ZIONISTS AND PALESTINE
Shat,—" Janus " cites the figures given in the House of Commons in answer to a question as an indication that English Jews are not sincerely interested in the establishment of a National Home in Palestine. A " home " is not necessarily a place in which one spends all of one's time, but a fireside of one's own to which one can resort " as of right and not on sufferance "—and to which one can welcome a distressed
relative when necessary. (Obviously, it is impossible for a people that has been in exile for twenty centuries to return overnight ; on the last occasion a century intervened between the beginning of the restoration under Zerubbabel and its consolidation under Nehemiah.) Moreover, there are many persons in this country who, in view of the slamming of the doors of Palestine by the British Government, refuse to transfer themselves for fear of prejudicing the chances of others whose lives depend on the possibility of admission. It is unfair for " Janus," of all people, to imagine that they are two-faced.—Your ebedient servant, (" Janus " writes: The Colonial Secretary's statement was that between 1922 and 1944 no more than 2,482 Jews had emigrated from Great Britain. That seems to me to justify fully the comment that Zionists who urge that Palestine should be made a National Home for the Jews, but show so little inclination to go there themselves, can carry little con- viction.]
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