The demands voiced in the United States in connection with the formation of a Jewish Army in Palestine are answered in an article from Jerusalem published in the London Times yesterday describing as “quite unfounded” the impression prevailing abroad that Palestine has a large body of potential military personnel which is not used because there is no conscription in the country.
Obviously inspired by the Palestine Government, the correspondent of the London Times in his cabled dispatch says that “the nationalist demand for a distinct Jewish Army, in addition to the 12,000 Jews who have joined the British armed forces and the 15,000 who are employed as temporary additional police, overlooks a number of important facts.” He enumerates these “overlooked facts” as follows: “1. The Jews have in fact won special recognition for the use of Hebrew and for the appointment of Jewish commanding officers wherever this is possible. “2. It is not expedient to excite suspicion and unrest by giving arms to one part of a mixed population which is notoriously at loggerheads with each other.
“In view of the chronic and basic political problems which at present have been shelved only temporarily, it is more important to keep Palestine internally quiet and working on essential war industries than upset the situation by either conscription or favoring nationalistic ambitions of one of the rival races,” the article in the London Times asserts.
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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.
