The Maccabaean

UNDOUBTEDLY the most important practical problem relating to work in Palestine by Zionism, is the advancement of Jewish agriculture in that country. If we do not succeed in creating a strong Jewish peasant class in Palestine, then all hopes of even an approximately autonomous home in Palestine must be given up. It is possible and indeed not improbable that the Jews in time may, even without agriculture, attain a certain preponderance in a number of cities in Palestine. Of what avail, however, would that be if the country remained un-Jewish? We should have nursed only a new and temporary Ghetto culture. For if the immigration from without once ceases, that will happen which always does in countries that have reached a higher stage of civilization. The population of the cities will increase but very little from within, and their growth will be provided for mainly by the rapidly increasing rural population. If the rural population is Arabic and not Jewish, the Jewish advantage till then possibly exists, will soon be wiped out. The principle that the future of a country belongs to the stock which inhabits the flat land has been demonstrated by too many historic examples to be now disputed.

Our most earnest endeavors, therefore, must be directed without intermission, to the task of opening up the level land of Palestine to Jewish colonization, however arduous this undertaking may at present be.

The so-called industrial colonization may perhaps be a good means of inciting the Jewish population in Palestine to quicker growth to start with, than would be possible with our limited resources in the rural parts. But we must not forget that it will always be a rather unsound makeshift.

Cities with large Jewish populations constitute, no doubt, a certain element of power. Especially to foreign eyes does a compact urban population appear more striking than a

much more numerous rural population. But from a political point of view, such colonization is of slight value.

In the world of diplomacy, the land-occupying population far outweighs in importance the inhabitants of the cities—and this not for military reasons alone—who are much more inclined to moving about.

Let us now examine what Zionism has done up to the present to advance the necessary agricultural colonization, so indispensable to a movement striving very particularly to attain these political aims, and what it can do in the future.

The great instrument with which the Zionist movement has expected to solve this important problem has been the National Fund, which at the beginning was intended only for purchasing land in Palestine. It was in fact decided that this Fund was not to be used before it had reached the sum of five million kronen. The sixth congress expanded the intended purpose of the Fund so as to permit the immediate purchase of land, as well as the administration and renting of the lands so purchased.

The present legal form of the National Fund, an English corporation, limited by guaranty, permits indeed theoretically, the purchase of land also, but forbids selling and allows renting only to Jews. These limitations, as well as the fact pointed out by our legal experts that at present the obtaining of land in Palestine with any degree of security by means of the National Fund is impossible, so long as it is not a legal person in the Turkish view, confine the purchase of land for some time to come to very isolated cases, namely, to such cases where legal insecurity and practical difhculties may be disregarded. The land possessions of the National Fund will therefore have to be limited to certain city lots, to certain plots necessary for the olive-tree donations, and to the three pieces of land bought