practical situation he became less and less confident
of the cooperation of men of wealth. Differences arose in the
preliminary discussions as to the scope of the bank. In the first
draft of the Articles of Incorporation the Orient alone was named as
the area of work for the bank. Menachem Ussishkin insisted that the
words "Syria and Palestine" should be substituted. After a great deal
of discussion, the proposals for the formation of the bank were
brought to the second Zionist Congress and the Articles of
Incorporation, as amended, were adopted by acclamation.

Herzl clung to the idea which had come to him when he was thinking of
the Jewish State as a pamphlet, that it might be better for him to
write a novel. The impulse to write such a novel became irresistible
after his visit to Palestine. It was to be called "Altneuland." He
began to write it in 1899. It was completed in April 1902, and
published six months later. It is remarkable that he could write such
a novel while engaged in varied political activities in
Constantinople, in London and in Berlin; and while he had to deal with
the many troublesome internal Zionist problems.

"Altneuland" was a novel with a purpose. It described the Palestine of
the near future as it would develop through the Zionist Movement. It
had the weaknesses of every propaganda novel. The entire work has
something of the state about it and proceeds in the form of scenes
rather than by way of narrative. Each type has a specific outlook.
Most of the characters are portraits of living personalities. It was
his purpose to memorialize his friends and his opponents.

"Altneuland" tells of a Jew who visits Palestine in 1898 and then
comes again in 1923 when he finds the Promised Land developed under
Jewish influence. Its territory lies East and West of the Jordan. The
dead land of 1898 is now thoroughly alive. Its real creators were the
irrigation engineers. Technology had given a new form to labor, a new
social and economic system had been created which is described as
"mutualistic," a huge cooperative, a mediate form between
individualism and collectivism. Haifa had become a world city. Around
the Holy City of Jerusalem, modern suburbs had arisen, shaded
boulevards and parks, institutes of learning, places of amusement,
markets--"a world city in the spirit of the twentieth century." In
this new land, the Arabs live side by side in friendship with the
Jews.

"Altneuland" did not produce the