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No. 18. Vienna, May 3, 1901. Vol. V.

For purposes of agitation, older numbers of the years 1899 and 1900 are supplied on remittance of the postage (for Austria and Germany, per 5-kilo parcel, about 100 numbers, 72 Heller).

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What is the Purpose of the Delegation of the Russian "Chowewe Zion"?

By B. Goldberg (Vilna).

I.

As is well known, the Odessa general meeting of the Russian "Chowewe Zion" resolved to send a delegation of the best friends of Zion to Paris. Unhappily the task of this delegation has been set forth in nearly the whole of the Jewish press so obscurely, in part so contradictorily, in part even downright incorrectly, that a clarification of this important, perhaps even historically significant step has become a commandment of necessity. May these lines furnish a small contribution towards it.

If it has been asserted that this delegation of the best forces of the Russian friends of Zion is betaking itself to Paris in order to beg of the Ica a definite sum — one spoke of 1—4 million francs — for the colonies, that is decidedly incorrect. The untenableness of this assumption follows not merely from the fact that the personages to whom the honourable mission has been entrusted would not lend themselves to such mendicancy, but quite especially from the fact that at the Odessa meeting it was repeatedly emphasised that the untenable situation in Palestine is by no means to be ascribed to a lack of material means. Far rather is the contrary the case: the all too lavish abundance of millions is one of the chief causes of the present crisis. Notwithstanding the most ideal motives of Baron Rothschild, notwithstanding his love for the Holy Land, this superfluity of grants on the part of the Baron, and in part also on the part of the "Chowewe Zion", has wrought much mischief. It is unhappily a fact that of the 30—40 million francs which, thanks to the high-mindedness of the Baron, were expended upon the colonies, only a third, perhaps even only a fourth, has been productively invested; the remainder, or better said the far greater part, has either been squandered wholly uselessly upon buildings of luxury, upon the most senseless projects, and so forth, or was of great profit to individual persons who, under that original administration, had known excellently well how to safeguard their private interests.

Neither is it correct that the delegation aims only at a kind of demonstration of protest against the all too harsh procedure of the Ica. No; for that alone one need not have taken so much trouble; the dozen accidental wielders of power in the Ica could be exposed so easily, their persons placed in the right light so readily, that in truth the weighty step of the Odessa meeting would not have been needed at all. For such an exposure the material has grown so mighty, not only in Palestine but everywhere throughout the whole Jewish world, the facts are so numerous, so eloquent and so telling, that, had the intention merely existed, one or two persons could have accomplished it with the best success.

Nor, again, is it accurate that the delegation has made it its task to come to the aid of this or that colony, to obtain from the Ica a support for this or that group of colonists or labourers.

No, something far more important is at stake: it is to be carried through once and for all that all the colonisation societies shall at length make an end of the hitherto existing system of directing the Palestinian work of colonisation from Paris, London, Odessa, or any other point outside Palestine. The best and finest project, one that might do the greatest honour to a Paris expert, presents itself, in its practical application upon the spot, under other climatic and geological conditions and in a wholly peculiar milieu of culture and economy, for the most part as a chimera, and leads, if its execution be pressed by the aid of material predominance, to the most injurious consequences.