Letters to the Tannersville Convention
[The following were among the important letters received at the Fourteenth Annual Convention of the Federation of American Zionists.]
FROM DAVID WOLFFSOHN
FELLOW-ZIONISTS:
I send you my heartiest greetings on the occasion of your Fourteenth Annual Convention and earnestly trust that your proceedings will be attended with the fullest success.
I am more convinced than ever that Zionism has a great future in America and hope that your forthcoming Convention will result in advancing our cause still further among the numberless Jewish communities of your country. I am di- vulging no secret when I say that I often urged upon Dr. Herzl the supreme importance of making a tour of the great centres of Jewish life across the Atlantic in order to win them over for our national ideal; and I still regard it as an omission in my own Zionist activity that I have not yet paid a visit to the land which has witnessed such a remarkable growth of Jewish souls and Jewish endeavor during the last thirty years. In no other country is there such abundant opportunity for increased activity as in that which has become the adopted home of myriads of our brethren from the zone of oppression in Eastern Europe. It is gratifying to see that our movement has lately been making such progress among the fraternal orders and students’ organizations in your midst, thus giving further evidence of the many-sided appeal it has always possessed. The proportion of organized Zionists to the Jewish population of your country, however, compared with that in other constitutional and English-speaking countries shows that there must still be a great field for propaganda requiring systematic cultivation within the area of your activity, and I sincerely hope that much of this field will be secured to our cause in the very near future.
The proximity of the Tenth Congress
attaches especial interest to your Convention, at which, 1 have no doubt, various points will be discussed in anticipation, I trust that your Federation will be well represented at the Congress so that due effect may be given to any decisions you may adopt at Tannersville. Apart from 6 questions of the Organization Statutes and the general situation, which have occupied the attention of the Actions Committee on various occasions, the most serious problem will be the future government of our Organization. Considerations of health, as you are aware, compel me to retire from office and it will therefore be necessary to elect a new Administration : but although I shall be unable to occupy the position I have hitherto held, I am prepared—nay, eager—to continue to devote my services to the movement in every possible direction in which my powers will permit. My chief concern, and it should be the concern of every earnest Zionist, is that the future Administration shall be composed of practical-minded men combining idealism with actual experience of public affairs, so that the precious heritage bequeathed to us by Herzl may not only be preserved intact, but also that our widely-ramified movement and its chain of institutions may grow steadily in material strength and moral influence. I fully believe that an Administration formed upon such lines will commend itself above all to the Zionists of America, the land which has witnessed a unique blending of the ideal, the intellectual and: the practical.
The progress of our movement in the Ottoman Empire may perhaps appear not to be very cheerful in view of recent utterances in the Turkish Chamber, but the latest debate on Zionism showed an improved understanding of our objects and a distinct sympathy in certain quarters with our ideals. So long as the great mass of the Jewish people, however, hold aloof from our banner, it can hardly be ex-