Lady Erleigh, daughter of the late Lord Melchett and daughter-in-law of Lord Reading, left London yesterday for Palestine, where she is expected, to arrive on the 17th. inst.
Lady Erleigh will most probably proceed direct from Port Said to Palestine, where she will stay at Villa Melchett, in Migdal, which was bequeathed to her by her father. She may, however, break her journey to be able to visit her father-in-law, Lord Reading, in Egypt, if his state of health should require it.
Her brother, Lord Melchett, who is now recuperating from an illness in Montreux, in Switzerland, may join Lady Erleigh in Palestine, if his health becomes sufficiently good, Lady Melchett has gone to Colombo, and she, too, may go on to Palestine from there to join her husband.
Lady Erleigh has gone to Palestine in connection with the planting of the new section of the Palestine Plantation Company on the Melchett Estate at Tel Mond, which is to be started in April.
Lady Erleigh was in Palestine a year ago, in March 1931, and she planted on that occasion the first two trees of Section 2 of the Palestine Plantations Company’s plantations at Tel Mond. The first section, consisting of a thousand dunams had then been already fully planted, and equal progress has no been made with the second section, necessitating fresh planting. The plantations on the estate are largely allocated among purchasers in England and other countries who have bought small lots of five to ten dunams.
Lady Erleigh addressed the workers on the estate, telling them of her late father’s keen desire to help in the rebuilding of Palestine by useful and constructive enterprises, of which the Tel Mond estate was the foremost, She and her brother, the present Lord Melchett, she said, intended to carry on their late father’s work on the same economic basis.
In an interview with the J.T.A. shortly after the conclusion of the last Zionist Congress, Lady Erleigh said: “Our work in Tel Mond is of great interest to us, to my brother, Lord Melchett and myself. I am well aware, and so is my brother, that our participation, in the work in Palestine, through Palestine Plantations, Limited, continues to identify the name of Melchett with the work of developing Palestine, which was our father’s great ideal. We realise that it is the one formal memorial to our father, the memorial which is most enduring”.
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