THE JEWISH NATION

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 12, 14 July 1923, Page 7

THE JEWISH NATION

ITS RIGHT TO PALESTINE

FOLLY OF ANTI-SEMITISM

FANATICALLY ABUSED PEOPLE.

[The following and all Lloyd George articles copyright by United Press of America in all countries, copyright by Australian Press, copyright in Britain by Daily Chronicle." Reproduction in full or part prohibited.]

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.? (AUSTRALIAN NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) (Received ' 14th July, 9 a.m.) LONDON, 11th July. Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper, there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. "It is just one of those dank and unwholesome weeds that grow in the morass of racial hatred. How utterly devoid of reason it 13 may be gathered from the fact that it 'is almost confined to nations which worship the Jewish prophets and apostles, and revere ' the national ■ literature of the Hebrews as? the only inspired message delivered by the Deity to mankind. In the sight of these fanatics, Jews, if rich, are birds of prey; if poor, they are vermin. If Labour is oppressed by great capital, the greed of the Jew is held responsible. If Labour revolts against Capital, as it did in Russia, the Jew is blamed for.that also. If he lives in a strange land he must be persecuted, and "pogromed" out of it; if he wants to go back to his own land •he must be prevented. Through the centuries, in every land, whatever he does or fails to do, he is pursued by the echo of the brutal cry of the rabble of Jerusalem against the greatest of all Jews, "Crucify Him !" No good has ever come of nations that crucified Jews. The .latest'exhibition of this agitation is against the settling of poor Jews in the land their fathers made famous. Palestine, which once maintained a Jewish population of five millions, is now under the blighting rule of the Turk r and barely supports 700,000. The "land flowing with milk and honey" is now largely a stony and unsightly desert. If Palestine is to be restored, it must be by settling the Jews on its soil. Jewish re-settlement started practically' seventy years ago, with Montefiore's experiment. It has proceeded .slowly.but steadily everywhere. The Jewish cultivator produces richer and heavier crops than his Arab neighbour. He introduced more scientific methods of cultivation. The effects of misrule and neglect cannot be restored in a single generation. Great irrigation works must be constructed if settlement is to .proceed on a satisfactory scale. Settled government gives the Holy Land its first chance for nineteen hundred years; but there is so much undeveloped country demanding the-attention of civilisation that Palestine will lose its chance unless it is made the special charge of some powerful influence. The Jews alone can redeem it from the wilderness. The Arabs have neither the means, not the energy, nor the ambition to discharge their duty. . The British Empire has too many burdens on its shoulders to carry this experiment through successfully. The Jewish, race, w.ith its genius,, its resource.-., 'fulness, tenacity, andy .not least, its wealth, can alone perform this essential task. The Balfour declaration is not .an expropriating, but an enabling, clause. It is only a charter of equality for the Jews. The declaration was subsequently endorsed arid adopted by President Wilson and the French and Italian Foreign Ministers.^ The Zionists ask for no more. The Zionist memorandum to the League of Nations refutes the suggestion by their enemies that they are seeking to establish a Jewish oligarchy. There are fourteen million Jews in the world. Is it too much to ask that those amongst them whose sufferings are the worst shall be able to find refuge in the land of their fathers, made holy by the splendour of their genius, by the loftiness of their thoughts, byt the. consecration of their lives, and by the inspiration of their message to mankind ?