Evening Post. THURSDAY,AUGUST 28,1930. BELATED OMNISCIENCE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 51, 28 August 1930, Page 12

Evening Post. THURSDAY,AUGUST 28,1930. BELATED OMNISCIENCE

The excellent report which was! supplied by British Wireless on TuesI day of the British Government's reply jtio the Mandates Commission's criti- | ctisms of the administration of Palesjtine was worthy of the importance of vhs occasion. It was both fuller, clearer, and prompter than that which arrived by cable yesterday. But it is surprising that neither of these agencies has supplied a word of comment on an exceptionally interesting and important document. The politicians are, of course, out >of town, and the dull season is at iite dullest, as the meagreness of our London messages on almost everything but cricket and flying has recently testified. But Fleet Street has mot closed down, and the. lack of general news might well have encouraged the Press to pay more attention than at a time of abundance t» the refreshing and convincing (Candour with which the British Government has rounded on its censors at Geneva. The occasion is, indeed, one on which, regardless of party, the Press and the nation must surely have been glad to give the Government a hearty support. Neither the outbreak of violence in Palestine in August last nor the outbreak of grotesquely unjudicial criticism which just a year later it has excited at I Geneva could have occurred at a •more suitable time from the standpoint of national unity. Probably if (the Government's Memorandum had provoked any clash of opinion we should have heard a good deal more about it.

The. continuity of British foreign policy has indeed been illustrated in the happiest possible way by the unhappy events in Palestine. Until the General Election last year Conservative Governments had had the shaping of British policy in Palestine during nearly the whole period of the Mandate. As the Labour Government, which took office in June, had not altered that policy the responsibility for the outbreak of the troubles in August, could not possibly be laid to 1 its charge, nor was the attempt made. The responsibility of dealing with [them belonged, on the other hand, to !the Labour Government alone, and this responsibility it discharged with ; a promptitude and a vigour which the Conservatives themselves could not have surpassed. But in the discharge of this responsibility Mr. MacDohald's Government had an advantage which would have been denied to Mr. Baldwin's. It was able to rely upon the undivided support of the Opposition, whereas in Palestine, as previously in China, Mr. Baldwin would have been embarrassed throughout by sniping from the Labour benches, varied by occasional mass attacks, and if the Conservative majority had been small Mr. Lloyd George might have been still more impartial in the bestowal of his favours than he was then. Instead of making for.'insecurity the change of Government had in this matter exactly the opposite effect.

So effective were the measures taken by the Labour Government to cope with the disorders in August that the Mandates Commission had no fault to find, and from its not very gracious or judicial silence the Memorandum infers a "tacit approval." But when it comes to the policy of the Mandatory / Power before the outbreak the Mandates Commission can afford to speak'plainly, because-ihere is something to attack, and there is nothing tacit about its disapproval. Here again, however, national unity is illustrated just as clearly as by the point already mentioned, for the very able defence made in the British Memorandum is substantially the defence of Conservative policy by a Labour Government. The most important of the points with which we did not deal in our review of this defence yesterday was the inadequacy of the forces at the disposal of the Palestine Government. It is beyond question that in the interests of economy these forces had been reduced below the safety mark. When General Sarrail, the Governor' of Syria, was officially received in Jerusalem, he is said to have asked where the troops were, and to have! expressed surprise when he was told that the handful of men in front of him represented the total. Coming from Damascus, where the French are accustomed to make a great parade of their troops, both white and black, to Jerusalem, where he saw little sign of authority but the local police, it was natural that he should be astonished. If General Sarrail's bombardment of Damascus in 1925 represented one extreme in the military policy of a Mandatory, the peril of Jerusalem in August last illustrated the other.

The fear that the civil authorities of Palestine would be made the scapegoats of this military economy lias fortunately not liccn realised. Though military problems were not strictly within the Shaw Commis-

sion's order of reference, it went far enough into them to absolve the Palestine Government altogether. Mr. H. C. Luke, the Chief Secretary of Palestine, who was then Acting High Commissioner, and whose promotion to the Lieutenant Governorship of Malta has since sent him to a still hotter place; is credited with having done all that was possible "with^ most inadequate means to maintain order till reinforcements arrived.'* It was further recommended by Sir Walter Shaw and his colleagues that

no reduction should bo made in tho present garrison of two battalions of infnntry until racial feeling has shown some marked improvement, and until tho question of the most suitable form of garrison has been roforred to the appropriate' advisers of His Majesty's Government.

The Mandates Commission had therefore a safe mark when it attacked the inadequacy of the armed forces at the disposal of the Palestine Administration, but in pleading guilty the British Government are able to add that they—or their predecessors—have erred in good company:-r- -

It. is not denied that the forces imniediately available were inadequate to cleal with sudden and widespread disturbances, but satisfaction was expressed by the Commission in 1925 that peace, and order existing had enabled the Mandatory Power to maintain only a very.small armed force in the country< is recalled, and it is noted that the" Commission, when considering the Palestine, report only a month before the outbreak, gave no indication that it regarded those forces as inadequate.

It is really very neat, very complete, and delightfully funny. The omniscience which is absolute imniediately. after,' the event had been preceded by stark ignorance only a month before, and yet by that time the state of things which is now condemned must have been in existence to the knowledge of the Mandates Commission for four or. five;years. This- admirable performance deserves to live as a classic example of the process described in an 18th century couplet, of which unfortunately we can only guarantee the second line:-—: ■ ■

Like juggling fiends who never spoke before, '■■■,• But say, "I told you," when the event is o'er.

And as' with the military forces, so with the pcixce. Here also every material detail has year by year been submitted to the Mandates Commission. As the Memorandum says,

the Commission has- all along known the composition of the Palestine police fprce, and the various changes which have taken; place in it. If, as stated in. the report, it was to be expected that such a force would prove to bo unreliable when teßted, it is to be regretted that the Commission did not warn the Mandatory Power of tho danger which it was incurring. \

We might perhaps say that this second bull's-eye is followed up by a third, though it is of a different quality. The British Government refuses to change its ideas of police policy at the beck of its censors in Geneva."" . ;'. ■■: '■ ■ .'■•; ■■'. .■ ■

To maintain order in a territory by a police force from which tho inhabitants of that territory are excluded, says' the MemorahdunVis a policy which the British Government, in the light of long and varied experience, is unable to view with favour, and which is open to objection on political, administrative, and financial grounds. It feels that it was justified in adopting in the case of Palestine a system which hasv been attended with success in many other territories and which it has still reason to hope will prove sue-

cessful in Palestine,

A nation which governs the 247,000,000 inhabitants of British India with police, services in which, as die1 Simon Commission tells us,

there are 600 Enropean officers and nearly 800 European police sergeants out of a total;of approximately 187,000,

can surely speak with greater authority on this point than all the 50 odd nations represented at Geneva put together. .