LETTERS READ AT THE SIXTEENTH CONVENTION
Accept my warmest thanks for your esteemed communication in which you call on me, in connection with your Sixteenth Convention, to unfold to you my views on the condition and proximate tasks of our Organization.
I yield with pleasure to your wishes although, after having sustained a serious illness, Iam now convalescing, and must stillspare myself a great deal.
Ever since the commencement of my Zionist activity I have maintained the standpoint that the political policy of our movement, as mapped out by Theodor Herzl, must be culivated in the first rank. But between the political and practical work of our party—to speak of a political and practical Zionism is false and misleading—no antagonism should be construed. This conviction has in the course of the years only gained force with me. Both these equally necessary forms of our activity, in which, of course, I also include, and not in the last place, our spiritual and cultural striving, must go hand in hand if we wish to reach our goal. Outer or inner circumstances may require us to give precedence now to the one, now to the other mode of activity for a certain period. But we should strive with all our might to neglect neither field.
From the very nature of the case, the political work must be wholly and entirely in the hands of the central administration. Our Federations and societies, in this connection, can offer this administration suggestions and moral support only, they should not, however, nor can they engage in the work themselves.
Entirely opposite, however, are the circumstances that obtain in the field of our practical work in Palestine and of the cultivation of our national culture. Here the administration can be effective through suggestions and support only; it cannot, however, and should not take upon itself the execution of the various undertakings. The realizing of our practical projects must be left to our comrades and to
our societies and Federations. This is is their field of work. Individuals and societies may even sometimes venture upon undertakings, the success of which cannot be predicted with certainty. Yes, I do not hesitate to state that the circumstances of this advance work may sometimes make it their plain Zionist duty to risk without much preliminary weighing. Our general organization as such, however, must keep constantly before it the fact that its very existence is placed in the balance if it does not exercise the most painstaking care in every one of its measures. The financial institutions of our organizations are the backbone of our movement, and must be entrusted in the hands of persons whose practical competence can be relied upon. As an example of what is to be understood by efficient work, let me cite our bank in Palestine, the Anglo-Palestine Company. The Anglo-Palestine Company will at this year's Congress submit a general report of its ten years' activity. This report will show publicly what successful work the Bank has accomplished. Not only has it kept safe and increased the funds entrusted to it, but it has grown to be an important factor of the Jewish Colonization work and it has already become an indispensable support of all our undertakings in Palestine. I wish to emphasize most strongly that the Anglo-Palestine Company owes its success first of all to the circumstance that it is administered by specialists who have guarded themselves strictly against over-hasty measures, who resisted most energetically the eagerness for a more rapid pace where such a policy was misplaced, and observed the greatest care and caution in everything.
It has thus been demonstrated that it was well done when it was agreed at the last Congress to leave our financial institutions in the safe hands of specialists where they had remained until then. But I have reason to fear that at this years' Congress the attempt will be made by some to deliver our financial institutions to such as, to judge by their