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No. 42. | Vienna, 18 October 1901. | Fifth Year

A Further Advance.

* As one gathers from the official communications of the party leadership, the Jewish Colonial Bank has entered upon its capacity for action. After the number of subscriptions had in these last months reached 330,000 pounds and the paid-up capital 229,200 pounds, it has quite lately been possible, chiefly through the accession of a number of firms of our own persuasion, to raise the remaining 20,800 pounds. Therewith the moment of capacity for action foreseen in the statutes has come. We behold the success of years of pains and labour. The first instrument of our activity is completed. It waits to be used.

But precisely now it is needful to mark out, for the time immediately before us, the limits of the Bank's activity. The capacity for action has a great significance: it is "the formal readiness for the conclusion of contracts". It represents, as it were, a latent force which may at any moment come into appearance. In the development of the Jewish Colonial Bank it is that stage in which the Bank stands for the first time before the outer world as a consolidated whole, as a finished organism. Zionism needed, beside its representation by persons, a representation by organised figures.

With the power of contracting, so laboriously won, we must deal cautiously. We may not employ our moneys so long as we are not entirely clear as to that mode of employment which is unconditionally and in the larger sense the most fruitful.

There have in these last months been brought before the directors of the Jewish Colonial Bank various projects and proposals, which were meant to serve the purpose of entering upon the best possible business. The Board of Directors has sifted all the suggestions that came in, and has examined them closely and without prejudice as to their conformity with the programme, their practicability, and their profitableness. But for the time immediately before us it is not intended, and cannot be intended, to undertake anything whatsoever. To the Jewish Colonial Bank there will fall pre-eminently the task of hoarding. It is therefore not to be expected that the Jewish Colonial Bank will be seen coming forward actively with enterprises; rather will it work in the same manner as hitherto. It will gather itself together. The money will be invested with every security. For it is — and this cannot to-day be repeated often enough — in the concurrent opinion of the Board of Directors and of the Board of Supervision not the task of the Bank to earn as rapidly as possible. It is to proceed with the utmost security, even if only a moderate dividend be in prospect for the next years. The Jewish Bank will surround itself with ever firmer walls. It is to form the reservoir in which the money of the Zionists gathers. Standing there calm and secure, it is to be acknowledged in every place.

We have drawn the main lines of its future. The time of building up begins. And to those who have already done much, but above all to those who have as yet done little, it must be said: your real work also is only now beginning. We have set our Bank its aims. Strain every power that it may attain them! If the Bank is to open intensively and fruitfully that action whose possibility is now given it, it must be strong. Create for it that strength! You can do it. For "the financial efficiency of the 'Jewish Colonial Bank' grows with every single share that is sold".