American Non-jewish Observer Says Zionist Movement Has “worked Very Well Indeed”

Anyone who has seen in Palestine “the marvelous new Jewish development and material improvements” must agree that the Zionist movement “has worked very well indeed,” according to Charles H. Sherrill, an American business man who recently visited Palestine, and who gives his impressions in an article in the July Review of Reviews. Mr. Sherrill expresses the hope that harnessing the water power of the Jordan River will help the Holy Land just as the distribution of the water of the Nile did Egypt.

“Anyone who has seen the glorious view from the Mount of Olives can well understand the homeland appeal which Jerusalem, and indeed all Palestine, make to Jews,” he says. “The Zionist movement has the deepest religious and racial reasons behind it.

With regard to the friction between Jews and Arabs, Mr. Sherrill says:

“Although three-quarters of Palestine’s population are still Arabs, the Jewish one-quarter has much the better of it in education, business acumen and financial backing from abroad. So this one-quarter is fully as powerful as all of the Arabic three-quarters.

“We onlookers are today witnessing the useful cooperation in Palestine of two notable races-the Jews, than whom history can show no wiser traders, and the British, equally distinguished for their uniform success in governing backward peoples. Combining the business acumen of the Jewish race with the imperial abilities of the British will surely advance material conditions in Palestine. One wonders what chance remains for the unbusinesslike and old-world Arab! Backward in commercial methods, his superiority in numbers means no more than that of the Russian peasant today.”