Angola for Jews

Paris.

With Jewish interest everywhere centered on the problems of European Jewry and on emigration and colonization as the most frequently invoked relief measures, the possibilities of Angola as a Jewish colonial territory again deserve consideration.

After a lengthy interval, the Angola idea, evolved in 1912 by Israel Zangwill and the Jewish Territorialist Organization, is again experiencing a resurrection. For two years there have been regularly recurring rumors concerning negotiations which private Jewish individuals or leagues which have fallen heir to the Zangwillian viewpoint are carrying on with the Portuguese government, aiming to gain permission to enter this paradise.

SUITABLE FOR IMMIGRATION

There cannot be the slightest doubt that Angola is suitable for a European immigration on a large scale, much more so than many another country in the subtropical or tropical zone.

All those who know the land concur in this judgment. Freyberg, the German who lived in Angola five years, hunting big game, searching for diamonds and running a plantation, cannot find enough words of praise for the climatic advantages and natural wealth of the country. Nor can he find them for the technical transportation preparations which will serve as a prompt beginning for an extensive settlement action. In his opinion, thousands of persons could find accommodation and nourishment there. American and English experts come to the same conclusions.

BIGGER THAN REICH

Angola has two and a half times the area of Germany. Its population has only forty to fifty per cent white and mixed elements among some two and a half million blacks. Its internal highlands offer conditions which meet the demands of the European person completely.

There is no opposition in Angola to the immigration of individuals. The country is open to everyone who can meet the not very exacting immigration requirements— principally the deposit of £40.

If up to the present no one of the interested parties, whether Jews or some European power, has been successful in winning the consent of the Portuguese government for a large-scale colonization experiment for so deserving an object, there must be psychological reasons. They lie in the realm of high politics.

PORTUGAL WILLING TO LISTEN

On the other hand, there have recently been many indications that the Portuguese government would consider serious and honestly-meant colonization plans and would give them a fair trial.

Despite difficulties which even today appear insurmountable, Angola should not be eliminated from the list of European colonization objectives.

For Angola’s hour will only come when the thought of colonizing Africa will have become the common property of Europe, in which case Portugal will see itself an equal partner of a group of powers which will solve a task of world political significance through the development of the whole dark continent.