of Governor Herbert R. O'Conor 157

is to be checked carefully, and that not only the Chief Executive of the State,
but also the people of the State as a whole, are looking to them for intelligent,
administration in their respective spheres.

WELCOME TO DR. CHAIM WEIZMANN, PRESIDENT, WORLD

ZIONIST ORGANIZATION AND PRESIDENT OF JEWISH

AGENCY FOR PALESTINE

Lyric Theatre Under Auspices Zionist Organization of America, Baltimore
District and Baltimore Chapter, Hadassah Labor Zionist Organization

January 21, 1940
Baltimore

IT is my official privilege, as well as a personal pleasure, to join with the
other representatives of the people of Maryland, and with the leaders of
Jewry in our State, in extending a most cordial welcome to Dr. Weizman,
scientist, philosopher and statesman, self-dedicated to the cause of the Zionist
world movement in behalf of Jewry's national home in Palestine, Dr. Weizman
has given evidence of a broad humanitarianism that could not fail to find a
warm response in the hearts of the people of Maryland, irrespective of race
or creed.

Fired by the same spirit of mental and spiritual independence that, more
than 300 years ago, sent that intrepid band of English adventurers to the shores
of the Potomac, to found a colony where they could live and worship without
interference or molestation, Dr. Weizman and those associated with him are
working valiantly to help solve the tortuous problems that beset their people
today. In this endeavor, they cannot fail to enlist the sympathy, and helpful
cooperation, of everyone in our State, and in this great country of ours who
truly appreciates, and properly evaluates, the privileges of freedom that are
ours.

Sheltered as we are here in America by a Constitution that guarantees,
and for more than a century and a half has preserved for all our citizens, no
matter to what minority group they might belong, those God-given rights of liberty
of thought, word, and action, we find it difficult sometimes to realize the extent
to which these personal rights are being violated throughout the world today.
We read in the press accounts of persecutions being laid upon the conquered
peoples of Poland and Central Europe, of the outrages to which Jewish and
other groups in these lands are being subjected, but it seems too far away,
so remote, that sometimes it may leave us cold.

To men like Dr. Weizman and his associates, however, who come face to
face with these persecutions in the afflicted countries, or who see the results
of the diabolical work in the broken, homeless men, women and children that
stream to them for aid in their destitution, the picture is a vivid one, dishearten-
ing, seemingly almost impossible of correction, so vast is its scope. When
they come before us, therefore, as Dr. Weizman does today, to plead the cause
of their thousands of unfortunate charges: when they attempt to bring home
to us the utter destitution and despair that grip so many thousands in the