The Maccabaean

purse. They strictly believe that he who pays the Jewish piper has the right to call the non-Jewish tune. We ought not to be shocked at this. If one could be sufficiently objective about Jewish life one might say this is the logic of the game. You are either very much for or very much against. Experience shows us that those who are very much for us are nearly always always much against us.

u zeit er — 7 ee The Zionist organization has therefore won through this agency not only the prestige that comes of expressed and active goodwill, but some of the prestige that comes to the successful banker because he is a good banker. If we presumed that it cost the PZC $20,000 a year for each year of the war to bring into the war zones among the embittered peoples a new sentiment that the Jew, himself a sufferer, is still the servant of humanity, it would be very difficult for anybody to argue against this expenditure. Instead, this result is the profit of the transfer department, day by day. Now look at it from the practical point of view. First, no other agency is doing the work in the same way, that is, with the same measure of success. In Palestine no other agency can do it at all for there we are on our own ground. Because we have a really well-drilled mechanism composed of self-sacri- fiing human beings, Jews who do the work because they want to do that work, we have been able for the sake of a woman in Salem to discover a missing mother who, herded amongst 15,000 refugees from Palestine, was discovered within forty-eight hours of the dispatch of the cable from this end, amongst the poor and the lowiy of Alexandria. Fifty percent of all the money sent to Europe and sixty-six per cent of the money sent to Palestine has been properly acknowledged. If anyone takes into account that the round trip for the mail to Palestine takes more than three months, one must realize that that percentage is close to perfection. It is therefore no matter of wonder that the PZC receives testimonials such as the following:

"I am sending you a dollar and am very thankful for the good work you are doing. I have sent money three times through a bank and the remittances were returned because my relatives could not be located. It is only through your office that they were found and given the money I sent them"——. "This Yom Kippur was Simchath Torah for me, because, after receiving my wife's signatures (on receipts) I see that my dearest friend is living."

The transfer adventures are thrilling. A Syrian leaves America intending to go to Lebanon and finds himself in Australia and from away up country sends an English banknote to an American friend which through the Zionist transfer department naturally reaches its destination —a hamlet on the slopes of the Lebanon to which he set out for its safe defence. Beirut mails to the N. Y. Zionist office in order to reach Jaffa and there

are other far more odd criss-crossings made by checks and drafts which can only be related when the war is over and all the world is neutral again. And with the aid of the U. S. Government all the money passes on its long journies through the safe and neutral hands. The transfer department has compromised no individual anywhere by making him the recipient of money from the hands of an opposing belligerent even though that belligerent merely acts as an agent; for the Polish Jews, a Polish Committee; for the Palestine Jews, a Palestine Committee; for the “Roumanian Jews, a Roumanian Committee. It is a hard thing to maintain neutrality. It is the duty of a Jewish organization, particularly of the Zionist organization to do so. The transfer department, its officers studying the map with every change in the tide of battle, keeping in close touch with everyone of its agencies and bureaus, has maintained neutrality in letter and spirit.

Now let us look at the transfer department as a self-help agency. Of course it costs more than would the receiving of large sums in bulk and their disbursement in bulk. The money comes in in small sums. Each item involves the making of nineteen records besides the number of entries that have to be made in the countries where the money is received and distributed and besides the work involved in the final discharge of each individual account. Yet if we assume that we wanted to collect half a million dollars for any public purpose in small sums one would gladiy set aside ten per cent. for the raising of the money, besides local expense and besides the expense of the distribution, then one would not be sure of the regularity of the income. It needed a lot of conviction and pressure to get $30,- 000 a month for Palestine relief. The Provisional Zionist Committee sends $30,000 a month to Palestine without any kind of pressure; without any argument, without any committee votes. And this money is going much further than the relief funds because it is helpful to individuals and not the dole and pittance which relief can at most afford and which at best keeps the recipients in a dependent position from day to day. As far as Palestine is concerned we know that the transfer department is the stable element in the public income. Incidentally it has thrown a great deal of light on the position of all the institutions in Palestine. A few years ago a great deal of interest was manifested in the whole charity problem of Palestine and it was suggested that some thousands of dollars could be usefully spent in obtaining information about the charities in Palestine. By its normal operations the transfer department has obtained an insieht into most of these questions.

The transfer department is therefore justifying its existence from every point of view. It is a distinct Zionist idea; a clear Zionist achievement.

With Zion's greetings,