As regards general treatment, the subject presented the usual difficulty in the choice of a chronological or analytical method. In a strict chronological arrangement things of a similar character would often be widely separated, and the chain recording a certain development would be broken. In the other arrangement the points appertaining to the influence of a particular period would be obscured, and the survey rendered difficult. I have therefore combined as far as possible the advantages of both methods, and have endeavoured to avoid their drawbacks. I have arranged the material chronologically for every subject, but in order to explain activities connected with one another, I have often had to take a retrospective glance at an episode or a personality. The elucidation of Zionist aims, with special reference to the present situation, is, apart from several allusions to it in the text of the present volume, mainly dealt with in the Introduction. The whole history, and particularly the Introduction, is, as I am perfectly aware, written from the Zionist standpoint. A historian should, it is true, put aside party interest. But nobody not himself a Zionist could penetrate into the kernel of Zionism, because one cannot fully comprehend any spiritual phenomenon without feeling it within himself. Those who have no experience in Zionism may have their opinions, but they are invariably found to be ignorant of the more minute features and finer points which are essential to a faithful portrayal of Zionism. Zionists, on the other hand, may be partial, but they are certainly better informed. Anyhow, I have endeavoured to be just to the best of my ability. To Zionists themselves this history needs no recommendation. The records of an ideal of thousands of years for which the best of our nation have laboured, struggled, suffered and died cannot fail to interest most profoundly those who have inherited their principles and continue their work, thoroughly convinced that it is in harmony with humanity and justice, as well as with Jewish tradition.