M. Bodenheimer, Leo Motzkin, Dr. C. Weitzmann, Leopold Kessler, Dr. I. Tschlenow, Advocate Rosenbaum of Minsk, Jacobus Kann of the Hague, J. Simon of Mannheim, Adolph Stand, M. M. Ussischkin, Boris Goldberg, Adolph Boehm, J. Kremenetzky, Dr. A. Klee, A. Podleschefsky, A. Idelson, I. A. Friedman, Dr. G. Halperin, Geiditsch and Housman.
The Congress closed as said, with ex-
pressions of peace and good-will. Dr. Tschlenow expressed the hope in an address at the close that now all Zionists would work together for the attainment of the ideal of the movement. The cablegrams state that at the conclusion of the Congress, M. Ussischkin, who has been the bitterest foe of Wolffsohn's policies, embraced and kissed Wolffsohn, saying that the latter was the hero of the Congress.
DAVID WOLFFSOHN'S ADDRESS
Honoured Congress,—We are assembled to-day for the tenth time, and once again in Basle, the handsome and hospitable city in which we gathered together from the four corners of the earth in response to the call of Theodor Herzl. We then—just fourteen years ago—laid the foundation upon which we have built up the Zionist Organization. We then proclaimed to the wide world freely and frankly, for the first time, that we regard ourselves as members of the Jewish Nation, that we are and wish to be a nation. This was really a matter of course, .but it sounded new and aroused the astonishment even of our fellow-Jews and called forth protests on many sides. But we went on our way which we had recognized to be the right way. We took counsel with one another, and found that we were all agreed that in the homelessness of our people lies our great misfortune and our thousand-year old misery. We came to the conclusion that we have only one remedy:We must establish a home on the soil of our fathers, in the land of Israel, which must be publicly recognized and legally assured. This is not an idea that we then first discovered. Neither Herzl nor we are the inventors of Zionism, which is as many centuries old as our people itself. What we then created was the organization.
Herzl's great achievement principally consists in the fact that he brought together those who were scattered through all parts of the world and organized them to work in union, that he gave the new comprehensible form to the ancient hopes and wishes of our people, that he made the mighty endeavour to convert the noble Zionist idea into a fact and to render its
realization possible by the creation of our organization. In our first enthusiasm we believed that all our fellow-Jews would be of the same opinion as we, and that the leaders in Israel and the Rabbis would particularly help us to accomplish the great work. But it turned out otherwise. The very persons who should have felt eminently called upon to assist us left us in the lurch. Nay, still worse. They attacked us and made our laborious work still more difficult. If we now call to mind the past fourteen years, the great sacrifices, we have brought, the bitter losses we have suffered, we may still feel satisfaction and a certain pride in what we have created and derive therefrom new strength and new hopes for the future.
Fourteen years ago Zionism was a sensation: to-day it is .an established fact. The position that Zionism has won for itself in Jewry can no more be taken away from it. From the very first day we were always conscious of the gravity of our task. Even now we are aware that we are still at the beginning of its realization, that we have a great deal, a very great deal, to do before we shall have reached our goal. But this we can already say without exaggeration: we have gone a good way forward after all. The seed that we have sown is beginning to sprout and is already shooting into stalks here and there. The strengthening of our national consciousness has made progress, the love for Judaism, for the Hebrew language, and for the land of our fathers has struck deep root in thousands of Jewish hearts, and is seizing upon ever new circles who formerly held aloof. The Jewish youth, oar future, is beginning to understand us and to find a source