WHAT THE OPPOSITION FOUGHT FOR
UNLESS there be issued a detailed and comprehensive report of the proceedings of the 12th annual convention of the Federation of American Zionists, it is doubtful whether its sturm und drang will be accounted for to the ordinary reader. He may seize upon the fact that there was a "protest" by seven "stalwarts" against the re-election of our vice-president and coupling that with certain remarks made by the Yiddish press will conclude that something in the nature of a factional opposition was created and failed to effect a popular leader.
Let me therefore repeat that the opposition there made was a mere dramatic incident in a three days struggle on principles. Since the death of Theodor Herzl the Jewish movement has stood a good deal on the defensive. It has warded off blows, mainly those struck from within. Itoism has risen and separated from it. And during the long period of "marking time" its rank and file have been invaded by thousands who, joining the movement through the force of current opinion, have brought with them into Zionism their pet hobbies and theories.
The result has been expansion, confusion and a dissipation of energy. Zionism began with one set task—I am not talking of object—to propagate the National Idea, in order to bring an understanding of its attitude. As the Zionists grew in numbers, there was added that of obtaining the wherewithal to Finance the organization—Shekolim. Then came the task of creating the instrument to accomplish its purpose—the founding of the Jewish Colonial Trust. Lastly followed the institution of the Jewish National Fund. The moral strength of the move-
ment becoming visible, the Culturists threw themselves into the movement and the first confusion of effort resulted. This confusion was not only theoretical, it was practical. I believe that in 1899 I wrote in the Jewish Chronicle something like this:
"There is an evident tendency to turn the Zionist Congress into a Jewish parliament which shall morally legislate 'on every conceivable Jewish issue. The confusion was practical because a congress is of exceedingly limited duration and the greater the number of issues presented to it, the less each can be developed, debated and permanently settled. Now, I conceive that the Zionist movement, in order to serve t.e Jewish people, owes certain definite obligations to itself as a movement. It needs to develope itself as an organization so that it may become efficient for the purpose for which it was created. A well-trained regiment has in the end always been worth more than a ragged army. To create some such thing for the Jewish people as a movement that can direct seemed to me not only worth while, but essential to the successful achievement of its purpose. When the first Zionist Congress set out to do this it had no precedent to guide it. It made a skeleton and year by year added flesh to it."
When the American Federation was founded it was in the same predicament, for there existed no organization in which there was no social caste, and all the other factors that make close corporations of most our so-called national bodies. The result has been that at each of the succeeding eleven conventions attempts have