The Maccabaean

SHOULD we expect in British Palestine the terror of Ireland, or the order and prosperity of Canada? The paternal repression of India, or the generous liberty of South Africa?

These questions represent the extremes of optimism and pessimism that agitate the American Jew now that the British Mandate is an historical fact.

. The American-born Jew brings to bear all the emotions engendered by events of a hundred and fifty, a hundred, fifty years, ago. Ah, England! If you had but known in the days of the Revolutionary War, in the days of the War of 1812, in the days of Abraham Lincoln, what seeds of perennial bitterness you were planting in the hearts of American patriots, you would have paused long, and solemnly deliberated before undertaking to suppress human liberty. Not all your works of tolerant and enlightened rule in far-off lands, of industrial progress and peaceful development in strange climes, can root out the poisonous memories of those unhappy years in American history. And the bloody events of Passover in Jerusalem have but strengthened these ingrained prejudices.

But the sober-minded, those scrupulous of historical facts, those with eyes to see conditions as they truly are, hesitate before concluding that because the British blundered in America a hundred years ago, that therefore they will blunder today in Palestine. History bears the record of no nation that never blundered, and national blunders are infinitely calamitous. Neither does history speak of any nation that ever attained to the grandeur of world-empire, without having at bottom some grand and immortal qualities. Burke was vanquished in the Commons. Armies were dispatched against America. But has not Burke proved to represent more truly than North the England as she is in her calm moments, in her long years of peaceful industry, in her far-seeing statements?

Let us consider, for instance, Canada. Through a long series of years Canada has slowly made her way to independence. She flies the Canadian flag; she elects her provincial and dominion legislatures; she imposes what customs duties, excises and internal taxes she sees fit; she appoints consuls and ambassadors; she decides for herself upon war and peace, and the conscription of her resources and her sons. Only the Governor-General is appointed by the British—one of those traditional political fictions of which the British are so fond and which we see exemplified in the society leader and perpetual vice-president whom the British call Monarch.

So also in Australia and New Zealand. South Africa, a country of disorder and hot anti-British agitation, transformed in a decade into a self-governing country, headed by the generals who opposed the British. Smuts! If you can imagine Patrick Henry seated in the high councils of the Britieh Empire, you can understand Smuts.

Montague is dispatched to India. He evolves a system of progressive self-government for hundreds of millions of ignorant natives. It is true that there is the slaughter of Amritsar; but the commanding general is censured in the Commons and extinguished with dignity. ‘Amritsar will not

re-occur. In fifty years India will be another Canada—or it will plunge again into a fiendish chaos.

Much has been said of oppression in Egypt, largely by those who have never been nearer to the pyramids than New York. But Roosevelt, after a study of conditions on the spot, was warm in his praise of the moderation, skill and justice of the British Administration.

e Denise ei We are yet too close to the civil war in Ireland to understand it clearly. Unionists and Sinn Fein are mixed up in a bloody strife that is complicated by local and personal animosities, and we cannot see things in historical perspective. It is just because every reasonable man sympathizes with the desire of the Irish for autonomy, however, that we can scarcely grudge England the credit for summoning the representative Irish conference to settle upon its own form of government; nor can we fail to censure the native Irishmen for failing to agree among themselves, or for resisting the form of home rule which England thereupon thought fit to srant.

With these historical facts as a background, we may determine in some measure what may be expected of England in Palestine. Palestine, in short, will have the government it deserves. The Jews will enjoy there the degree of liberty and independence they measure up to. If at the end of ten years there are still six Arabs to every Jew in Palestine, then Palestine will remain very much of a Protectorate governed from Downing Street. But if there are six Jews to every Arab, then Palestine will be an autonomous and prosperous Jewish Homeland flying the flag of the Jew. Let us examine more recent evidence.

During the period that elapsed between the Balfour Declaration and the San Remo conference, all kinds of rumors were rife that England intended to evade the obligation of her pledged word; first, she had consummated a deal with France; then with the Emir Feisal. The military governors of Palestine were openly charged with being hostile to Zionist aims. The Jerusalem pogrom broke out—fostered, it is hinted, by men in authority in order to discriminate Zionism before the world as an impractical, unjust and dangerous dream.

The mandate is announced. Within one month, and in the teeth of violent opposition, an eminent British Jew is mentioned for Civil Administrator of Palestine. It is a challenge. None other than General Lord Allenby, the one outstanding military genius produced by Britain in the war, the popular idol, the conqueror of Jerusalem, threatens to resign in protest. The military administration backs him up.

The British Government does not falter. Its action is firm, decisive, magnificent. If the world would know its attitude towards Zionism, here it is: The Civil Administrator is to be Sir Herbert Samuel. His publicly declared purpose is to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish Homeland. Allenby resigns. He is followed by Bols and the minor military officials. Their department causes scarcely a ripple in the tide of British governmental functions. The civil administration comes in—a new era in Palestine begins.

Who could not foresee all this, even back in 1914? Are we not living in an era when enlightened selfishness is the high-water mark of national morality? It did not take a