Condemning the view that “shackling the Jew will stimulate the Arab,” Prof. Elwood Mead, Federal Commissioner of Reclamation in the Department of the Interior, declared that the new White Paper of the British government outlining a new policy in Palestine would bring suffering to that country so that “within two years the Arabs will join the Jews in asking for the removal of these restrictions,” according to a statement made by Prof. Mead to the Zionist Organization of America, which has made it public.
Prof. Mead, who is regarded as the outstanding expert in this country on the reclamation of lands and associated agricultural problems, went to Palestine in 1923 and 1927 as an expert for the United States government to survey the possibilities of development in the Holy Land. In his statement he reviews some of his findings and declares that the new policy in Palestine “if not modified by the enlightened opinion of the world will not alone bring distress to the unfinished Jewish colonies, but it means that Arabic development as well as Jewish will cease and the suffering of the fellaheen from the poverty of his life and hard economic conditions, will be made more severe.”
With regard to helping the Arab in Palestine, Prof. Mead says:
“He needs help, but the first step toward help is money, and in an amount similar to that which the Jews have provided. Where is that money to come from? The English government will not provide it, and the Arab cannot enlist either money or the consecration which has enabled the Jews to overcome the great obstacles they have surmounted.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
