The Maccabaean

There is a certain traditional view held by the respectable bourgeoise of Anglo-Jewry that, whatever Palestine may have been in the past, it is certainly now, and has been for centuries, a howling wilderness, inhabited by beggars, overrun by vermin, and hopelessly cut off from all civilizing influences. It is difficult, if at all possible, to estimate the extent to which I had imbibed these views, but I had undoubtedly come under their influence. With such a preparation, I went to Palestine with but moderate expectations. I returned inspired with enthusiasm. I look forward even to the time not very far distant, when, like its neighbor, Egypt, Palestine will be a fashionable tourist resort. Then, probably, wealthy English Jews, still disclaiming the most distant Zi- ionistic proclivities, will imitate their Eng- lsh neighbors, and also have their villas on Palestinian soil. More than one English gentleman has to-day his villa on Mount Carmel or the Mount of Olives. The English Jew has, however, not yet assimilated English customs to so great an extent.

But let me come to my own impressions. Instead of finding a desert, the country struck me I am not an agriculturalist and I must also remember that I entered Palestine at the most attractive season as a garden. Of course, the mountainous districts are barren and rocky. Well, mountains are not, as a rule, pleasure gardens. Even here, however, land is not entirely neglected, and traces exist of a relatively high state of cultivation. In former days, apparently, the hillsides were laid out in terraces on which the vine and

the olive tree were cultivated in profusion, and if the country were not literally flowing with milk and honey, it was certainly overrun by the grape, the olive and the fig. But in a country such as this, the government is always the controlling element, and kitherto this has been far short of the ideal. So far from encouraging “agriculture and improvement, the official element—taking it as a whole —has had, at any rate until quite recently, the opposite influence, It is true that it is an offense to cut down a tree, and fire- wood, therefore, has to be smuggled after dark, into the house.

But on the other hand, a benevolent gov- rument would encourage afforestation to the extent of paying a bounty on avory tree planted. In Dalusılue, the Opposite process, that of levying a tax, has been adopt-— ed. In consequence, tree-planting has become an expensive luxury. But this is not all. In Turkey, ofhicial salaries, again until recently, at any rate, consisted of promises rather than of payments. Yet even a Turkish oflicial must live The easiest means of doing so has been to squeeze the last coin out of the wretched peasantry and of anyone else who has not the advantage of some sort of foreign protection. All effort and desire was thus crushed out of the people who could not escape the tax collector, for they knew that it was useless for them to earn money in order that it might merely pass into the pockets of the oppressors. The effendis even had recourse to arbitrary imprisonment and subsequent ransom in order to secure the substitute for a salary. Any poor native, innocent of all