Hebrew Nation Can Become Fact in Palestine Though Jews Remain a Minority, Says French Economist

That a Hebraic nation can be established in Palestine even though the Jews remain for a long time in the mniority there, is the opinion expressed by Professor Charles Gide, the well-known French economist and friend of Zionism, in a recent issue of “La Terre Retrouvée,” organ of the Jewish National Fund of France. Says Professor Gide:

“It is to be hoped that the tragic occurrences in Palestine will not destroy the great work of Zionism. But these occurrences are a warning which must be taken seriously, since they show that as a result of Jewish nationalism, a Palestinian-Arab nationalism has been created.

“Let us beware of the notion that a superior civilization entails the right to rule, the notion which justifies rule over less-developed races. Jews, even Zionists, even Revisionists, shouldn’t adopt such a political orientation, and under no circumstances will England—especially now—and the League of Nations admit this. It seems to me that the future of Palestine can be conceived only as Jewish-Arabic, with equal political rights for both races as in many other bi-lingual or tri-lingual countries, like Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Czechoslovakia and Jugo-Slavia. I believe that the majority of Zionists agrees to this solution of the problem, though hoping some day to attain a majority. This hope seems to me doubtful. The probabilities of a Jewish majority in Palestine are not greater than that of a French majority in Algiers, and for the same reason: the immigration and colonization—of Jews in Palestine, of Frenchmen in Algiers—promotes the increase of the native population through increasing the yield of the soil, better hygienic conditions and better living conditions in general. In this way the natural increase becomes greater than the artificial increase through immigration.

“Besides the increase of the agricultural population is limited in Palestine by the amount of land available for tilling. This limit however, cannot be applied to the population of the cities. If Tel Aviv or Haifa should some day become as thickly populated as Alexandria, the question of numbers will be solved in favor of the Jews. But even then it won’t be the whole land of Israel that will be under Jewish control, but only the coastal plain, which formerly, before Palestine was conquered by the Hebrews, was the home of the Canaanite or Phoenician traders.

“But numbers do not mean everything, even when there is universal suffrage, and it is not necessary to