It is true that the great progress which has been made in most of the Colonies is matter for rejoicing. Twelve years ago one knew what to expect on entering a Jewish Colony in Palestine. From the farmers one would hear bitter complaints about their intolerable condition, charges of neglect of duty against the hard-hearted administrators, and last, but not least, a long list of requirements, involving large sums of money, for the proper equipment of each farmer. The administrators on their side would rail against the farmers, call them lazy _schnorrers_, who were always asking for more, though their condition was not at all bad, and denounce the schedule of requirements as a fabrication. To-day there is no echo of these recriminations in most of the Colonies. During the intervening years the administrators—it is but just to them to say so—have done all that they could to remedy their earlier mistakes. They have extended the Colonies wherever it was possible to buy land in the neighbourhood; they have founded new Colonies for those who could not find room in the old; and in general they have endeavoured to finish their work, to free the Colonies gradually from their own supervision, and to transfer the management and the responsibility to the farmers themselves, so that they should at last realise that the man who wants to live must work and look after himself, instead of depending always on external help. No doubt one cannot yet speak of the complete emancipation of the Colonies as an accomplished fact. The strings are still there, and the absentee Administration still holds them. But it no longer _pulls_ the strings, as it used to do, and, consequently, its existence is hardly noticed. So, if one visits one of these Colonies to-day, one hears quite another tune. “We are independent”—that is the first thing they tell one, with the pride of men who know the value of freedom. This pride makes them exaggerate the present blessings, just as they used to exaggerate the evil. “All’s right with the Colony. It is strong and secure, and pays its workers well. No doubt some people are badly off. But what of that? There are failures everywhere. The man who cannot succeed leaves, and makes room for another. The great thing is that the Colony as a whole is able to exist and to develop properly. True, it lacks this, that, and the other, and we cannot yet supply the deficiencies; but in course of time they will be supplied. We need patient work, and everything will come in good time.” That is the prevailing note of what I heard in nearly all the Colonies which I visited.[77] Any visitor to Palestine who brings with him, as I did, painful and humiliating recollections of years ago must rejoice beyond measure at all this, and must be inclined to take an extremely optimistic view of the development of the colonisation movement in general.