Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 178, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1915 — AMBITIOUS PLANS of ZIONISTS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AMBITIOUS PLANS of ZIONISTS

IF the war in Europe changes the outlook tor the better of any cause more quickly and more radically than it did that of Zionism among Jews of America and of the world, that cause, whatever it be, has not yet been discovered. A year ago a few Jews were Zionists; the vast majority were not. And they were rather zealously not They fought the plan, often by ridicule, a deadly weapon. Today almost all Jews are Zionists. The change was brought about by the war and by the probable fall of the Turkish power in Syria. American Jews are leading. Jews of the world are watching whit Jews here do and say. In Boston there was recently held a Zionist week. The Federation of American Zionists held a congress and various other Jewish organizations held congresses, conventions, conferences. These other Jewish bodies include the Knights of Zion, strongest in the middle West, and composed chiefly of laymen; the Order of Sons of Zion, Hadasseh, composed of Jewish women. Poale Zion, Misrachi, and the Young Judeans. Conventions sat in the old City club and in the synagogues. The remarkable growth of Zionism is shown by the fact that the American federation has 155 organizations affiliated with it, all growing, and all in favor of the new movement in Palestine. It is now claimed that three in four of all American Jews are Zionists. It may well be asked: Precisely what is Zionism among the Jews? The answer is -that it is an effort to satisfy that longing among Jews, a‘ longing centuries old, for a national and religious home; a home that is their own; a home that is in the land of the Bible; a home where there is not only politics, but where religious Judaism asserts itself and grows. All Jews agree that with the end of this great war must come a solution of the Jewish problem that will stay solved for all time, and most Jews hold firmly the point that a home in Syria will furnish such a solution. Looking Here for Leadership. Jews do not reckon that all of their number, about 14,000,000, will migrate to Palestine. That is not their

thought or expectation. Some Jews now in America desire to go there. Many more in Russia, in Poland, in Austria, In Germany, in England, are looking to Jews in this country to lead in plans that may make it possible for them to go there. The expectation is that Palestine can become a Jewish state of 4,000,000 besides other races remaining there. Here Jews may have a home, even if all Jews do not reside in it. Here Jews may demonstrate successful government, based on those ideals of Jewish patriarchs with which Christians are familiar, but which they do not follow. Here, as one Zionist leader, Rev. Dr. H. Pereira Mendes of New York, puts it, “there may be established a great Hebrew university for the study of world questions; one that will emphasize the spiritual state of the world existing for the world; and that goes further even than Lincoln’s program for a nation, and teach government of the people, for the peoples of the world, and under God, by the peoples of the world.” American Jews have already entered into Zionist plans. Jews of St Louis have just bought 8,000 acres of land quite near to the shores of the Sea of Galilee. One nundred and fifty Jews of New York, joining in a plan, have invested $455,000 in a tract near Haifa. Some Chicago Jews have purchased a tract not far from Cana, where was the wedding feast mentioned by St John. Sixty Jews of Winnipeg have bought a vast tract near the Sea of Joppa, and Pittsburgh and Cleveland Jews are interested in a tract of 1,800 acres not far from the Armageddon about which so much is heard in political literature of our day. If one consults a map, poesibly-the

map found in the back of his Bible, he finds that desert fills the very center of the region that Jews must occupy if they call Palestine home. The fact is that until a few years ago almost all of the Holy Land was desert in the Bense that it was treeless, and its acres raised next to nothing in the way of crops. But all that has changed. Deserts are no more deserts in Palestine than in our own West. Expert tillers of land have seen to that. Trees now grow in Palestine, and the land raises great crops ?of grain and harvests of fruits. Very large numbers of Jews already live in Palestine, of course, and there are considerable cities. True Jerusalem has barely a population of 45,000, but Damascus is a thriving city of 140,000, Beirut one of 120,000, and Bagdad, away off in the East, 145,000. Joppa has 10,000, ancient Antioch 17,000. Hebron 10,000, and Tarsus, where St. Paul came from, 22,000. Region Jews Want. The region which Jews covet for a home extends from the sea eastward to the Euphrates, and perhaps beyond, taking in not only Syria, but perhaps part of Mesopotamia. Possibly it may extend Into Anatolia, and northward into Kurdistan and Armenia. Ancient Babylon will then be within Its borders, and so many parts of the great Bagdad railway line, which Constantinople in favorable hands is to be the route to India by the way of the Persian gulf, rather than around Spain, through the Gibraltar straits, the Suez canal, and the Red sea. Here is a region. considerably larger in square miles than France, and so far as territory goes, therefore, competent to make a Jewish one of the great states of the world. A few months ago there was tentatively formed in England a Christian committee on the Holy Land that immediately sounded their acquaintance in America on the subject of creating, should Turkey fall and the council of war at last have the disposal of Palestine in its plans, a great educational resort. Its aim was not a political state at all, but a center of instruction and inspiration for Christians of the world. Fortunes of war not going England’s way altogether,

nothing of late has been, heard ol this plan. These English Christian* were, however, sufficiently alive to business to say to American Christians that a first need of the proposed Palestine resort would be the development of rapid transit lines, already begun, so that electric railways would cover every part of the famous region. There were also to be comfortable hotels. So equipped, the statement in these English letters was to the effect that the whole world besides does not afford a place that would actually attract so many visitors. Development Going On. Developments of banks, of farms, of hospitals, of sanitary homes and of many things that go to make up comfortable living, have been put into Palestine. Jews now feel that with the end of the war, and land questions uppermost, there will be tremendous strife for possession of Palestine. They argue that they are the logical heirs to it, and .they purpose, through consolidation of their Zionist forces, to be in position to accept it and to guarantee its wise use. They will argue that the Christian development as proposed by the English Christian* need not be shut out; that it is not inconsistent with their ambitions foi a Jewish home state. Jews urge for a Palestine that is entrusted to them a neutral government, somewhat after the pattern of Switzerland, and here the Jews want to apply the principles of the Jewish law aa found in the Tal mud to modem conditions; a largei adaptation and use of religion to modem education and life. Jews believe tfrnt such a state will do away with discriminations, social and otheg against Jews everywhere.

Antioch, Whose Glories Are to Be Revived.