SIR,—It is regrettable (and astonishing) that Dr. Cecil Roth should
not have thought of a better and more valid explanation for the smallness of Jewish emigration from Britain to Palestine than the one which he has offered. Thus he enabled " Janus " to his icy, though under the circum- stances not incorrect, retort " that Zionists . . . who show so little inclination to go to Palestine themselves, can carry little conviction." As a protagonist of British Jewry has failed to reply effectively to " Janus's " query, you will perhaps allow a non-British Jew to offer a sensible explanation.
Jewish immigration into Palestine has from 1923 stood under a quota system. At that date the Jewish people in all countries of the world numbered sixteen million. Though some super-radical and fanatical Jewish elements—(like the Revisionists under Jabotinsky's leadership,— they have cooled off since and are more reasonable now)—assumed that Palestine could absorb five to six million of Jews, the Jewish Agency never had doubts that the absorptive capacity of Palestine during one generation could hardly be bigger than two million. It was therefore clear—and that in fact was originally the reason why political Zionism sprung up at all fifty years ago—that these quotas which were available for immigration into Palestine must go to those Jewries whose social and civic existence was the most endangered, namely to the Jewish com- munities of Eastern, South Eastern and Central Europe. (Few Gentile people in Britain, or for that matter, America, realise the abysmal degree of poverty in which ninety per cent. of the Polish Jews, who then num- bered 3,500,000 souls, dwelt.) There has never been an intimation that large numbers of British or American Jews should go to Palestine and stay there for good. The idea has always been that the wealthy Jewries in America, in the British Empire, France, Holland and Belgium would have the task of procuring the financial means which would be necessary to settle as many Jews as possible from the destitute communities of Eastern Europe in Palestine. This " division of labour " has from the very outset been a clear and generally accepted state of affairs within the Zionist movement—and I believe that " Janus " will agree that it was (and still is) a sensible and natural arrangement. I have for some years been a (deputy) member of the Czechoslovak Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency and I have noticed at various conferences that what I have stated above was generally accepted as a matter of course.—
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