The Maccabaean

TO-DAY we meet for the fifth time — in Basle for the fourth time — where our movement is regarded with a, to us highly gratifying, goodwill. It may also be said that the hospitable feelings entertained towards a movement that aims at relieving distress have only added to the old reputation of this town. Already much that was difficult to us is half gone by, and much, too, half achieved. One thing above all is a matter for congratulation : that we find ourselves once more assembled together, and that the years have not diminished our enthusiasm for a splendid cause. Death has taken many a good man from our midst. Age, bodily suffering, or the duties of their calling have kept back many more, but even they are present in the spirit. Those that live in other parts of the world could not easily travel at this season, but even some of them have appeared, and new co-workers have joined us in splendid fashion—not only Jews! I am not prejudiced by partiality when I say that those helpers that have come to us from other nations and of other faiths belong to the noblest and the best.

I may be allowed to quote the words used lately by the English writer, Hall Caine, at a meeting in London:—

If I were a Jew myself, I should be greatly proud of the fact—proud of belonging to an ancient race, which has produced some of the greatest of men, proud of a nation which still plays a mighty part in the world's affairs, although it has neither a throne nor a king, nor a soldier, nor an inch of earth which it can call its own—proud of a literature which reached, in the Scriptures, a sublimity unapproached by any other masterpieces of the human mind, proud of the opportunity to play my part in an effort to lift up Palestine from the condition of a barren waste to that of a land of great fertility and prosperity, but perhaps proudest of all of the great chance now before the Jews of helping to realize for the poor and oppressed of their own people in many lands the great religious hope which has sustained them through three thousand cruel years.

These are the words of a Christian. This language, that does him honor, would not become

us. We have merely a moral duty to fulfil. The weak have a claim to the help of the strong. Our former Congresses have shown in what way we think to render this help, and it is to be hoped that this one, too, will make the justice of our wishes and the loyalty of our procedure clear. The Jewish question can only be solved by the Jews themselves, that is our standpoint.

From this principle everything else is logically evolved. On that account we have rejected former methods. We have not tried by means of abuse to prove that we are superior people. Nor have we in vague discourses alluded to the imminent brotherhood of all mankind. Nor, again, do we thrust another nationality as a mask before us. And we do not work unceasingly towards the overthrow of all things. All this has nothing to do with us. We believe rather that the means for the solution of the Jewish question are to be found in the existing laws that govern society.

What is demanded from people that attempt the solution of a great question is not only that they should be sufficiently in earnest, but that they should be impassionate enough to be able to judge the given circumstances. These circumstances are sad, but merely sitting down to bewail them will not improve matters. When we show ourselves sufficiently capable to proceed to deeds then the co-operation of honorablemen will not fail us. Many things bear out what I say. Every impartial man is bound to recognize that we propose a final solution.

The Jewish proletariat to-day is not only the poorest and most unhappy, but also the most unsettled and the most disquieting. Wandering continually, and in great numbers, from one misery to another, we can see how great their present wretchedness must be when they expose themselves to the despair of such a migration to seek out a new misery. To make this proletariat settled and industrious were in itself a gigantic task, apart from national or religious considera-