The first organised form of Zionism took shape in Russia under the stress of the pogroms of 1880-81. Those pogroms, following a period during which the Russian Government had seemed to be working sincerely towards the emancipation of the Jews, and themselves followed by a whole code of restrictive legislation known as the May Laws, awoke into a blaze the national sentiment which had slumbered but had not died in the Russian Ghetto. They revealed the evils of _galuth_—exile, life outside Palestine—in all their hideousness, and turned men’s minds to the active accomplishment of that escape from _galuth_ for which during many centuries the Jew had only prayed. _Chibbath Zion_ (Love of Zion) became an organised movement, and throughout Russia groups of _Chovevé Zion_ (Lovers of Zion) began to work for the settlement of Jews on the land in Palestine. At the head of the movement stood Dr. Leo Pinsker, who in his pamphlet _Auto-Emancipation_ had outlined an ambitious scheme for the emigration of Jews _en masse_ to some territory (not necessarily Palestine) where they could be their own masters. His proposal found no response among the emancipated Western Jews, to whom it was addressed; and as its realisation was obviously beyond the power of the oppressed and persecuted Russian Jews, its author turned to _Chibbath Zion_ as the only means open to him of working for a national regeneration of Jewry. Events soon showed that _Chibbath Zion_ was as yet unable to achieve so large an aim. The difficulties in the way of settling Jews on the land in Palestine were enormous, and the resources of the _Chovevé Zion_ were painfully limited. The national sentiment was not sufficiently alive in the Jewish masses to induce large numbers of them to brave the hardships and privations of life in Palestine for the sake of a national ideal. Any Jew whose primary object was to escape from pogroms and May Laws and to better his individual position would naturally prefer some country, like the United States, where economic life was already developed. The _Chovevé Zion_ attempted, rather unwisely, to make Palestine attractive to the less idealistically minded by exaggerating the possibilities of individual self-advancement which it held out. The natural result was disappointment and disillusion; and the Palestinian agricultural settlements (or colonies, as they are generally called) would have faded away altogether but for the generous assistance of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, of Paris. Thanks to him the first colonies pulled through, and after many vicissitudes were set on the road to independence. But the whole colonisation movement remained small and poor, and any hopes which might have been entertained of its bringing about even the beginning of a solution of the material problem of _galuth_ were dissipated at an early date. Meanwhile, however, the _Chovevé Zion_ contributed to a national work of the first importance by helping to lay