Zionists and by all with gratitude. It was a beau geste on the part of the Government, and a recognition that Herzl and his following were regarded seriously in serious quarters. The Chamberlain scheme of territory within an English Colony was too tempting and too flattering to be summarily rejected; and, though Herzl said that the Jewish people could have no other ultimate goal than Palestine, and that immigration elsewhere could only be subsidiary, it was at his recommendation that the Congress resolved to send out an expedition to East Africa to investigate the Uganda proposal.
The Russian Zionists, however, regarded the scheme as treason to Zionism, and under the leadership of Ussishkin held a counter-Congress in Palestine in the Colony of Zichron Jacob and another in Charkov in November 1903, which presented an ultimatum to Herzl calling upon him to abandon the scheme.
The press throughout Europe, and especially in England, devoted much space to the subject, and the bibliography of Zionism has been rapidly increasing ever since.[1] In April 1904 a modus vivendi was found by a conference of the Greater Actions Committee, which, while taking cognizance of the Palestinian work of the Inner Actions Committee, assented to the dispatch to Uganda of a Commission of Enquiry, but left the final decision to the next Congress. It was at this juncture, when there was this cleavage in the ranks of the Zionists, that Herzl died suddenly, a comparatively young man, on July 3, 1904.
The report brought back by the Commission to Uganda was not a favourable one. The seventh, or 'Sabbath', Congress was held at Hassle in July 1905 under the presidency of Max Nordau, and attended by delegates from twenty-two countries. The Jewish Territorial Organization (generally known as 'Ito')
- ↑ Thus Thomsen's Palästina-Literatur contains 84 entries between 1895 and 1904, and 311 entries, including 40 newspapers and magazines, for 1904–9. See also Zeitlin's Bibliotheca Sionistica, 1852–1905, limited to Hebrew books on Zionism.
