(J. T. A. Mail Service)
No two things could more completely demonstrate the fact that, in the official British view, the acute problems of Palestine have become sufficiently blunted to permit the instalment of a system of non-political routine, than the appointment of a trained Colonial Office official. Sir Robert Chancellor, to the High Commissionership, and the contents of the last report for 1927 made by the British Government to the League of Nations, writes the “Near East” here today.
The High Commissioner Designate will succeed two men, Sir Herbert Samuel and Lord Plumer, who were deliberately chosen for the possession of virtues other than that of civil service experience and efficiency, the paper continues. These two rast virtues were not in the first years of the great Palestine experiment so much required as the larger virtues of impartiality and inflexibility. The exercise of these two British characteristics has now had its effect; neither Arab nor Jew now hopes to sway the mind of the Administration by unconstitutional action. For the next few years, in other words, Palestine (and Transjordan with it) must proceed “according to plan,” and it is in recognition of this fact which implies that the capital necessity now is a tightening up of the administrative machinery in the Holy Land rather than any new “gesture” towards old or new inhabitant that the former Governor of Thodesia has been appointed to the task for which he is eminently fitted.
The Jewish Nationalists, the “Near East” proceeds, would do well to drop this over-advertised affair of the floggings and the deportations, and to concentrate upon the task of facilitating the entry into Palestine of more desirables instead of uselessly maintaing their “right” to conserve a few undesirables within the confines of the “National Home.” There is more virtue in adding one tree to the Balfour Forest than in flourishing shrill trumpets in honor of Jewish Communists whose heroism consisted of throwing stones at their warders. For the first is of benefit to the whole country the second is an asset to no one.
Fortunately, however, the number of Zionists is increasing who realize that, while continual and larger efforts must be made to buttress up the position of the immigrants, this process can endure only on the basis of Arab-Jewish co-operation. Such men see clearly that any undue insistence upon, any over-proud claim to special privileges in Palestine can result only in a stiffening of the resistance of the Arabs, and also in a probable growth of aloofness on the part of the British Administration in Palestine. The Palestine Arabs are not as the Zionists well know a united body; there is considerable section, which increases slowly but surely, that fain would take the advantages which the Zionists have to offer and trust the Administration to see that their own Arab interests are not neglected. It is the wisest policy of both the British and the Zionists to cultivate this section, for if to the Arab majority neither economic nor political benefit be extended, its opposition must become automatic and unanimous. Patiently, modestly, and fraternally, therefore, the Jews should now set to work in Palestine along the lines just laid down by the Survey Commission, and in two or three generations there may–who knows?–be realized in fact that Palestinian nation, consisting of awakened Arab and home-loving Jew, which has been the goal of all statesmen and officials in Palestine who acknowledged and were determined that the promises, however vague extended to both Arab and Jew should be realized under the aegis of Great Britain, the “Near East” states.
My First Two Thousand Years” is the title of a forthcoming book by George Sylvester Viereck and Paul Eldridge, which it is said will be a modern “autobiography of the Wandering Jew.” The book will be published in September by the Macaulay Company.
Lewis M. Nelson, Camden, N. J. jeweler known in local business circles as “Square Deal” Nelson died suddenly on Sunday at his home in Atlantic City.
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.
