The outbreak of the First World War posed daunting challenges to Zionism. The movement that had proclaimed, in Theodor Herzl’s words in Der Judenstaat, that “we are a people, one people” now faced a reality in which Jews were enlisted in all of the belligerent armies, facing one another on the battlefield in uniforms of riven, warring nations. There was little that might be hoped for in such a situation, from the point of view of many Zionists.