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Merita Products
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A. W. Woodliff
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Established 39 Years
716 Forrest Ave.
Phone 80
GADSDEN, ALA.
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DUNAWAY
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e Phone 998 Drug Dept. 999
GADSDEN, ALA.
East Gadsden, Ala.
Phone 1188
°°DYEAR station
The Southern I
SRAELITE
Page 47
11 hat Is Wrong With the Palestine
Administration?
(Continued
now entered the Palestinian civil serv
ice upon demobilization. When these
men saw their plans finally balked by
San Remo, and British prestige, as
they firmly held, gravely injured by
the exclusion of Palestine and Syria
from their Pan-Arabic scheme, which
therewith collapsed automatically, one
might say, they began to vent their
chagrin and spleen upon the newly
born Jewish National Home. Their en
tire course of action and that of their
successors—for the mentality and bit
terness over disillusion not only per
petuated themselves but grew more
pronounced—has ever since that time
taken a direction of proving to Britain
and the world that the Balfour Decla
ration was a mistake and the Jewish
National Home a practical impossibil
ity. They still hope a revision of the
political structure of the Near East,
along the lines conjectured by Law
rence, will be possible. Every crisis,
every outbreak is an arrow in their
quiver to drive the idea home that
Britain was wrong with the Balfour
Declaration. In this light the Arab
attacks of 1921 appeared as a welcome
“I-told-you-so” to these officials, ex-
Lawrence men as they were. And when
the growing prosperity of Palestine,
following the economic crisis of 1925-
1926, threatened to repudiate their the
sis and sweep it away forever, and dis
credit them completely in the eyes of
the world, the August outbreaks oc
curred at a propitious moment. With
the aid of a skillful official propa
ganda, w’hich set about at once, to allot
50 per cent each of the blame to Jews
and Arabs, the officials have managed
to throw sand in the eyes of public
opinion and therewith have saved their
own faces for the time being.
I do not go too far, I am sure, when
I say, as a witness of those harrowing
days and as the recipient of the con
fidence of H. C. Luke and his col
leagues in the administration in Jeru
salem, that the August outbreaks were
not entirely unwelcome in that quar
ter. They came just in time to sub
stantiate the old theories, which were
in danger of final liquidation. I admit
at once that blind Arab fanaticism
went beyond official expectations. But
that the storm struck like a thunder
bolt from the blue, as Mr. Luke inti
mated to me, was a deliberate and
clumsy untruth uttered by a man
scared for his job and reputation.
Legitimate Jewish indignation forced
the Colonial office to remove him from
office and from Palestine. But as in
the case of Storrs, who left earlier for
the same reason, Luke was promptly
promoted to a more responsible post.
Jews, with touching solicitude for
British’ honor, still hesitate to charge
the Palestinian British bureaucracy
with complicity in the outbreaks, but
the present writer, as a Canadian, hav
ing the utmost respect for the great
British nation and its traditions of
from Page 45)
fair play and justice, must say that in
his estimation those men over in Pal
estine acted neither as Britishers nor
as honorable men. The truth is they
welcomed the disturbances, for the sim
ple reason that the outbreaks tended
to substantiate their theories on Near
Eastern politics. It is time to look this
matter squarely in the face. The cam
ouflage of the Shaw Commission has
hidden the real issues and the real
causes and the real issues and the real
gust events long enough. When we
know the game Luke and his friends
have been playing, and which his suc
cessors and colleagues in Palestine and
in the Colonial office are still playing
today, things are considerably simpli
fied and clarified.
Once the tempest was unchained
Luke stood quaking in his shoes. Not
only because he knew on which side
was right, but because lie fully real
ized which side was strongest, he
turned to the Jews of Jerusalem and
armed them. Then he did a thing un
precedented in the annals of Britain’s
empire-building history. He gave in to
the threats of the Mufti and disarmed
the Jews. More degrading still, he went
out of his way to beg the Mufti—a
man condemned for subversive agita
tion on a previous occasion—to inter
cede with the Bedouin tribes reported
to be massing in Transjordan. The
Mufti turned him down coldly. But
while Luke lost his head, and the Gov
ernor of Jerusalem with him, the Jews
stood firm.
There was not a British battalion
within hundreds of miles of Jerusalem.
British prestige was menaced in a way
Lawrence and his friends had never
foreseen. British prestige, in fact, was
on the point of receiving a shattering
blow throughout the East. The Arabs
exulted. They grew arrogant. Their
threats redoubled. Government House
was closed and fortified. Somewhere
in its depths Luke and Roach were
concocting messages for aid, writing
appeals to the Arabs’ chiefs, trying to
gain time until reinforcements should
arrive. But the Jews stood firm.
Thousands of ex-legionnaires offered
themselves for active service. They did
not argue as to where the blame rested.
They did not cover the cowering offi
cials with reproaches for past conduct
that had consciously paved the way for
the outbreaks. They stood firm. When
the offendis saw the Jewish attitude—
uncringing, firm, ready to pass to the
counter-offensive at a given signal—
the mass-attack collapsed completely.
All this, let us remember, happened
before the first British contingent ar
rived from Egypt or Malta.
Who, then, saved British prestige?
W’ho are entitled to British gratitude?
(Copyright, 1930, by SAES.)
Welcome and Comfort
Await You at
Hotel
Twickenham
R. E. CAMPER, Proprietor
88 Rooms, Over
Half With Baths
Huntsville, Ala.
Neiv Year Greetings
To All
From
WHITE
SWAN
LAUNDRY
IKE D. DILLARD
W D. DILLARD
Phone 871
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.
HUNTSVILLE
STEAM
LAUNDRY
Wishes You a Happy
New Year
Huntsville, Ala.
New Years Greetings
BOSWELL-WHITE
Insurance Agency
Phone 565 Elks Bldg.
Huntsville, Ala.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.
H. J. CERTAIN
Who!esaie and Retail
Phone 25# Jefferson St. A Sou. Ry.