The Maccabaean

ALTHOUGH the subject of my paper to-day is the industrial development of Palestine, there need be no fear that I am about to deliver a scientific lecture with statistical data and rigid deductions. However seductive the prospect may be of showing larger circles of hearers how even under the reign of the crescent, under the rule of the Turk, beneath whose foot it is claimed no grass blade may grow, industrial progress is taking place before our eyes, still this convention is not the place for it. We have happily got so far since the Palestine Commission was appointed at the sixth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1903, after five years of striving, that we may demand and expect the representatives of Zionism sent to the convention to be in some degree informed concerning, and to have made their own, the views which those who know the country have been advancing for a long time. The task of acquiring this information was not indeed very easy, and it may be questioned whether the course of Zionism would not have been a different, and perhaps sounder one, if the necessary knowledge of the industrial possibilities offered by Palestine had been to hand ten years ago. Let this not be understood as a reproach; for. at that time it was the generally prevailing opinion that industrial results could be obtained in Palestine only by hard and prolonged labor. Even scientific works spoke of the desolation and drying up of the country as a result of deforestation and reckless exploitation. -The successes of the German and Jewish colonists were not yet so striking to the eye and not so well known as they are today. They were limited to small tracts of land and we can not reproach men who are not accustomed to draw large inferences from slight indications that they did not dare to prognosticate a brilliant future for the colonies on the basis of their far from rosy condition at the time; especially since they were constantly being

assured that the colonies were only the artificial products of Baron Rothschild's philanthropic mood and that the German Templar communities maintained themselves painfully by freighting and vegetable-gardening for the cities. Thus, what were the beginnings of a far-reaching development were regarded as insignificant accidents.

It was, therefore, only natural to set up the theory that no industrial enterprises ought to’ be undertaken in Palestine before adequate and far-reaching concessions had been obtained from the Turkish government. For what would otherwise be the use of all the labor? The government might at any time step in and annihilate the results of long and toilsome preparations, or lay claim to them, so that those who had invested labor and capital in the country would go away empty. It was a natural consequence that men strove for the whole: autonomy in Palestine or nothing, was the watchword. When it was seen that autonomy was not so easily obtainable, they were satisfied with the demand for a charter that should be as far-reaching as possible. The Jews were to obtain from the Sultan in Palestine that which the British South African Chartered Company had received from the English government for Rhodesia. But when it was asked what those Zionists ought to do who do not belong to the small, select company that have a grasp of politics, the answer always was, and had to be: Prepare and hold yourselves in readiness until the signal shall sound for the start.

This is more easily said than done. We see at every parade how hard it is to remain for hours at a stretch in readiness and to wait with grounded arms for a signal. But to do this for years—that is to ask the impossible.

So people became impatient. The impatience after a time urgently required alleviating measure. Of these, there was first