BACK FROM PALESTINE

Southland Times, Issue 20641, 13 November 1928, Page 15

BACK FROM PALESTINE

VISIT OF REV. D. C. HERRON. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE. MEETING IN EX KAISER’S HALL. One of the representatives of 51 nations attending the international missionary conference at Jerusalem last Easter was the Rev. D. C. Herron, minister of St. David’s Presbyterian Church, Auckland, who returned by the Niagara from Sydney recently. Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, France and Great Britain were included in Mr Herron’s tour abroad, but the great conference at Jerusalem was the outstanding experience. In all there were 250 delegates, the only other New Zealander being the Rev. D. Calder, Dominion representative of the British and Foreign Bible Society. There were some novel associations at the gathering, said Mr. Herron Delegates were accommodated in tents and cubicles and he had on his right two German scholars, and on his left the Negro Bishop of Nigeria and a Uganda chief. The Germans epoke frankly of the war but without bitterness, and expressed the view that Germany’s defeat had had the effect of strengthening the religious life of her people. Meetings were held in a truly remarkable atmosphere—in a hall built to the order of the ex-Kaiser, a plaster statue of whom, lacking a ’eg broken off by an earthquake, adorned one of the walls above chapel decorations of orthodox Christian character. British administration had had a tremendous beneficial effect upon conditions of life in Palestine, particularly so far as roads were concerned. There were numerous rebuilt highways in Palestine as good as those of New Zealand and some were even better. The police force was largely composed of Arabs, or Palestinians, as they termed themselves, mounted on splendid Arab horses. One outward effect of the Zionist movement had been the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees, including, many fruit trees. Although there were a great many Jews in the country, it was patent, when considering the possibilities of the “back to Palestine” movement, that such rocky and poor country could never carry a great population. There were those who thought the prominence given the Jews’ aspirations by the Balfour Declaration had been harmful, inasmuch as it had sharpened feeling between the Jews and Moslems, which at all times created a tension in the country. Zionism had built a fine modern city named Tel-Aviv, near Jaffa, but whereas it had a population of 45,000 last year, it had since dwindled to 40,000. At the outset the missionary conference had caused a deal of misapprehension among the Modems and there had been some mild rioting, one act jf which was to break a glass window in a newly-opened church structure. The agitation had not been really grave, and much good had been achieved by this world representative assemblage of Christian workers.