A GREAT SCHEME.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 4, 5 July 1910, Page 9

A GREAT SCHEME.

JEWISH REPATRIATION. INTERVIEW WITH A LADY SUPPORTER.

[BY TELEGBAPH — SPECIAL TO THE POST.] AUCKLAND, This Day. Among Auckland's visitors at the present time is Mrs. Freeman, a lady who in the course of almost world-wide travel, extended over a number of years, has become an ardent supporter of tho Victoria League movement; keenly interested in the Zionist movement and the repatriation of the Jews, and a deep student of many sociological problems. In the course of a talk with a pressman, Mrs. Freeman expressed herself strongly in favoui of the Gothenburg system regarding the liquor trade, providing the system wero rigidly administered. She herself displays somewhat of a pessimistic vicvr concerning the future of the country unless stringent measures are adopted li> reduce drinking and gambling, but declines to express an opinion touching the- -introduction of prohibition as at present advocated by the temperance people. Speaking of the Zionist movement, in which from a long residence in Palestine and Egypt she has become deeply interested, Mrs. Freeman mentioned many names familiar as household words as associated with the question of Jewish repatriation and with whom she had held frequent converse on the subject. Mrs. Freeman is, in effect, ai: enthusiastic apostle of the creed that the Jews will yet inhabit as a nation not so much Palestine — which is not of itself a particularly attractive land for a people of thrifty instincts— but all that old famed country of Mesopotamia, the rich valley of the Tigris and Euphrates that only requires the application of a little engineering skill and the expenditure of the requisite capital to make it- 1 capable of becoming the granary of Europe as before it was the wealth of the known world. "Already much work is going on there," said Mrs. Freeman, "work that is going to alter the face of the earth in that corner of the world, and although the Germans have obtained a big footing in Palestine and the surrounding country, there is no reason why the great scheme of Jewish repatriation should not see fulfilment. The great and wealthy society of the Maccabees has voted £7,000,000, and already there are 180,000 Jews round about Jerusalem, while, contrary to the popular idea* concerning the race, they are proving themselves to be splendid agriculturists. Yes, it is true that Palestine itself does not offer much attraction, and that the 'movement has consequently received but lukewarm support from a large section of Jows, but the prophecies distinctly stato that tho race shall inherit the whole country between the Tigris and Euphrates, including the rich land of Mesopotamia, and the promulgation of this promise has stimulated much enthusiasm where before existed indifference. It has brought about a conjunction, so to speak, of the territorials and Zionists, and the former are working as eagerly towards the fruition of the great project as are the latter. For. don't you see that with the construction of barrages like they have on the Nile, and with a proper and comprehensive scheme for bringing this country back to its old state of fertility, there is prospect of enormous prosperity and profit for those who become possessed of the lands "