The Maccabaean

TURKISH, German, and Austrian statesmen are flooding the world with assurances of their generous intentions towards the Jews in Palestine in the future. These assurances are notably vague, and they have nothing to do with the present. They are obviously extorted by fear of the effect upon the world at large, and upon Jewry in particular, of the British Government’s Declaration. But for that Declaration they would never have been made and so long as Turkey and her allies enjoyed actual control over Palestine, nothing was said by them that could give Jewish nationalism hope, nothing was done by them but what was calculated to provoke among the Jews the gravest apprehension as to the future. It may be that the Central Powers are now convinced that in their handling of the Palestinian question they were guilty of grave blunders, but if they are so convinced, the only blunders which they have in mind are blunders of political calculation. There is nothing to suggest a change of spirit, a realization of the moral issues involved in the re-establishment of Jewish life in Palestine.

The English statesmen who issued the Declaration can learn something from German errors. The perturbation of the Central Powers must show them that in committing themselves to a Jewish Palestine they have grasped a great world political factor. Some of them, perhaps, are in the position of Saul, the son of Kish, who went out to seek his father’s asses and found a kingdom. But even many of those who grasped fully the ideal and the romantic meaning of a Jewish Palestine, are only now learning the full political significance of that stroke of statesmanship. They are learning it in the astonishing reverberation throughout the world which the Declaration has called forth, and from the very evident anxiety which it has provoked among the rulers of the Central Powers. Important as these manifestations are, they are not the end, but the beginning, for the full fruits of the Declaration cannot be gathered unless the Declaration is made, even now, within the measure of possibility, not only promise but also fulfilment. \

All the Palestines are pledged to a Jewish Palestine. The Central Powers, if we accept their assurance at its face value, are not opposed to it. What might be called the moral and political field is therefore clear for the beginning even now of the work of creating a Jewish Palestine. All southern Palestine, including the capital, is already in British hands, and in that region the British Government can even now take in hand the realization of the task to which it has committed itself. There are certain limitations and obstacles. Palestine itself is still a theatre of war; that is one. The Jewish world outside Palestine is deeply engaged in the war; that is another. Even making all these allowances, there is plenty of practical work which may be begun now and executed before the war is at an end.

Much of what can be done on the material side is, in fact, war work. We all understand now that armies operating in distant fields must be made, so far as possible, self-supporting, so as to conserve tonnage and eliminate risks. The economic expansion of Palestine will provide an economic basis for military operations in Palestine. The more Jewish labor is there, the more is produced, the more expert assistance is put at the disposal of the military and civil authorities in Palestine, the easier is the military task

of General Allenby. Economic expansion operates in another way. As soon as the British army acquired control over a considerable fraction of the country the British authorities assumed responsibility for the feeding and maintenance of the population which had been reduced to bitter suffering under Turkey. These people must be fed and supported and the best way of doing that is not by unlimited extension of philanthropic relief work, but by preparing the foundations of the new Jewish Palestine, and so creating a natural support for the indigent. The British military authorities have shown prompt appreciation of certain aspects of the situation; they have provided the Jewish colonists with seed and with the means of carrying on production. We are not at the present aware how far these wise measures have been carried, but they can hardly extend very far. There is a very considerable room for expansion. There are not only the exiles from Palestine in Egypt, but also the large Jewish population of Jerusalem and the other towns. All these are forces which can and must be employed to their fullest, and through them work ‘can be achieved which is valuable in the present for the military authorities, and which can lay the foundations of the new Jewish Palestine.

It is not only material work which can be done there. The new Jewish Palestine will have to justify itself mainly as a moral entity by its emancipation of the Jewish spirit and by its individual contribution to the sum of civilization. It is well known that a considerable Hebrew school system was created in Palestine before the war. It has, of course, suffered very greatly during the war, partly because the war deprived it of many pupils and of money and partly because the Turks persecuted it. The evacuations of the Jews from Jaffa, for example, involved closing the famous Jewish Secondary School there. Again, the fine technical college which Jewish energy and Jewish devotion had brought into being at Haifa was perverted into an instrument of German Kultur. All this fabric of education must be restored forthwith and extended. It must be extended in area, and the crown of the system must be fashioned. The crown is the Hebrew University.

For more than a score of years the establishment of a Hebrew University has been one of the goals of Jewish striving, and every Jewish element throughout the world with a tinge of Jewish consciousness has sympathized with it. On the eve of the war the project was very near to realization. A site for the university had been found and a scheme drawn up for a real, though a modest, beginning. The war cut the thread of these endeavors. They can, and must, be resumed now. It would be difficult to conceive a nobler pledge that the new Jewish Palestine could give than the creation, in the midst of the war, of a Hebrew University at Jerusalem. It would show the whole world that the new Palestine is not to be an El Dorado for fortune hunters nor a miniature reproduction of imperialist vul- garities, but a spiritual force for universal Jewry and for the whole world. That a Hebrew University could come into being while military operations were still in progress would demonstrate even to the most suspicious the sincerity of British idealism in relation to Palestine.

We have carefully avoided indicating in detail the programme of constructive work which must be set in hand

(Continued on page 78)