they still viewed the Arab question as something of lesser importance, perhaps hoping that by ignoring the problem it would go away.
* * *
While the question of dealing with the Arabs on the scene was taken lightly, the Zionist leaders were engrossed in their efforts to gain the support of at least one world power. Herzl himself never dreamed of establishing his Jewish state by a simple fait accompli. He was thinking in terms of the great colonial enterprises, the chartered companies. His dream was to turn the movement into one great chartered company, different from all the others, not owned by capitalists bent on exploitation, but the property of a whole people striving to put its roots down. It was a beautiful idea, imposing in its naivete.
The First Zionist Congress had called for "a legally secured Jewish home in Palestine." Secured, that meant, by a charter from the family of nations, or by some world power. Herzl saw his life work as the securing of this charter, and so did his successors. The first person to address was, obviously, the Turkish Sultan. Herzl himself tried to convince Abd-el-Hamid, quite oblivious to the fact that this bloody potentate was universally hated by his Arab subjects as a brutal oppressor. Herzl went to Constantinople and was received by the Sultan on May 17, 1901, not as a Zionist delegate but as a journalist. In a two-hour conversation he offered the Sultan the assistance of world Jewry in solving Turkey's chronic financial difficulties. Later Herzl met several other high-ranking Ottoman officials reiterating the same idea.
When these efforts proved futile, the obvious next person to address was the German Kaiser, by that time the foremost ally of the Turks. Germany stood at the peak of its imperial aspirations and endeavors. The Drang nach Osten, the eastward urge, led to the plan for a Berlin-toBaghdad railway as part of an effort to fill the Middle