R.d.b. Speaks

For thrity years Editor-in-chief of the Daily Express Londen, England’s most celebrated journalist and chairman of the Board of Directors of the London Daily Express

There was a good deal of apprechension recently lest the Arab demonstration in Palestine should turn out to be anti-Semitic in their character rether than purely political. The much-advertised march of the Arabs through the streets not only of Jerusalem only elswhere was fruitful of all storts of mischief and it was hoped particularly by the Nazi and their sympathizers that the Arabs would be easily handled tools and would smash up things. All this would have been utilized by the Nazi propaganda department as first-class anti-Jewish ammunition. If the Arabs who had been worked up by Nazi agitators had actually broken out, the world would have been informed at once of the futility of the Jewish National dangers and the hand of the British Mandatory Power would have been still further hindered in its work of impartial administration.

I did not have the feintest doubt the Arabs would do anything beyond mere peaceful demonstration of protest against what they were informed by outsiders is discrimination against their interests. It is not so, of course. None others know better thatn the Arabs the influx of Jews from Europe and America to Palestine has benefitted the Arabs more than any other section of the community. There is work at present for any Arab who cares to work and at higher wages and better circumstances thatn for generations. There is work also for as many able-bodied immigrant Jews as it is possible to land in Palestine and agitation, if any, should be initiated by those entrusted with the interests of the Jews in and out of Palestine.

It is all very well to say that the British government is doing its best in a delicte situation created by the task of trying to balance a feather on the Mandator’s nose but I am not convinced that this best amounts to very much. This traditional habit of compromise which has always been looked upon by the world, generation after generation, represents quite a sound policy for most questions but it is certainly beyond the point in this matter of Jewish permits for Palestine. The British government is probably betterequipped than any other to administer the somewhat nebulous affairs of its mandatory states. For my part, I would wish the work in Palestine uner the British government preferably to any other, not even the United States excluded. But I am not sure that the Colonial Office, under Cunliffe Lister, does not regard Palestine as the most minor point in the great Imperial game of chess an#in# instance I am inclined to think that Jewish leaders have not been insistent enough in persuading the Minister to be just a bit more definite.

I have the honor of numbering Cunliffe-Lister, the Colotial Minister, among my personal friends, I know him as a man of scrupulous fairness and that he is not in the least actuated by any anti-Semitic prejudices, I feel, however, that if he liked, he could lift Palestine straight out of its present troubles and put it on the road to immediate peace between Arab and Jews, which means properity for all the unhappy land and renewed enthusiasm in the hearts of those Jews who believe Palestine constitutes at least a portion of the solution of their heavy problem.

I would strongly urge authouritative Jewish bodies in the United States to press the Colonial Office hard in the meantime withthe view of lightening and not lightening the burden on the Jews, to let the Colonial Office understand that the Jews are ready and willing to cooperate with the Arabs toward the goal of prosperity for palestine and, above all, that a prosperous Palestine, with more and mo# Jews in it, will be far more beneficail for the British Empire than a muzzled, fettered, agitating Palestine cause.

Bear this in mind. Every immigrant to Palestine carries by virtue of his going there the promise of emploment for at least another Arab on terms which be could never have achieved but for the Jews against whom some interested people are now seeking to prejudice him with fales propaganda stories.