IN PALESTINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 188, 10 August 1936, Page 9

IN PALESTINE.

POLITICAL CHANGES. | PROBLEMS OF BISHOPRIC. i | CAPITALISTIC EXPERIMENT.

The first of a series of addresses to be given by the Rt. Rev. Dr. G. F. Graham-Brown, the Anglieah Bishop in Jerusalem, who is at present visiting Auckland, was delivered in the sermon at St. Mary's Cathedral yesterday morning when he dealt interestingly with his work in Palestine and surrounding countries. Dr. Graham-Brown spoke 011 similar lines at St. Matthew's Church in the evening. Although the work was principally located in Palestine, Dr. Graham-Brown said that in the first nine months he was there he travelled over 20,000 miles. The area over which the bishopric had jurisdiction included certain parts of Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine, Transjordania, Iraq, and parts of Persia. It consisted of over 200.00» square miles, several million people, and six separate administrations. Its political changes i were rapid and kaleidoscopic. Faced ! with Turkey, Persia and Arabia, the last under Ibn Sand, the greatest Arab since Mahomet, his bishopric knew that it had to contend with forces opposed ( to Christianity and threatening its very foundations. I In Palestine alone fliere was practically every cultural level, most of the ; forms of social organisation, from the I tribal justice of Beersheba to the patriarchal organisation and feudal system |of Palestine, and most conflicting examples of climate. In Palestine the Anglican bishopric was faced by one of the greatest capitalistic systems in the world. The Jews claimed that since 1020 they had brought over £100.000,000 into the country. Xo j other country ever had such financial backing at its beginning, he said. It was the greatest capitalistic experiment ever made. The bishop and his colleagues, v>lio were pan-Anglican 111 their representation, were pressed by problems of major magnitude every day. The Christians, about 00.000, numbered less than 10 j per cent of the population. They rcpre-

sented about 45 nationalities. Within a stone's throw of the cathedral in Jerusalem there were the representatives of more people than were represented on the League of Nations. Dr. Graham Brown said it was no use having any mistaken ideas about the romanticism of the Holv C'itv.