The Maccabaean

Dos Yiddish Folk for July 11th, 1913, brings the intelligence that the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jerusalem has placed itself under the protection of the French Government. This report, in an official Zionist newspaper, must fill every loyal Zionist with alarm and protest. We deem the action of the Gymnasium a menace to the security of Jewish life in Palestine, for reasons which shall here be set forth. But first, we wish to note the alleged advantages which are declared in Dos Yiddishe Folk to accrue to the Gymnasium from its self-surrender to the French government. These alleged advantages are two, as follows:

1. "The Gymnasium becomes independent of the Turkish Government and of the caprices of party changes in the Government."2. "The students of the Gymnasium will acquire the right of matriculating at French and Turkish Hochschulen without special examinations—which is very important so long as we have no Hebrew University of our own."

These are the advantages as stated in Dos Yiddishe Folk. We, on the contrary, hold them to be no advantages at all, but the first we hold to be a grave error in policy from the point of view of the Jewish needs in the Ottoman Empire, and the second we hold to be a humiliating confession of academic incompetence on the part of the Gymnasium. For—to dispose of this second advantage forthwith—if special privileges must be sought for the students of the Gymnasium when they desire to enter higher institutions of learning, whether French or Turkish, we cannot but regard this, in the absence of other considerations, as a sign that the students of the Gymnasium are unable or unwilling to stand up to the usual tests imposed upon candidates for admission by all the high institutions of learning, whether in Europe or America.

But infinitely more alarming, in our est- mation, because it strikes at the very root

of the whole Jewish foundation in Palestine, is that which is declared to be the first advantage of the action of the Gymnasium, namely, that by submitting itself to the French protection the Gymnasium becomes independent of the Turkish Government. This statement, we are compelled to admit, gives more than color to the suspicion that Zionist institutions and Zionist energies are being utilized to strengthen the influences and to promote the selfish interests of foreign governments in Palestine; a suspicion lately reinforced from another quarter by the information brought to us by Hapoel-Hazair for June 20th, 1913, that German is to be the language of instruction at the Technical Institute at Haifa; and we deem it to be our bounden duty, the bounden duty of all Zionists, to protest with all our power until this grave suspicion is absolutely removed. For nothing can be more fatal to Zionist aspirations than to harbor distrust of the Ottoman Government and the Turkish people. The Ottoman Government and the Turkish people have ever shown themselves friendly and even magnanimous to the Jewish people, whereas this, unfortunately, cannot be affirmed of certain foreign governments that are at present endeavoring to aggrandize themselves in the Turkish domains and are looking forward with ill-concealed anticipation of the time when they may actually dismember Turkey in Asia as they have already, with cynical disregard of justice and humanity, looked upon the dismemberment of Turkey in Europe. This threatened dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in Asia—openly adumbrated in the London Spectator of July 5th, 1913— the Jewish people represented by the Zionist organization, must regard with undisguised apprehension, not merely because of our hereditary friendship with the Turkish people, not merely because of our desire for international stability and justice, but chiefly, to speak with perfect candor, because the destruction of the Ottoman power