A land without a people for a people without a land throw upon the Jews the actual manual labor of regeneration and prevent them from exploiting the "fellahin", whose numbers and lower wages are moreover a considerable obstacle to the proposed immigration from Poland and other suffering centers". In 1914 Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Congress and the first president of the state of Israel said: "In its initial stage Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish
Chaim Weizmann 10 February 1917 another was held, in a series of winter meetings in London. The older generation of Greenberg, Joseph Cowen and Gaster were stepping down or being passed over. "...those friends ... in close cooperation all these years", he suggested should become the EZF Council- Manchester's Sieff, Sacher and Marks, and London's Leon Simon and Samuel Tollowsky. While the war was raging in the outside world, the Zionists prepared for an even bigger fight for the survival of their homeland. Weizmann issued a statement on 11 February 1917, and on the following day, they received news of the Kerensky