The Maccabaean

Speech of Mr. Jacob de Haas on Presenting the Declaration of Principles to the Pittsburgh Convention

MR. CHAIRMAN: What I have to present here this evening is not a Palestine program. What I am about to present to you is a series of resolutions that, together, will constitute a declaration on our part of Palestinian policy.

I was very eager, Mr. Chairman, to be privileged to be allowed to present here this evening these declarations of principles. I recall at this moment twenty years ago—twenty-one years ago almost—a side-room in the Casino at Basle, very much similar to that side-room, in which a group of men, including myself, labored day and night about thirty hours in order to set up that declaration of principles which became world-widely known as the Basle Program. It was my privilege to be one of the group—one of the committee—that drew up that program which aimed at “the establishment of a publicly recognized and legally secured homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.”

I recall that, when the draft was complete—it was early in the morning—our never-to-be-forgotten leader, my most beloved friend, Theodor Herzl, came into that small room, read that draft, and, in that wonderfully optimistic manner of his, repeated it twice and turned round to the committee, and said, “Gentlemen, the Jewish State exists.”

I was much younger than I am today, and for the moment I felt as though he were telling me and the others that some miracle had happened. I said, “The Jewish State exists? Where is it, Doctor?” And he looked back at the sheet of paper and said, “It is there, you have willed it.”

And for all of these twenty-one years we have willed it, willed it to be; and in all of these years of willing it, we could only express to Jewry and to the world just this one idea—we want a Jewish homeland in Palestine. And all our orators, and all who have spoken for us all these years have told us what they believed or what they wished this Jewish State and homeland should be. Each man has drawn some sort of a picture for himself of what he would will it to be. All of us Jews are idealists, and we have concentrated all the idealism of which we are capable upon the things that are to be over there.

Now, Mr. Chairman, we come to what I believe is a very solemn moment in the history of any people, a very solemn moment in Jewish history, a moment, perhaps, too heavy for us—the moment when we pass from this vague phrase, this homeland we want, to say to the world here, fully conscious of the responsibilities we are going to assume, how we wish, how we determine that homeland shall be. We are past the period of dreaming and have come to the period of assuming the responsibilities of defining the character of the Jewish Homeland. Nothing is in the nature of things more impressive, nothing is a stronger assertion of our belief of the imminence of realization, of the nearness of that end which we seek, than that we come before you and ask you to declare for ourselves and for all the Zionists of America how we wish our future home in Palestine to be. And to that end men have labored for many hours in this convention and prior to the sessions in order to tell the world in the fewest possible words what we regard as fundamental to the Jewish homeland in Palestine.

I WENT to Pittsburgh as guest of the Convention of the Federation of American Zionists, and as participant in the sessions of the Joint Conference as well as in those of the Provisional Committee, in which a certain number of Mizrachi members were included.

As guest I was interested in the growth and development of the American Zionist Organization for the past year, especially since, thanks to the English Declaration and the conquest of a portion of Palestine, the Zionist movement emerged out of its party limits. Even before the Convention in Pittsburgh, I had the pleasure of witnessing three

conventions of the American Zionists, in Boston, in Philadelphia, and in Baltimore, and each time I noted with pleasure a definite growth of the movement and a distinct deepening of the idea, and for this reason the Pittsburgh Convention, at the present time, had a special interest for me.

But also as participant in the Joint Conference and in the short sessions of the Provisional Committee, my presence there at this time afforded me particular satisfaction. Although I had been aware for some time previously what would take place at the joint sessions and what would