Die Welt

Published every Friday.

Editorial Office and Administration: VIENNA, IX., Türkenstrasse No. 9. Telephone 14.199.

Correspondence is to be addressed not to individuals but to the Editorial Office or Administration: Vienna, IX., Türkenstrasse 9. Unstamped letters are not accepted and manuscripts are not returned. Editorial office hours daily from 10—1/212 o'clock.

Advertising rates: according to the tariff on file. The advertising section closes on Tuesday evening. Single numbers 30 Heller.

Subscription rates: Austria-Hungary: yearly Kr. 12.—, half-yearly Kr. 6.—, quarterly Kr. 3.—. Abroad: Germany yearly Mk. 13.70, half-yearly Mk. 6.85, quarterly Mk. 3.45; England yearly Shg. 14.—, half-yearly Shg. 7.—, quarterly Shg. 3.10; Russia yearly R. 7.—, half-yearly R. 3.50, quarterly R. 1.75; Switzerland, France, Italy, Turkey, Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, Egypt yearly Frcs. 17.—, half-yearly Frcs. 8.50, quarterly Frcs. 4.25; America yearly Doll. 3.40, half-yearly Doll. 1.70, quarterly Doll. —.85

No. 42. Vienna, 14 October 1904. — 5 Marcheshvan 5665. 8th Year.

Philanthropy or National Movement?

Six Congresses have proclaimed to the world the substance and the aim of Zionism. At six Congresses, members of every class of Jewry have declared that they strive for the restoration of the Jewish people upon Jewish soil; and yet there are people who hold Zionism to be merely a charitable undertaking.

It is surprising that the gifted director of German policy, too, should be caught in this error. To be sure, he has far weightier things to do than to read the protocols of the Zionist Congresses, and his mistaken view of Zionism doubtless rests upon incorrect information from intermediaries.

Only through this fundamental error as to the nature of Zionism can one explain the utterances which Count Bülow, according to the "Neue Freie Presse"*), is said to have made to an interviewer concerning this movement. According to this interview, Count Bülow relates Zionism only to the distressed Jews of the East, and is of opinion: "That Zionism could at most induce the Jewish proletariat, but by no means the well-to-do and educated among the Jews of Europe, to emigrate to Palestine; that one cannot colonize with schnorrers; that he had seldom seen so unfruitful a land as Palestine; and that in his opinion salvation might sooner come to the Eastern Jews, despite the failures hitherto, through colonization in the Argentine than through a prospect towards the shores of the 'Dead Sea' guided more by sentimental romanticism and by no means by practical considerations."

Certainly, if one assumes that Zionism seeks only to procure bread for some or many distressed people of the East, then the view is intelligible that fertile Argentina is to be preferred to unfruitful Palestine, that sentimental romanticism has nothing to do with the matter, and that the well-to-do and educated take no part in such a colonization. But this is not so! Zionism is not a philanthropic but a national movement. It seeks not to procure bread for individual Jews, but to restore the Jewish people. It seeks not chiefly to rescue the Jews of the East from material want, but to liberate the whole Jewish people. To liberate them not only from material want, but from the still more grievous moral oppression; to liberate them from the specific hatred of the Jews, from the persecution of the Jews, from daily degradation, humiliation and insult.

It seeks — as has been said — nothing less than the restoration of the Jewish people upon Jewish soil. It seeks to give the descendants of the people which has outlived the Greeks and the Romans the possibility of living their lives after their own fashion in their own land, unhindered by religious and racial hatred; of creating a new culture in the ancient homeland according to their own peculiar gifts.

Here, to be sure, "sentimental romanticism," which may often do harm in a mere question of bread, is of great use; here, to be sure, no other land than Palestine can well come into question; and here surely no one will doubt that we have educated and well-to-do men among us who warm to such an ideal.

The Imperial Chancellor surely knows what great political value in the life of nations belongs to sentimental romanticism, however harmful it may often be in questions of bread. What, indeed, since there have been settled nations, is patriotism but a sentimental romanticism of peoples — a sentiment which makes nations bring the greatest sacrifices to save the threatened fatherland, to raise up again the one destroyed? A sentiment which contributed not a little to the unification of Germany and Italy, to the creation of modern Greece. He who has not this sentiment, for him it is ubi bene ibi patria.

This sentiment for Palestine, however, has a special value among the Jews. It alone makes it possible that a great part of the Jews, who for two thousand years have been estranged from agriculture, can again devote themselves to it with success. According to the interviewer's account, the Imperial Chancellor himself admits that failures have hitherto been recorded in the Argentine. What is the cause of this? The lack of sentimental romanticism! A Jew who all his life was a Melamed (Hebrew teacher), a broker or a trader, who has no notion of farming, whose forefathers for two thousand years back never busied themselves with it,

*) No. 14410, 6 October.