the American Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, which Brandeis chaired, had increased American Zionist membership ten times to 200,000 members; "American Jewry thenceforth became the financial center for the world Zionist movement". As in the US, England had experienced a rapid growth in their Jewish minority. About 150,000 Jews migrated there from Russia in the period 1881–1914. With this immigration influx, pressure grew from British voters to halt it; added to the established knowledge in British society of Old Testament scripture, Zionism became an attractive solution for both Britain and the Empire. In the search for support, Herzl, before his death, had made the most progress with the German Kaiser, joining him on his 1898 trip to Palestine. At the outbreak of war in 1914, the offices of the Zionist Organization were located in Berlin and led by Otto Warburg, a German citizen. With different national sections of the movement supporting different sides in the war, Zionist policy was to maintain strict neutrality and "to demonstrate complete loyalty to Turkey", the German ally controlling Palestine. Following Turkey's entry into World War I in August however, the Zionists were expelled from Tel Aviv and its environs. David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi both volunteered for the Turkish Army but were rejected and exiled to Egypt. They moved to the US and tried to recruit Jews to set up a Jewish unit in the Turkish army. Although 500,000 Russian Jews were serving in the Russian army, the Russian leadership regarded all Jews as their enemies and assumed that most were avoiding the draft. In 1915, following German advances in the Baltic provinces, the Russian military leadership accused the Jews of being a German fifth column and ordered 500,000 to leave their homes in the Pale of Settlement, mostly with less than 24 hours notice, and to relocate in central Russia. An estimated 100,000 died of starvation and exposure and their plight contributed to the disintegration of the Russian army. In the United States, still officially neutral, most Russian and German Jews supported the Germans, as did much of the largely anti-British Irish American and German American community. Britain was anxious to win US support for its war effort, and winning over Jewish financial and popular support in the US was considered vital. With Tsarist Russia on the Allied side, most Jews supported Germany and in much of Eastern Europe the advancing