1932

What Zionist propaganda for years and years could not do,
disaster has done overnight. Palestine is today the fiery question
for the Jews of East and West, and the New World as well. The
'certificate' is now the hope and salvation of thousands.

Can Palestine absorb them all? What manner of immigrant is
most to be desired? What can the Zionist Movement do to
enlarge the prospects? These are painful queries to answer.

In 1922, the British Government laid down, in the Churchill-
Samuel White Paper, that immigration must be regulated by
economic absorptive capacity. The Executive of the Jewish
Agency, comprising Weizmann, Sokolow, Motzkin, Jabotinsky,
Lichtheim and Soloveichik, subscribed to the principles of the
White Paper and bound itself in writing to conduct Zionist affairs
accordingly.

How are we to interpret the principle of absorptive capacity?
In the eleven years since the White Paper appeared, the rate of
admission has fluctuated considerably--in some years, over 10,000
Jews arrived, in others, only a few thousands; one year more
than 30,000 immigrants; another year more emigrants than im-
migrants.

It is true that there were four changes of High Commissioner
in that same period, but that was not the reason for the vagaries.
During the term of Herbert Samuel, who was the real author
of the White Paper, the rate varied from year to year; and so
it did with his successors. The personal view of a High Com-
missioner has only a very restricted bearing on the progress of

-41-