THE PALESTINE MANDATE
Sm,—Dr. Maude Royden Shaw is of the opinion that the contention in my letter on the Palestine Mandate can be refuted by facts, but she omits to explain what these'refuting facts are. Presumably she is under the impression that the present population of over half a million Jews in Palestine and a calculated pre-war world Jewish population of sixteen millions constitute a self-evident contradiction of my statement : "It is possible to say that the problem of Jewish homelessness can be solved in Palestine."
To solve the problem of Jewish homelessncss it is not necessary for all Jews in the world to go to Palestine. Such a proposition would be fantastic. The problem will be solved if all the Jews who want to go there can go there as of right. If the number of Jews who desire to go to Palestine are within the limit of the absorptive capacity of that country in the next generation, then it is demonstrably true that the problem of Jewish homelessness can be solved in Palestine.
The pre-war Jewish population was about sixteen millions. Since then some five million European Jews have lost their lives owing to Nazi mass murders or other anti-Semitic outrages.
Of the eleven millions who survive, five millions are in the United States of America, four millions in the U.S.S.R., half a million in South America 'and four hundred thousand in Great Britain. These figures are, of course, approximations ; they serve, however, to show that the real problem of. Jewish homelessness is of the order of magnitude of one million persons.
In other words, Palestine will be required in the next generation to absorb less than twice the number of Jews so successfully absorbed in the last generation Even then, the population of Palestine would fall far short of its historic maximum. Has Dr. Royden Shaw noted that Jews want for a homeland less than one per cent, of the Arab world?—
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