makes advances to the new settlers when they take up their holdings. As
a result of this enlightened policy the number of colonies has risen to
about forty, with 15,000 inhabitants in all and 110,000 acres of land,
and these figures do not do full justice to the importance of the
colonising movement. The 15,000 Jewish agriculturists are only 12-1/2
per cent. of the Jewish population in Palestine, and 2 per cent., of the
total population of the country; but they are the most active,
intelligent element, and the only element which is rapidly increasing.
Again, the land they own is only 2 per cent. of the total area of
Palestine; but it is between 8 and 14 per cent. of the area under
cultivation, and there are vast uncultivated tracts which the Jews can
and will reclaim, as their numbers grow--both by further colonisation
and by natural increase, for the first generation of colonists have
already proved their ability to multiply in the Promised Land. Under
this new Jewish husbandry Palestine has begun to recover its ancient
prosperity. The Jews have sunk artesian wells, built dams for water
storage, fought down malaria by drainage and eucalyptus planting, and
laid out many miles of roads. In 1890 an acre of irrigable land at
Petach-Tikweh, the earliest colony, was worth £3 12s., in 1914, £36, and
the annual trade of Jaffa rose from £760,000 to £2,080,000 between 1904
and 1912. "The impetus to agriculture is benefiting the whole economic
life of the country," wrote the German Vice-Counsul at Jaffa in his
report for 1912, and there is no fear that, as immigration increases,
the Arab element will be crowded to the wall. There are still only two
Jewish colonies beyond Jordan, where the Hauran--under the Roman Empire
a corn-land with a dozen cities--has been opened up by the railway and
is waiting again for the plough.

But will immigration continue now that the Jew of the Pale has been
turned at a stroke into the free citizen of a democratic country?