Though no official announcement has yet been made, nor is
likely to be before the-reading of her will, there seems to be little doubt that the Baroness Hirsch has left close on two millions of money to various Jewish instientions, mainly on the Continent. The largest bequests, according to the Vienna correspondent of the Standard fall to the Jewish Colonisation Association in London, Baron Hirsch's New York fund for schools, the Comite de Bienfaisance Israelite and Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale in Paris, the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the Hirsch primary schools in Galicia, and the Home for Jewish Working Girls in London, and range from £400,000 down to 2120,000, nearly twenty smaller benefac- tions to minor institutions and the Jewish communities of nine Continental cities bringing the total up to 21,880,000. Rumours of a far larger distribution, extending to upwards of twenty millions, have been circulated by the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, but even if the lower estimate be correct it probably constitutes a " record " in the annals of almsgiving. We cannot help wishing, however, that these gifts had been concentrated on the founding of Jewish colonies in Syria. The Rothschild colonies there have succeeded so well from the social and humane, if not from the pecuniary, point of view, that one would like to see the idea still further developed, —but perhaps the Sultan would not have allowed £20,000,000 to be invested on " planting " Jews in Palestine.
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