Page:The International Jew - Volume 1.djvu/162

158 at this peace conference Cavour, as the representative of Sardinia, will proclaim the free and independent, united Italy. Thus our dream for which we have suffered and died, will become, at last, a wonderful and happy reality. And if you now ask me again, what has Sardinia to do at Sebastopol, then let me tell you the following words, like the steps of a ladder: Cavour, Sardinia, the siege of Sebastopol, the future European peace conference, the proclamation of a free and united Italy.”’

“The whole assembly was under the spell of Nordau’s beautiful, truly poetic and exalted diction, and his exquisite, musical French delighted the hearers with an almost sensual pleasure. For a few seconds the speaker paused, and the public, absolutely intoxicated by his splendid oratory, applauded frantically. But soon Nordau asked for silence and continued:

“‘Now this great progressive world power, England, has after the pogroms of Kishineff, in token of her sympathy with our poor people, offered through the Zionist Congress the autonomous colony of Uganda to the Jewish nation. Of course, Uganda is in Africa, and Africa is not Zion and never will be Zion, to quote Herzl’s own words. But Herzl knows full well that nothing is so valuable to the cause of Zionism as amicable political relations with such a power as England is, and so much more valuable as England’s main interest is concentrated in the Orient. Nowhere else is precedent as powerful as in England, and so it is most important to accept a colony out of the hands of England and create thus a precedent in our favor. Sooner or later the Oriental question will have to be solved, and the Oriental question means, naturally, also the question of Palestine. England, who had addressed a formal, political note to the Zionist Congress—the Zionist Congress which is pledged to the Basle program, England will have the deciding voice in the final solution of the Oriental question, and Herzl has considered it his duty to maintain valuable relations with this great and progressive power. ''Herzl knows that we stand before a tremendous upheaval of the whole world. Soon, perhaps, some kind of a world-congress will have to be called'', and England, the great, free and powerful England, will then continue the work it has begun with its generous offer to the Sixth