The Maccabaean

In other words, the people would have to remain disinherited unless they bought back their confiscated birthright, which would be an iniquitous requirement.

Nevertheless, compensation might well be made as matter of policy. It is often wiser to buy off an adverse claimant than to engage in any kind of contest with him. This is something which circumstances must determine. The practical question, therefore, with reference to the terms of release to the whole people of the natural resources of Palestine is not whether in equity anything ought to be paid to present owners, but how much it would be wise to pay rather than contest or even dispute their claim.

And while equity does not require compensation for restoration of natural resources from private monopolists to the whole people, equity does require compensation for expropriated artificial resources. As title to these comes from their producers, they are in the moral category of private property. The fact must therefore be considered that artificial resources are often so intimately related to natural resources as to identify them as one in common thought--the building site for instance with the house, or the farm area with the farm clearing. Consequently the condition of the Pittsburgh declaration that the policy of establishing

ownership and control in the whole people shall be effected with “due regard to existing rights,” would be too narrowly construed if it were interpreted as applying only to private ownership of natural resources. It evidently applies to property rights in artificial resources.

Justice of the Zionist Purpose

Interpreted according to its spirit, and substantially according to its express terms, the Zionist purpose is evenhanded justice. No injury to anyone is contemplated. The rights of all are to be conserved. And this with reference alike to individual interests in the artificial resources of the Commonwealth and to common interests in all its natural resources.

To that end the natural resources of Palestine, inclusive of city centers and agricultural areas, together with forest growths and every other resource that nature yields or may hereafter yield, would be leased by the whole people, as primary owners, to users as tenants of the Commonwealth, on such conditions as would induce the fullest development and secure continuity of useful possession while giving the strongest assurance of security for earnings and equality of opportunity to earn.

PALESTINE is not mentioned by name in the summaries of the Peace Treaty that have so far been published, nor so far as is known has the mandatory of any portion of the derelict Ottoman sovereignty yet been chosen. But there is a consensus of opinion that Great Britain will be the mandatory in Palestine under the Covenant of the League of Nations, and the object of this short article is to justify that belief and to touch on some elementary conditions of the discharge of her mandate.

One general observation may be made at the outset. There is no longer any fear that a taint of Imperialism will attach to a British protectorship in Palestine. At the end of 1916 there was founded in Manchester a British Palestine Committee, which ever since has persistently advocated in its weekly organ Palestine a British trusteeship for Jewish nationhood. The writer, an original member of that Committee, is one of an increasing band of English Gentiles who have worked for that trusteeship and have seen between Zionism and a sound British policy in the East a natural alliance both of ideals and of interests. But so far were English people to whom the arguments of the Committee were mainly addressed from being anxious to have a protectorate of Palestine that the commonest objection made against the policy of the Committee was that it was imperialistic. The Covenant of the League and a mandatory system have disposed once for all of an objection, which, felt most by the English (because they would have been the chief sufferers if the enterprise were really imperialistic in the bad sense), may also have had some effect on liberal opinion in other countries. Whoever is protector of Palestine, under the Covenant, will not act as a principal but as an agent of the League; the protectorate will not be a prop-

erty held in its own right but “a sacred trust of civilization.” A trustee is never an object of jealousy, and the idea of international rivalry for the position of trustee under the League in Palestine or anywhere else is unthinkable.

Although the mandatory has not been chosen, his qualifications have been laid down in the Covenant. Palestine will, presumably, be one of the “communities formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire” mentioned in article 22 of the Covenant. In their case, the mandatory must be selected in reference to the following considerations: (1) the wishes of the community; (2) the “resources” of the mandatory; (3) his experience; (4) his geographical position; and (5) his willingness to accept the mandate. Let us see how far Great Britain satisfies these qualifications.

First then as to the wishes of the people. There is at present a close military alliance between the Arabs of the Hedjaz and Great Britain, and it is highly probable that Great Britain, which originated the idea of reviving the old Arab nationality, will be chosen as the mandatory for the Arab state or states which may be brought into existence. The Arab population of Palestine would clearly prefer as mandatory a nation which is their foster-father. Even more clearly would the choice of the Jews in Palestine fall upon Great Britain, for Great Britain was the first to give official recognition to the claims of Zionism. The offer of East Africa fifteen years ago for Jewish settlement was not Zionism, for there can be no Zion except in Palestine, but it was at any rate a recognition of the Jewish claim to nationality. Further, Mr. Balfour, who, with Mr. Chamberlain, interested himself in the East African scheme fifteen years ago, was the first of all Gentile statesmen to recognize the Jewish claim to Palestine as a “national home,” and his