EUROPEAN JEWRY : THE POLISH PROBLEM
Commonwealth and Foreign
By LORD MELCHETT THE visit to London of the Polish Foreign Minister is of great significance to the present European situation, in view of the anxious position which Poland occupies between the contending States of Russia and Germany. Among the other problems which Colonel Beck was understood to desire to discuss was the one which he raised at the last session of the League of Nations ; that is, the question of Polish emigration. At Geneva he was forced to point out that, as he himself expressed it with much regret, Poland was not able to provide a satisfactory standard of living for the whole of her large and increasing population, and that emigration was of vital necessity to the Polish people. Within this larger problem arises the question of Jewish migration, and it is natural that the recent decision severely to curtail Jewish immigration to Palestine during the period of the enquiries of the Royal Commission will cause him serious anxiety.
About 10 per cent. of Poland's total population is repre- sented 637 some three million JeWs, and it is by no means an exaggeration to. say that the fate of Poland is very largely tied up with the destiny of these people. Poland has no desire to
• be driven either into' the arms of Nazism or the embrace of Communism, yet the intense anti-Semitism of the parties of the Right, which are mainly under modern German ideology, is likely to drive the Jewish population to the Left, which, because of the immediate proximity of Russia, is largely Communist. Such a movement might well tip the balance of Polish politics, therefore, in the wrong direction, with conse- quences which would not only be gravely distressing to Poiand herself, but might also seriously endanger the future of Europe.
In a situation of this kind, it is clearly urgent that the Jewish population should be offered a realisable alternative to either Nazism or Communism, and only one such alternative is poisible. That is Zionism—the real hope of a direct solution . of the problem by steady migration to the National Home in . Palestine.
At first sight it might appear that the magnitude of Poland's Jewish population precludes a rapid solution of the problem by migration, and indeed it is probable that a mere haphazard transference of families from one country to the other would not provide the way out. A study of the effects upon the future of a population of the transference of selected age-groups, however, throws an entirely new light on the whole issue. Careful statistical enquiry shows that the -effect on the future numerical strength of a given population, if all persons of the age-group 19-20 are removed annually, is very striking. The effect of such a transference would be nearly to halve the original population in 20 years, and in 40 years to reduce it to about 14 per cent. of its former size. It will readily be appreciated that the application of this theory to the problem of Polish Jewry provides an admirable means for reducing the Jewish population of that country to a magnitude at which it ceases to be a serious political problem within the space of one generation, or say between 25 and 30 years.
In pre-War days Poland was an emigrant country to the extent of about 250,000 persons a year, of whom a great proportion were Jews, so that when emigration was checked the adverse effect upon the Jews was two-fold. -In the first place, it has meant that a heavy drain on the Jewish population itself has not taken place, and in the second, that a consequently abnormally large Jewish population finds itself in a time of economic distress in competition with an abnormally enhanced non-Jewish population. Add to this the fact that economic distress has forced a considerable number of the peasant population to enter into those small trades and petty _ manufactures which were formerly almost exclusively carried on by the Jews, and_ you have
accounted for the fact that 2,000,000 of the latter are practically on the brink of starvation and that there is considerable social irritation caused by the new economic conflict.
In order to relieve this situation it has been estimated that the number of Jews who ought to emigrate from Poland is as many as 120,000 a year, but it is my belief that by the systematic migration of the age-group 19-20 a smaller number would be adequate. The increase in Poland's population is, it seems, round about 35,000 a year, and if that number of Jews of the given age-group were removed annually, phis the normal migration of capitalist classes, I am convinced that the diminution of the Jewish population would be sufficiently rapid to make it possible to stem the tide which is sweeping them to the Left. Nazism would have no cause to use as a rallying-cry a problem which was definitely in process of orderly solution by agreement between the Government and the Mandatory Power for Palestine. On the other hand, in face of such anti-Semitism as remained, the Jews would be able to stand firm against the leftward pressure by rallying themselves around their own standard of Zionism.
The application of this principle need by no means be confined to 'Poland. The problem is a European problem of growing importance and urgency, and if we take into account the Jewish populations of Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Rumania as well, we find the problem reduced to a relatively simple one of the migration of between 60,000 and 70,000 young Jews a year. Fortunately, this figure is equivalent to the rate of immigration into Palestine reached last year, so that a solution of the Jewish problem throughout Europe reduces itself to a simple mathematical problem, which is that of adjusting the pressure in Europe to the absorptive capacity in Palestine by the outflow from the former to the latter of a specified age-group composed of those young and strong Jews who in present circum- stances may be forced to become a great accretion of strength to Left Parties, but who in their own National Home would be able to devote their strength and their creative capacities to the development of their own land among their own people.
So far we have dealt with the problem as one of European political strategy in which we aim at the salvation of Jewry from being forced to the Left with dire consequences to the Western world and bitter results for Jews living else- where, and particularly in America, where anything savouring of Communism arouses the most violent enmity. But there is a striking reason why the Mandatory Power itself should support the solution proposed. That reason is also one of strategy. The new Jewish migration would people Palestine with a very fine type, strong not only in itself but in its progeny, and conscious of a debt of gratitude to the British Empire, the expression of which would know no' bounds. Such a population could preserve for all time at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean a link of Empire between the East and the West, which could by its own man-power, wealth and equipment make itself impregnable, and prOvide at no expense to Great Britain a permanent naval and air base. It is 'unnee. eisary for me to emphasise here, as I have done before, the benefits which I' believe would accrue to the Arab population by the adoption of this policy.
The opportunity presents itself of solving, by agreement between the Powers of Europe, the Jewish problem, which if left unsolved may lead to disaster, of giving Jews them- selves pride in a new future in their own land and of strengthening the strategic position of the British Empire in a way that . no other policy could.
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