Chamberlain an influential cabinet member and the most forceful imperialist of his day was sympathetic to Jewish suffering though not above making a cutting remark about Jews when it proved politically expedient. In the spring of 1903 the fastidiously dressed sixty-six-year-old secretary was fresh from a trip to British possessions in Africa.... Whatever the genesis of the idea, Chamberlain received Herzl in his office just weeks after the Kishinev pogroms.