The Maccabaean

As time goes on and the difficulties which the Zionist movement is in the field to overcome assume their true proportions, the real grapplers among the people stand up to be counted while the pretenders “fall their crests like deceitful jades’” and, with a whisk of the tail, scamper off to the precious retreat of the onlooker, from whence one may stil! snort occasionally like a true charger, yet assume none of the unpleasant hardships and disappointments of rude battle. These traits of the flighty, the insincere, the dillettanti, who fasten their worthless allegiance on great movements for a time, are the same in our movement as in others and should 00085- ion no surprise. The sooner these furtive, nervous, irresponsible gentry leave the Zionist camp and skurry to their respective holes, the better. For it is becoming apparent to al] that the harvest ts too great to be reaped before luncheon; that this task is not for cynics or shirkers but for strong and earnest men working whole-heartedly and with perseverance and faith.

With the close of the Tenth Congress at Basle, Zionism enters upon a more methodical even if upon a more restricted course in the fulfillment of its aims. Who shall say that this is not, after all, the better way?

Let not the political Zionists of our movement consider themselves cast adrift by the last session of the Congress. Herzl- Zionism, like latter-day Zionism, always depended upon the full, free and friendly concurrence of Turkey in granting autonomy to the Jewish people in Palestine. This expectation was and is of the basis of our movement. But if the Ottoman Empire does not at present fall in with this spirit, who has ordained that, in the course of shifting political tides it shall not recognize the advantages of

such an adjustment in the future? In the meantime, however, the last Congress has resolved to rectify the one great error of the Herzl regime; the cart had been placed before the horse; a charter had been asked before the land (the land of the Jew!) should be settled by Jews! This method of procedure has not proven logical in practice. Hereafter, this policy will be changed. Jews will first come into actual possession of the land of their fathers, and that fact in itself will entitle them to a measure of recognition proportionate to their numbers in constitutional Turkey. If there is a possibility of obtaining a charter under the suzerainty of Turkey, it will be strongest then; and the previous settlement of Palestine by Jews will furnish the strongest possible guarantee of the alertness of the Jewish people to take advantage of a disposition on the part of the Ottoman Empire to sell charter privileges to them when the Empire arrives at a better acquaintance with the beneficial character of our movement and finds more reasons for doing so than at present. It will thus be seen that the greatest political stroke possible for Zionism is in the steady settlement of Palestine by Jews.

No, there is no cause for abatement in Zionist labor. Rather, the season for real and effective work has come at last. The Zionist Movement is not the growth of a day or a year or even fourteen years. It has had a long and arduous past commencing some nineteen hundred years ago and its future is likely to be protracted and eventful, but its ultimate success is not to be doubted. The present movement represents the dawn of the fulfillment of Jewish history. It means that national endeavor is on the home- stretch and its goal is becoming dis-