TRIP TO JERUSALEM

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 114, 18 May 1925, Page 14

TRIP TO JERUSALEM

EARL BALFOUR IN PALESTINE

" CHILDE ARTHUR'S PILGRIMAGE."

The recent visit of the Earl of Balfour to .Palestine has received a great deal of criticism in ■ England, especially among his newspaper opponents. The following i^ from the "Daily Express," and expresses its opinions in satirical manner: " The oriental pilgrimage of the' Earl of Balfour demands a laureate," declares the .writer. "It is a pity that we have no' Byron capable of writing a new ' Childe Harold.' When he was engaged in dialectical warfare with the late Dr. Clifford about religious education, he used to plead that he was a child in these matters. The phrase was' a famous 'crystal' in those days. The fashions for making political ' crystals ' has gone out with long skirts, long hair, and low taxes. But Childe Arthur is still a child in many matters, and his trip to Jerusalem suggests' that he has not yet cnt his wisdom teeth. Jerusalem is the last place he ought to have chosen for a political demonstration. It contains more explosive material than Dublin, from the point of view of the Childe's reputation as a statesman.

"Let the impoverished British taxpayer avert his anxious gaze from his debts and hia duns, from his taxgatherers and his rate collectors,, and fix his weary eyes on the amazing medley and motley now assembling in Jerusalem for the purpose of providing a warm welcome for Childe'-Arthur.' There has been nothing like it since the Crusades. There are drums and tramplings, alarums and excursions. Martial din drowns the cry. of the muezzin from the minrset and the devout murmurs at the Wailing Wall. The thunder of tanks, the rattle of armourned cars, thn clatter of cavalry.-loop-holed barricades, .secret police, ma-chine-guns,' and aeroplanes may all help to make the Black and Tan fe«l at home in the uniform of the Palestine j police. The 9th Lancers may delight the street urchins at the Jaffa Gate. But all thi; parade of military force costs money The shivering taxpayer, as he buttons up His shabby overcoat in the March breeze, may be pardoned for asking why he

should be bled, if not butchered, to make a Zionist holiday. " All this expensive pother is merely a preparation for the opening, by Lord Balfour, of a Zionist University on the first of April, which happens to be All Fools' Day. We are the fools, and Lord Balfour has made fools of us. He is the author of the Balfour Declaration, which eight years ago saddled iia with the incubus of Zionism. We were then at war, and were not consulted. The Balfour Declaration has already cost us untold millions. The attempt to impose Zionism on the inhabitants of Palestine has always been, is now, and always will be impracticable. Why not spend our millions on national homes for the British people, instead of squandering them on the protection of the Zionist national home apainst the hostile majority of Arab Christians, Arab Moslems, Copts, Armenions, Greeks, Eoman Catholics", and orthodox Jews?"