LAND OF THREE FAITHS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XX, Issue 2119, 26 May 1925, Page 6

LAND OF THREE FAITHS.

! ISRAEL, ISLAM, AND THE ; CROSS.

j By the rivers of Babylotn, there we | sat down. Yea, we wept when we reremembered Zion.

| If I forgett thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning, i If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

The Allied and Associated! Powers at Paris, not otherwise given to religious exercise in concert, assembled i to make a diplomatic reality of the I 137th Psalm, write Mr J. L. Garvin iin the Loiuh/n Observer. The British Government led the movement to restore Zion to Palestine, though not Palestine to Zion—a distinction sometimes forgotten. Whatever else may he thought, Zionism is a hazardous and fascinating adventure. The like of it has not been known, nor can man cast its horoscope when the destinies of all the changing East stand under unsearchable. It is a far journey through time from Titus to Lord Balfour. From tho shoulder of Mount Scopus (meaning sentinel), where the Hebrew University has been built 3000 feet above the level of the sea. Titus began the siege that battered down the outer and inner ramparts of Jerusalem and quickened! the dispersion of the Jews through tho earth. Thus one of the smaller sideshows of /the Roman Empire has become an affair universal and endless. Nearly two thousand years have passed, and now we have Zionism and tho great adventure of the return. Zionism may be restored, in Palestine, but Palestine cannot bo restored to Zionism. Side by side with the other existing inhabitants the National Homo may come to comprise larger numbers. The numbers could never pass beyond a certain limit, or be increased too rapidly at any time, without provoking a destroying outbreak.

Here we touch the secret of Arab resistance. Though the toflfitl Jewish influx has not exceeded 40,000 since the Balfour Declaration, the Arabs are still afraid tliaib immigration may reach more formidable proportions. The land 1 as a whole never can be wrenched from Islam. If the fears of the Arabs, whether reasonable oi not, are inflamed violently in the future, they will rise with a vengeance, and Zionism, after all ithe 18 centuries of its dream, might end again in tragedy and dispersion. Islam is a quenchless force in these matters. Many of us can remember how the boat-builder’s sou Of Dongola became a Prophet, swept the Soudan, destroyed Gordan, and conquered 2,000,000 square miles of territory in two years. “Above all, what mankind requires, between nations, raices, sects, classes, parties and individuals is leiSs prejudice and moire charity. No one lives long enaugh to plumb the depth of the word that was said when Christianity was first conceived as the Zionism of the world. ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, L am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” Anti-Semitism will disappear from Western civilisation like the ghetto and the gaberdine; but the fortunes of Jewry iu Palestine depend upon its power to create a harmony of Israel, Islam, land Christendom in the land where the Later monotheism of Mohammed is as intense as thait of Moses and Abraham, where lie the sacred scenes of the New Testament as of the Old, and where the Three Faiths must learn toi dwell together if any peace is to be.”