly has our Zionist thought been misunderstood, disparaged and distorted from the very beginning! Against how many prejudices of the ignorant and the ill-disposed had we to contend! And step by step we had first to overcome the fearful power of habit and of tradition.

The Zionist thought has once again proved its wonderful power of winning men. Our opponents in the electoral struggle did not make the matter easy for us. Injudicious friends of the old Communal Board thought to render us incapable of fighting by befouling our one weapon, the Zionist thought. But our sword is a good sword, and proof against all uncleanness.

He who is truly the victor is known above all by his capacity for forgiving. Perhaps, had the issue not fallen out as it has fallen out, we should still have answered many an assault of the last days of the election with unsparing sharpness. The strongest words would not have been strong enough for us to avenge that treacherous onslaught which certain persons, very cunningly but very little chivalrously, ventured against Zionism at the eleventh hour, out of that peculiar feeling of security which all assailants may have who know that the assailed has not even the time in which to defend himself. In the language of the duelling code this is called an "afterblow." Whoever strikes such an "afterblow" has staked the honour of the sabre-encounter.

But the electoral battle is at an end, and our thought has come forth from the struggle strong and pure. So much the more easily can we forget the affronts of the last days of the election.

With calm eye we will now survey the situation which results from our electoral success.

Almost half the electors declared themselves on Sunday for the Jewish Nationals. Were there in the Jewish Community that proportional system of election which has been introduced in several countries, then, according to this ratio of votes, some half of the seats on the Communal Board would fall to us. And in this it must be taken into account that the core of our following, the poorer strata of the Jewish population, has no vote at all.

If, then, the Vienna Communal Board really desires to be the representation of the whole community, it must pay to the wishes and endeavours of the Zionists at least that regard, must give to their proposals of reform that attention, which have hitherto been accorded to the non-Zionist portion of the community. The Communal Board is under the obligation, if not the juridical, then certainly the moral one — since so large a part of the electorate has declared for Zionism — to approach the Zionist endeavours and to make itself acquainted with them, but above all to examine the communal programme of the Zionists and to turn it to practical account. During the electoral campaign we uttered our grievances and our wishes loudly and decidedly, and the