The Maccabaean

elect delegates to the convention, or on petition, to elect local officers other than those of the present local organization and to transact other special business, but on the other hand with the ever-present possibility of calling nation-wide meetings, or of securing a vote, whenever a question of great moment arises in regard to which it is necessary to have an impressive expression of popular condemnation or approval. * The new organization by no means attempts the dangerous task of uprooting that form of organization into which Zionism has grown in the past twenty years, with its adaption to the social and segregative instincts of human nature. Nor does it attempt to do the kind of work which the present societies are already doing. The two forms of organization go hand in hand, working in two different paths, for two different objectives, one the co-ordinate of the other. We need both, whereas at the present time we have only one. To deepen Zionist sentiment, to give our young people opportunities for social intercourse, to provide the most harmonious grouping of workers, the societies must remain; but for the practical business of war politics we need a great, popular machine; we need a mass organization of Shekel-payers. The former will be ever before the eye as an institution for social and cultural purposes. The latter will be silent, unseen, but ready to leap to life and action at a moment’s call. We are accustomed to see this dual organization in the normal life of America, or of any of the well-ordered countries. They have also their visible societies for a multitude of social and cultural purposes. But only once in a year, two years or four years, can the American people show what strength they possess through the ballot-boxes. So should the voice of the Jews be heard through the popular Shekel.

It is not to be wondered at that at present some of the most valuable members’ of the Jewish communities, our prosperous business men, doctors and lawyers, are the hardest to get into the organization. Daily business calls insistently for attention, and if we are practical men we cannot expect of all of our fellow Jews a self-sacrificing idealism that will go to the extent of neglecting individual interest for the Zionist cause. Hence, the local club with its complexity of committees, meetings, social undertakings, and a thousand and one activities must for the most part remain in the care of those on whose shoulders family, business and professional responsibility rests lightly, if at all.

But the average business or professional man is just the man we need. Moreover he is willing to do his share. But he has little opportunity. A way must

be provided for enrolling these men who are the backbone of our communities, of establishing connections with them, which, without imposing onerous obligations, will yet enable us to call upon them in time of need. There is no better way than a mass organization, of Shekel-payers. I cannot conceive of a business or professional man who sympathizes with the Zionist program, refusing to pay his Shekel, to renew it each year on request, or to attend a meeting once or twice a year for the purpose of registering his vote on some wital matter

To pay and renew the Shekel, and to register those votes is merely the minimum duty of every organized Zionist. . But it is only reasonable to suppose ‘that under the influence of such an organization not only would scores of thousands whom we do not now reach perform that minimum, but that a considerable percentage of them would feel impelled to subscribe to Zionist funds and become acquainted with its literature. Indeed the local societies far from feeling that their obligations as Zionists had been reduced, would be stimulated to greater activity by the thought that no new adherent would be allowed to drift off again, and that difficult as it is to secure new active members of a local society, yet that, at least many new, permanent adherents could be secured for the larger political body. They would be encouraged to feel that the fruits of their labor were being systematically conserved by the central office, and that they were able to compute in concrete terms the advantages they had brought to the larger Zionist oreanization.