The memoir continues: "On entering the lobby of the hotel I met Herzl's mother who welcomed me with her usual gracious friendliness and asked me whether the feelings of the Russian Zionists were now calmer.
"'Why just the Russian Zionists, Frau Herzl?' I asked. 'Why do you only inquire about these?'
"'Because my son,' she explained, 'is mostly interested in the Russian
Zionists. He considers them the quintessence, the most vital part of the
Jewish people.'"
At this Sixth Congress the British Government ("Herzl and his agents had kept in contact with the English Government"—Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 12, page 678) had offered the Jews a colony in Uganda, East Africa. Herzl was in favor of taking it, not as a substitute for Palestine, but as a step toward it. It was this which formed the chief topic of conversation between Herzl and Litman Rosenthal in that Basle hotel. Herzl said to Rosenthal, as reported in this article: "There is a difference between the final aim and the ways we have to go to achieve this aim."
Suddenly Max Nordau, who seems at the conference held last month in
London to have become Herzl's successor, entered the room, and the
Rosenthal interview was ended.
Let the reader now follow attentively the important part of this
Rosenthal story:—(the italics are ours)
"About a month later I went on a business trip to France. On my way to Lyons I stopped in Paris, and there I visited, as usual, our Zionist friends.