World Press Digest

The Near East and India, writing on Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine, says:

One of the most encouraging factors about the situation is the fact that race-hatred is not, as a whole, a prevalent thought in either the Jew or the Arab. Recently a young Jewish athlete was in difficulties in the water at Tel Aviv; two Arabs dived in to rescue him; all three drowned. This is not evidence of bitter enmity. The tragedy proved that the spirit of brotherhood exists.

For many years the Arab has done very well out of the Jew. Jewish money has poured into Palestine from all over the world. Much of it has been and is being used to purchase land from the Arabs. Supply and demand have caused great profits to be made. On the other hand, the Arab leaders watch with disfavor Jewish immigration, which, restricted as it is, seems to them to be the thin end of the wedge to drive the Arabs from the country. This thought does not enter the minds of the Jews. In spite of the fact that Palestine was spoken of as a land flowing with milk and honey, it is not entirely a fertile country: large tracts of it are a wilderness. The Arab knows agriculture alone as a livelihood and thinks that, as soon as the available fertile land is bought up, he will be left with the wilderness in which to make a living—or to go elsewhere.

DEPLORES END OF FARM PROJECT

Commenting on the liquidation of the Jewish settlement at Gross-Gaglow, Germany, by the Nazi authorities, the Juedische Rundschau, official organ of the Zionist Organization in Germany, says:

The Union of Jewish Front Soldiers wanted to show here that the land settlement of Jews was was possible not only in Palestine, but also in Germany. In Zionist quarters, too, the experiment was welcomed at the time as an effort towards vocational reconstruction. About twenty-four families settled in Gross-Gaglow, most of them having no means of their own. Considerable funds were raised for the purpose. In the four years of its existence a sum of 25,000 to 300,000 marks was invested at a modest estimate in this settlement. These sums were required for cultivating the soil and preparing it for vegetable gardening.

We cannot deny the immense zeal and industry and the good work done by the settlers. If conditions had remained as they were, we might have been able to record important results in the next year or so.

But the change that occurred in the country in 1933 brought difficulties also to Gross-Gaglow. The settlers hoped that they would be left on the soil, but their hopes have not been realized. The authorities have ordered the settlers to clear the land and the live stock and inventory have had to be put up for auction.