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No. 39. Vienna, 25 September 1903 — 4 Tishri 5664. 7th Year.

Communication from the A.-C.

The Greater Actions Committee has unanimously resolved to recommend to those Zionists who are shareholders of the Jewish Colonial Bank that they place the dividend which this Bank has resolved to pay out at the disposal of the Actions Committee, for the purpose of covering the costs of the El-Arish Expedition, as well as of any further expeditions to Palestine, and also the costs of the Palestine Commission.

Dr. Herzl, Dr. Kahn, Leon Zolotkoff, J. de Haas, Dr. Bodenheimer, J. Moser, Dr. Kokesch, G. Belkowsky, I. Bernstein-Kohan, E. W. Tschlenow, I. S. Goldberg, S. I. Rabinowitz, Wl. Temkin, M. Scheinkin, Dr. Klee, Dr. H. Bruck, Dr. Jacobsohn, Dr. I. Sapir, J. Jasinowski, Dr. Farbstein, Dr. Moses.

The societies are requested, in accordance with these resolutions, to collect the coupons from their members and to deliver them to the Actions Committee in Vienna.

The End of Zionism.

What a joy! They can pronounce us dead once more.

In every key they have sung it to us these last weeks. Some with dignified gravity, weightily, from the pinnacle of their higher wisdom. A few lightly regretful, genteel words about good will, overrated strength, amiable enthusiasm, and whatever else the worn-out coins of speech may ring like when they are flung by hard, pen-callused hands at hollow heads. Others with that spiteful glee in which the petty and the base delight whenever they can cast a stone after something great and noble. The dullest and most pitiable, by delivering the ass's kick, which they are ever ready to deal out, in the daintiest manner at their command. Truly, were one to judge Zionism by these opponents, one would seldom be able to value it aright.

We neither will nor can repay them in the same coin. Every new idea has had to wage the struggle against prejudice and venerable nonsense, against sluggishness of thought and cherished comfort, against baseness and deep-rooted self-interest. Nor has this harmed it in the end; for only in struggle has it become conscious of its full strength, only in struggle has it been purified. Should it fare otherwise with Zionism? Thanks be to Fate! It stands in the fiercest struggle!

What, then, has stirred up the whole old-Liberal newspaper swamp with its Jewish-denominational offshoots; what has thrown into such agitation the undaunted champions of repellent progress-phrasemongering, and, as a matter of course, the poorest in spirit and most presumption-laden in understanding, the stalwart representatives of the blood-libel business? No small thing. That must be conceded. The Zionists have been offered a land for the Jewish people; it is proposed to guarantee them in that land an autonomy and full freedom to live out their life as a people. And the offer was made by — England. Quite apart from the fact that Russia, on the other hand, through her Minister, likewise gave assurances regarding the acquisition of Palestine.

That was, to be sure, a heavy blow to the manifold opponents of the Jewish national renaissance. Some, who hope to ruin us by their tactics of silence, bore with commendable consistency, in silence, the mighty refutation which the two government documents forced upon them. The others, who wished to speak, to speak the worst, writhed and twisted so as not to succumb to the weight of the facts. Then rescue came to them, as they believed.

A fairly considerable minority of the Zionist delegates, and not the least considerable among them, found the proposals unacceptable in this form. There ensued very earnest, often passionate debates, and indeed, when the English proposal was answered by the appointment of a commission for the purpose of dispatching an expedition to the land offered, even a walk-out by this minority.

Now the lever was at hand by which Zionism was to be lifted out of its framework. This absenting, though it lasted only a short time, the hope,