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But had they insured a new policy? Few thought so: some said they would have voted for the Mustermesse janitor in order to have a new deal. Day after Dr. Sokolow's election the Congress elected an executive committee in which the majority are Weizmannites. Extremist in talk, the Congress had ended by becoming moderate in action, for the new president, 72-year-old Dr. Sokolow, is conservative, suave, quiet. Eminent among Jewish linguists and scholars, he has all his life been a journalist. Emotionally he spoke at the opening meeting, not in the statesman's but in the Hebraist's manner: "We are the oldest martyr people in the world! What pen can describe the wrongs and cruelties we have borne in the course of thousands of years? What good the nations have done us by such action as the Balfour Declaration is not kindness. Shall we now be driven into mistrust of mankind?" Fervently he quoted a Jew from Kishinev who cried: "God save us from commissions and we'll save ourselves from pogroms!"
Action is the simple program of the Revisionists, who are Dr. Weizmann's most violent opponents. They demand a national, autonomous Jewish state in Palestine. Zion, say they, may try once more to ''play the game" with England, but let no one think (as does Dr. Weizmann) that the present situation is in the least bearable. Organizer and leader of the Revisionists is 50-year-old Russian-born Vladimir Jabotinsky. Kinetic, rambunctious, romantic, he is called the Hitler, the Mussolini of young Zionists. Round-faced, bespectacled, he is a poet and international journalist. He founded the Jewish Legion of the British Army, fought in Palestine during the World War, was imprisoned in the fortress of Acco for leading a Jewish defense corps against Arab attackers in Jerusalem in 1920. Viewed now as a firebrand, he is forbidden to return to Palestine.
Weizmann supporters called the Revisionists '"Hitlerites" during the Congress last fortnight. Keeping obligingly in character, they shouted back: "Red slaves! Go to Moscow!" Impressively they arose during a later debate, walked out of the meeting just as dramatically as Hitlerites walked out of the Reichstag last February. Next day they walked back in, minus Leader Jabotinsky who announced he would take a six-month leave. One Revisionist, Abraham Lang, tore down a blue-&-white Zionist flag because he thought the Congress had "betrayed Zionism's ideals." He was tried last week, suspended from Zionist activities until next December. Abraham Lang wept.