to enlighten the people on the most important hygienic questions by means of popular leaflets, and which will also act as an advisory centre to the Government and municipal authorities in regard to all problems of sanitation. The increasing danger of plague infection not merely to Palestine but also to Europe, which is likely to result from the new railway connections with South Arabia on the one side and Constantinople on the other, is alone sufficient to indicate the necessity of the proposed Institute.
In the sphere of education in Palestine the activity of the Zionist Organization has hitherto not been very considerable, but it can point to an up-to-date higher- grade school (Hebrew Gymnasium) in Jaffa, where two hundred pupils receive efficient instruction in modern subjects and are prepared for a university course. A number of pupils intend proceeding to the Military Academy at Constantinople where they may duly qualify for a commission in the army. The Zionists, moreover, have provided a site at Haifa for a Technical College which will train native students in the various professions of applied science and thus render the Holy Land less dependent upon the engineers and electricians of Europe. They have also got together the nucleus of a Natural Museum in Jerusalem, in which the most interesting and representative
specimens of the flora and fauna of the country are exhibited; and the latest results of Zionist private initiative is the establishment of a school of music at Jaffa.
The results of Zionist activity that have been outlined have all been accomplished within the last seven years, and most of them within the last three or four. They have contributed in an appreciable, if not a considerable, measure to the improvement of the economic conditions of the country and they have indicated the way in which further improvements may be expected and achieved in an increasing degree in the future. They show that Zionist endeavors have modernized and quickened commercial life, stimulated industrial crafts, introduced rational reforms in agricultural colonization, improved the conditions of housing and sanitation, and contributed to the advancement of education and science. They prove that Zionist activity aims at rendering the soil more fertile, the cities more habitable, the people more healthy and productive and the country more flourishing. Whether such activity can be tharmful to the interests of the Ottoman Empire is a question that can only suggest itself to those who have these interests less at heart than the gratification of their own ignoble prejudices.
Letter from President David Wolffsohn
I am very glad to hear that with your forthcoming number of THE MACCABAEAN, you celebrate its tenth anniversary, and I congratulate you most cordially upon what is indeed a notable and gratifying event. So far as I am aware yours is the only English journal entirely devoted to Zionist interests that can point to such a splendid record, and I earnestly trust that now that your magazine has established itself so firmly in the popularity of our fellow-Zionists in America it may continue uninterruptedly upon its useful career.
I am aware of the difficulties that THE MACCABAEAN has had to encounter from time to time, but such difficulties are the lot of every journal that serves the cause
of idealism, and your success in overcoming them is a tribute to your zeal and devotion and to the earnest labours of your predecessors.
THE MACCABAEAN has steadfastly and faithfully discharged its functions to inform, to educate, and to stimulate American Jewry in regard to all developments within the Zionist movement, and has thus contributed in an important degree to the maintenance of our Organization on the American continent. Its necessity will grow not less but more with the continuous development of our movement, and I therefore earnestly wish it a long and robust life so that it may be able to render untold services to our cause in the future.