Who was thinking, between 1896 and 1905, of the new “no annexations” rule to be applied to war? Were you? Do you know of any statesman who was? We know that military men were concerned about the appliances and operations of any future war that might occur. We know that statesmen, of the more responsible sort, were working to consolidate a balance of interests that would make war extremely improbable. Who had outdistanced them all in foresight and planning sufficiently to lay down a definite program of “no annexations?”
Fortunately the clue to the answer is supplied to us by unquestionable Jewish sources. The American Jewish News of September 19, 1919, had an advertisement on its front page which read thus:
“WHEN PROPHETS SPEAK
Many years ago Nordau prophesied the Balfour Declaration. Litman Rosenthal, his intimate friend, relates this incident in a fascinating memoir.”
The article, on page 464, begins: “It was on Saturday, the day after the closing of the Sixth Congress, when I received a telephone message from Dr. Herzl asking me to call on him.”
This fixes the time. The Sixth Zionist Congress was held at Basle in August, 1903.
The memoir continues: “On entering the lobby of the hotel I met Herzl’s mother who welcomed me with her usual gracious friendliness and asked me whether the feelings of the Russian Zionists were now calmer.
“‘Why just the Russian Zionists, Frau Herzl?’ I asked. ‘Why do you only inquire about these?’
“‘Because my son,’ she explained, ‘is mostly interested in the Russian Zionists. He considers them the quintessence, the most vital part of the Jewish people.’”
At this Sixth Congress the British Government (“Herzl and his agents had kept in contact with the English Government”—Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 12, page 678) had offered the Jews a colony in Uganda, East Africa. Herzl was in favor of taking it, not as a substitute for Palestine, but as a step toward it.
