Die Welt

Appears every Friday.

Editorial Office and Administration: VIENNA IX., Türkenstrasse No. 9. Telephone 14199.

Communications are to be addressed not to individual persons, but to the Editorial Office or the Administration: Vienna, IX., Türkenstrasse No. 9. Unstamped letters are not accepted, and manuscripts are not returned. Office hours of the Editorial Office: Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 3 to 4 o'clock.

Rates for advertisements: The four-column petit line, 20 Heller. The advertisement section closes Tuesday evening. Single numbers 30 Heller.

Subscription rates: Austria-Hungary: yearly 12 Kronen, half-yearly 6 Kronen. 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 Ct.

No. 36. | Vienna, 6 September 1901. | Fifth Year

We beg that expired subscriptions may be renewed in good time, so that no interruption in delivery may follow. Our representation for Russia has again been undertaken by the publishing house "Achiasaf" in Warsaw, Twarda 6, whereof we hereby inform our subscribers in Russia.

Remittances of money are most cheaply made in registered letters. In place of copecks, Russian postage stamps are also accepted.

The Congress Tribune.

We open a tribune to the fifth Congress. Not merely to the practical questions that stand upon its agenda and are no longer anything new to us, but also to the theoretical problems that find their expression in them. What a web of fine and significant matters of insight is, for example, that complex of ideas which we call "questions of spiritual elevation"!

Why and wherein does the Jewish people stand in need of elevation? And what are the sense, the purpose, the limit and the instrument of this elevation? What has happened hitherto that we might set before this activity of ours? And what of a civilising disposition of the all-too-Europeans, directed quite elsewhere? And what has been practised for years by old Zionists, naively and half unconsciously, now and then no doubt with programmatic beginnings as well? What is the deep historical genesis of these questions? What name shall we give to the great history of the sufferings of the Jewish spirit, and of what martyrdoms, what storms, what tragedies of the will are we the heirs, when we speak of spiritual elevation? What are our words about spiritual elevation at all? Are they not merely the conscious expression of a development which is accomplished independently of our influence, and is it given to us only to record the mighty striding of the people? Or should they not rather be the living concentration which gathers up what is happening and stirs new creation? To be sure, it is not we who conquer new worlds for the Hebrew language and bestow upon the people the writings of its own homeland as an eternal possession; it is not we who set monuments of national art before thousands of shining human eyes, and it is not granted to us to describe, to analyse, to explain the whole vast and wondrous being of our people. All this is done by the creators, our brothers. But we utter what has been created, we announce, quite softly, what is to be created, and therein lies a directive. And all this greatness, all this power, all this beauty we would make familiar and conscious to the people; together with the consciousness of its strength we would first give it the right use thereof; we would lend it the moral firmness of one who waits calmly, of one made ready for the highest: this we call national education, and this is our proper activity. In how far this too must necessarily be no more than a means and may never rise above the rank of one, and how the tasks and methods of a national education so conceived are to be determined in detail — these also are questions that require a searching discussion.

One may dig deeper still. For to-day let these hints, fetched from a single, though certainly an essential, example, suffice. They show sufficiently how greatly a living exchange of opinion, deepened in substance and in person, upon the fundamental questions of the fifth Congress and of our movement in general is needed. Whoever is a Zionist believes that the idea shapes reality. No Zionist will therefore call in question the significance of an honest theoretical understanding. To this understanding we open a tribune in the columns of our paper. For admission to this tribune it shall naturally not be this or that tendency of thought that decides, but only the objective worth of what is said, the compass and the depth of the view. We hope that there will arise from it a discussion which has something over that of the Congress: calm, deepened objectivity, a clear separation and confrontation of the problems, a level that cannot be dragged down. We hope from this discussion much clarification and much healing for the Zionist idea, and for the Zionist movement as well.

I remarked at the outset that this tribune of ours shall be devoted to the practical questions of the Congress as well. This will be essentially made easier by a resolution of the Greater Actions Committee. The rapporteurs are, namely, to make known their fundamental theses in this paper a suitable space of time before the Congress, so that a position may be taken toward them both in our columns and in the several societies and groups. To this significant exchange of opinion, however, we can even now prepare the way by anticipating the theoretical discussion. It is now to every one who has something to say,