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No. 47. Vienna, 22 November 1901. Fifth Year

To the Friends of our Paper.

We have of late been repeatedly requested to send out specimen numbers of our paper. We are gladly prepared to comply with these requests in ample measure, and therefore beg our friends to send us trustworthy, plainly written and exact addresses (of private persons, corporations and public places). To these there will then be sent, gratis and post-free, all the December numbers, which appear in an edition of 10,000 copies.

Advertisements for the four agitation numbers, whose circulation will be certified before a notary, are already being accepted.

This year's Maccabean Festival Number will appear on 5 December in double compass, with choice literary and musical contributions from our most eminent collaborators and several illustrations. Single price 40 Heller. Firm orders are already being accepted. The Administration.

Our Muster.

The festal days of a new Congress, awaited with zealous joy by the freedom-loving Jews, are close at hand. It is the New Year's Day of our political era. At such a season it is the retrospect that traditionally occupies our thoughts, and the prospect, the hope, that keeps our spirits high. And how should it be otherwise? We Zionists attend Freedom and Truth upon their march; we help to fight their battles. That the weakness of our age carries the road over marshy ground may indeed delay our victory, but never arrest it. The retrospect, to be sure — the perception of this weakness among the Jews also — somewhat dims our joy; for the long-past ages beheld another state of things. More vigorously and more unanimously than we, the Jews once desired freedom and a fatherland. When the Roman Julian permitted the scattered people to return and to rebuild the Temple, he threw their multitudes into a feverish activity; the most distinguished Jews dug earth for the building of the Temple with spades of precious metal, and their women carried the sand in the folds of their costliest garments to the workmen. Later the ardent patriots of Judah, whom their failure has appointed Messiahs of the Lie, led millions. We, however, press forward far more slowly, for an obvious reason. From those times until to-day hatred — nay, madness, raving frenzy — has raged against our forefathers. And though Jewry is still defiantly alive, palsied we nevertheless are. The blind fear of long-reigning impotence has broken the backbone, the support of every upright people: the sense of national freedom.

We Zionists came as physicians and nurses; we counselled and entreated, instructed and urged, and slowly the sick body raised itself, and under our care there grew again within it the cord of life and gave it strength and will. The cure would come more swiftly, to be sure, did not so very many political quacks and charlatans ply their trade within Jewry. With every kind of embittered enmity they defended their prestige against us. Their failure and their decline is an indication of the compelling power of our idea. It was a combat with unequal weapons, poisoned and burnished. Against means of every sort and morality we set nothing but truth and enlightenment, and ring after ring formed itself upon the tree of freedom that we planted.

Far, far reach its branches. All the earth is full of the Jewish will to freedom. Where there are Jews, there is Zionism. Of the European states we will not speak, as being a matter of course; the Jews of the other quarters of the globe, too, have long been in great part our fellow-combatants. Far away on the Amazon, scattered brethren, when they received the first tidings, wrote a letter full of Spanish ardour and grandezza and enrolled themselves; in India's coast towns are our federations; South Africa harbours numerous brethren of our persuasion, and in Australia too we have gained a firm footing. Long, long since have we the love of mockery that prevailed against our first appearance,