LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
A PALESTINE PLAN
SIR,—Dr. G. R. Driver, at the end of a constructive and interesting article on Palestine, makes the suggestion that a home for the Jews should be sought in Eritrea. Apart from the wisdom or unwisdom of creating fresh Palestines in other territories hitherto peaceful, what are the facts about Eritrea? They are that only, at most, one-fifth of the surface of the territory could imaginably be used for European settlement. That one-fifth has been inhabited from time inunemorial by a settled village- dwelling Christian folk : there is no question whatsoever of Dr. Diver's "more or less nomadic African tribes" nor of his "fair number of Tigrinian immigrants." The population in these highlands is relatively dense, and every square inch of cultivable land is owned by one of the many villages or kinship-groups. The prelude, therefore, of Jewish settlement must be forceable expulsion of the age-long inhabitants. Have these no rights?
The picture of Italian farmers returning to Italy and evacuating their well-tended farms for Jewish newcomers belongs to pure fantasy. It is true there are still 45,000 Italians in Eritrea, but not more than one or two per cent, of these live on the land ; the rest, except for the two or three thousand employed in the public services and recently developed local industries, are an unwanted urban proletariat who proved a grave embarrassment to the Italian administration in its later days and a still graver for the British. Nine-tenths of the Italians must be repatriated because there is no living for them, and never can be, in Eritrea. Dr.
Driver says: Where Italians have lived, Jews can live." That is equivalent to saying: "Where Italians have invaded, to the bitter resent- ment of the population, and have formed an unwanted and highly em- barrassing element, surely Jews can do the same."—Yours faithfully,
STEPHEN H. LONGRIGG.
Ling House, Dominion Street, London, E.G. 2.
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