News Brief

The funeral took place this (Sunday) morning, in the presence of representatives of the Palestine Government and of the Jewish institutions in the country. Burial was in the Bentwich family vault, near the Jewish National Library of the Hebrew University. Mr. David Yellin, an old friend, spoke at the grave-side.

A telegram of condolence has been received from the Jewish Agency in London.

THE MACCABEAN PILGRIMAGE TO PALESTINE AND THE CLERKENWELL CONFERENCE

Mr. Herbert Bentwich, who was born in London on May 11th., 1856, was a distinguished barrister and an authority on the law of copyright. He was far 17 years, from 1907-1924, editor of the “Law Journal”, and he had been one of the arbitrators of the London Chamber of Arbitration. He was Examiner in Jurisprudence for the Palestine Law School, and Chairman of the English Branch of the Society for Jewish Jurisprudence.

His publications included “A Treatise on the Law of Copyright in Designs”, “The Military Service Acts’ Practice”, “Pamphlets on Chambers of Arbitration”, “The Administration of the Aliens Act and Zionism”, and many political and other articles in the “Nineteenth Century”, “Fortnightly”, “English”, and other reviews.

Mr. Herbert Bentwich was a member of the Maccabean Club in London, before which Dr. Herzl made his first public plea. He was particularly helpful to Dr. Herzl in founding the Jewish Colonial Trust. He was for many years the President of the Order of Ancient Maccabeans, which he represented at many of the Zionist Congresses, and in 1922 he founded the Anglo-Jewish Settlement at Gezer, in Palestine.

Some months before the First Zionist Congress was opened at Basle, Mr. Herbert Bentwich organised the Maccabean pilgrimage to Palestine, which (as he himself wrote of it afterwards) helped in some degree to rouse world-wide interest in the movement. Herzl himself, he went on, welcomed the pilgrimage, in which some Americans Joined with their English friends, as an expedition of pioneers directed to an investigation and the possibilities of the land, and although our, Party in no way aspired to fulfil that function, it did serve as the pioneer of many similar pilgrimages of lovers of Zion from other countries.

There followed on this, Mr. Herbert Bentwich wrote in this article, the great Clerkenwell Conference of 1898, the first parliament that had ever been called from the mass of English Jews, which was attended by 150 delegates from all parts of the kingdom, and also by many foreign visitors, including Dr. Wolffsohn, of Cologne, representing the Central Committee appointed by the first Basle Congress. Dr. Herzl sent a message to the Conference, in which he declared: “From the first moment I entered the movement my eyes were directed towards England, because I saw that by reason of the general situation of things there it was the Archimedean point where the lever could be applied”.

Out of this great meeting, he proceeded, there grew the English Zionist Federation, and at the first annual conference of the Federation in the following year, the Zionist leader himself attended and delivered a notable address at St. Martin’s Town Hall, Westminster, dealing with the supposed conflict between so-called “practical” and so-called “political” Zionism.

“THOSE OF US WHO WERE LIEUTENANTS UNDER THE GREAT CAPTAIN”

During this period, he went on, there were established as British corporations the two great organs, the Jewish Colonial Trust and the Jewish National Fund, which made possible all the later developments.

Herzl, he wrote, had been charged with having a veritable Anglomania, and like all other leaders, he recognised in the Anglo-Saxon race the true pathfinders of progress and the champions of liberty. So like another Mazzini, he appealed to the English people to come to the help of the dispersed millions of his own race.

Since Herzl burst on an incredulous world with his Jewish State, a whole generation has passed, and a new generation has arisen, which knew not Joseph, Mr. Bentwich concluded his article, and yet the charm of the wonder-worker persists, and Herzl’s attempt at a modern solution of the Jewish question has its reverberations to the ends of the earth. Though the State has not been established, the status of the people has been raised by the unfolding of the age-long dream, touched with a master-hand. The story of the dispersed nation kept alive by its ideals, has roused the conscience of humanity and the vision of the seer is being translated into fact. Those of us who were lieutenants under the Great Captain and are privileged to partake in the gradual unfolding of the dream in the land of our fathers, have to-day no prouder title than that which we enjoy under England’s protection with the remnant of Israel who are the pioneers and harbingers of the Return.