Zionists

In Vienna, the city where lie the bones of Theodore Herzl, onetime newspaper correspondent and pioneer in the Zionist movement, Zionists gathered for their 14th congress in 28 years. They bent together over tables in beer gardens, talking with subdued gestures, and always there was one name that rang and buzzed in their talk--the name of Chaim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization. Opposition to his reelection was brewing on three fronts:

1) The impatience of the Jewry of Poland with his policy of making haste slowly in the business of restoring Palestine to the Jews and the Jews to Palestine. The economic policy of Poland has driven thousands of Jews to look for new homes. Weizmann has not yet organized Palestine to receive them.

2) The militant Zionists of Paris, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, enfant terrible of the movement, founder of the Jewish Legion. Jabotinsky strongly disapproves of Weizmann's alleged acquiescence in British attempts to whittle down the Zionist pledge.

3) The party of Jerusalem, led by the so-called "iron man," Menahem Ussishkin, a former colleague of Weizmann.

Despite the vigorous if disorganized efforts of these rival factions to defeat him, the reelection of Weizmann seems highly probable.

With such thoughts in their heads, hundreds of Jews made their way to the Freiheit Platz to attend the first session of the congress. Throughout the city 6,000 police were posted. Around the Platz were more than 500 sabred police, holding back a growling, rumbling, angry crowd.

With cries of "Clear out the Jews" thousands of young men, belonging to the violently anti-Semite Hackenkreutzer (Swastika) organization, broke through the police cordons, began what they sportively called a "Jew hunt." Anti-Zionist Jews supported-"Christian Vienna" in its attempt to chasten their brethren.

Mounted police quickly appeared. Showers of stones met them. One bobby was knocked off his horse. At one point the angry crowd chased the police around the broad Ringstrasse.