PROBLEM OF EMPIRE

Evening Star, Issue 23175, 26 January 1939, Page 16

PROBLEM OF EMPIRE

PALESTINE POSITION BRITAIN'S NEW ATTITUDE The session of the British Cabinet, the first since *tha Government heard Mr Chamberlain’s report on the meeting at Munich, did not revert to the Central European situation at all, writes Ann© O’Hare M'Cormick in the ‘ New York Times.’ Consideration of the burning problem of national defence was held over. The final obstacles to the Anglo-American Trade Treaty were referred to very briefly. Only two subjects were seriously discussed. Lord Halifax informed his colleagues on the prospects of ratification of the agreement with Italy following the withdrawal of more Italian troops from Spain. Otherwise the Cabinet concentrated all its ■ attention on the crisis in Palestine. . For the moment this is the overshadowing issue, before the British Government. We hear that Palestine is now regarded in London as the pivotal point on which British prestige in the near Middle East depends. The authority of the Empire is felt to be involved in the ability of the Government to put down the Arab revolt, already two and a-half years old and intensifying in strength and violence with every month that passes. How the underlying conflict can be solved has become secondary to the question of stopping the guerilla war. The Woodhead Report, embodying a new attempt to satisfy both claimants in this twicepromised land, will not be made public, it is announced, until order is restored. USE OF THE “FIRM HAND.” As the Black Watch, the Coldstream Guards, and the Northumberland Fusiliers march softly, through the gates of Jerusalem in their rubber-soled boots and invest the murmurous labyrinth of the Old City, we see for the first time in many moons the use of the “ firm baud ” in British policy. Very significant is this immediate turn to the Mediterranean from the troubles of the Danube area. It shows Britain getting back to her own im-perial-business. It goes far to explain the quick* decisions taken at Munich. It accounts for the fact that in the three years since the rearmament campaign began there is little to show for the effort in the way of guns, tanks, and aeroplanes, and much in the shape of ships and naval equipment. It indicates why Mr Chamberlain, an iu-

sistent advocate of large-scale arming before he was head of the Government, pushed aside Mr Eden in order to deal at once with > Mussolini on the Mediterranean question. Britain’s road to the East is not overland. The direct gates to the Empire are the water-gates. NOT A SIMPLE CONFLICT. Thus what is happening in Palestine is not a simple conflict between Arabs and Jews for the possession of a little country the size of Vermont. For such a conflict there might be a satisfactory solution. It happens that this little land, already crowded with race memories and saturated with religious associations, is to-day. the meeting place of nearly every problem that agitates the earth. It is not by accident that three great religions germinated in this yeasty soil. It must be as magnetic to ideas and emotions as the electric fields around the North Pole. The Jews have found a homeland about as peaceful as the live crater of a volcano. ■ After all the centuries, they have settled down on a spot which events have made vital to the British Imperial system., They have settled at a. moment when nationalism has become a contagious disease, sweeping from the plague centres of Europe and Asia to infect the Arab world. It is too simple to imagine that this fever, inflaming Arabs whether they are governed by French, British, Turks. Spaniards, or Italians, is merely the effect of Fascist propaganda. It is a self-starting movement of revolt against foreign rule, as self-conscious in the remote oases of the desert as among the sullen youth milling in the towns. UNEXPECTED PROBLEMS. Zionists could not have foreseen these complications. They could not have foreseen that the establishment of the Homeland would also coincide with an explosion of anti-Semitism in the heart of Europe that would drive hundreds of thousands of Jews into exile. It is these unexpected coincidences that make the problem acute. The refugees, especially, have no real relation to the Zionist movement. Most of them are non-Zionists who love the homelands they are forced to leave. But their tragedy gives a meaning to Zion it never had before. For the first time the whole world is aroused to protest against any solution of the Palestine question which would restrict Jewish immigration. The question has become important to everybody. In this great human emergency no reason seems great enough to justify putting up new bars. For the British Government this is also a time of emergency. And it is evident that the question of Palestine is no longer primarily a question of the

rights of Arabs or Jews. In a new sense, not true at the time of the Balfour Declaration or since, it has become a question of Imperial policy, and will be settled on that basis. The Homeland was planted at a turning point of history. This is why the solution of its problem is infinitely more difficult than could have been imagined 20 years ago. Quite unpredictably Jerusalem has become again a focus of the assorted crises and clashing faiths of the world