"(3.) Strengthening of the Jewish self-respect and national consciousness."
The Zionist societies use every effort that the members and the Jewish masses in general may know the history of their nation, and become acquainted with the sacred and profane literature in the Hebrew tongue. They teach the Jews to hold their heads high, to be proud of their descent, and to despise the Anti-Semitic lies, calumnies, and insults. They care, in the measure of their strength, for the amelioration of the hygiene of the Jewish proletariat, for its economic improvement by means of association and solidarity, for well-directed education of children, and for the instruction of the women. They give the young students a goal for their efforts and an ideal in life. They preach the duty of leading a faultless, spiritual life, the rejection of a crude materialism, into which the assimilation Jews, on account of the want of a worthy ideal, are only too apt to sink, and strict self-control in word and deed. They found athletic societies in order to promote the long neglected physical development of the rising generation. They give a new impulse to the celebration of Jewish historical feasts and memorial days. In many instances they even make themselves outwardly conspicuous by wearing insignia. The Zionist regards it as contemptible to conceal his nationality. He wishes to be recognized as a Jew, and as he always behaves himself in a natural, unaffected way, plays no comedy of imitation, wishes to deceive nobody about his extraction and identity, intrudes upon no one under a false flag, his relations to his Christian neighbors and fellow-countrymen are sounder, truer, more frank and dignified than those of the assimilation Jew, who makes painful and useless efforts, which disgust every Christian possessing a modicum of good taste, to hide the fact that he is a Jew.
"(4.) Preparatory steps to obtain the consent of the governments necessary to achieve the aims of Zionism."
Several of the governments whose opinion will eventually be decisive in the matter have been, by means of memorials, reliably informed of the aims of Zionism; and there has been no want of very important encouragements and promising expressions of sympathy with its tendencies.