Writer is Keen About Youth of Palestine

The fact that Palestine during the last two years has been making such tremendous strides forward in fields of industry and trade while the rest of the world is still in economic doldroms is due largely to the preponderant share of the Jewish youth in the activities of the country. This is the opinion of a prominent non-Jewish observer, M. Emile Schreiber, French, industrialist, who recently spent several weeks in Palestine and records his observations in Vu of Paris.

Like in Italy and Soviet Russia, the Palestinian youth is playing a prominent role in the growth of its country, but to a much greater extent than elsewhere in practical pursuits. Watching the young chaluzim at work, M. Schreiber declares that one cannot help feeling enthusiastic and confident of the future of Palestine.

“Last Friday night,” he says, “I saw marching in the streets of Telaviv, a singing group of lightlyclad boys and girls, whose average age did not seem to be above fifteen. I could see a halo of enthusiasm in their ranks and around them as I watched them. Dressed only in a shirt and shorts and a pair of sandals, they marched on wings, prepared to sing or work or sleep in the fields, all imbued with a spirit which I have not seen in the youth anywhere else.”

M. Schreiber particularly admits the lack of military atmosphere about the Jewish youth movement, in contrast to the Italian and German or other youth movements which are organized on a more or less military basis.

“There are, to be sure many hot young blods among them,” he adds, “who are only too willing and eager to fight the Arabs, but they do not form a preponderant part.”

Everywhere one goes in Palestine one sees evidence that the youth takes the leading role in everything, whether in the fields, workshop, store, or office, he reports. It is the youth which gives Palestine its color and strikes its keynote today, not the orthodox, religious type of older Jew who was practically the only type seen there up till recently.