12 JULY 1946, Page 13

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

AMERICA AND ARAB NATIONALISM

Sia,—The Zionist protests to America against the hesitating policy of the British Government in implementing the findings of the Angio-American Commission on Palestine. Most Jews seem to regard the Americans as the defenders of Jewish rights and the British as their arth-enemies, yet Americans more than Britons are responsible for the rise of Arab, nationalism. Of this unrecognised fact I am convinced from impressions and experiences gained when serving as an Army chaplain in Arab lands. There can be no question that the intellectual renaissance in the Arab world during the last century has been inspired mainly by American educationalists. Education, it has often been said is dynamite, and a better illustration of that truth could not be found than in the story of American Protestant missions in the Levant.

When in 1820 the first American Presbyterian missionaries began work in Beirut, the general intellectual level in Syria was kw. What little educational work was being carried on was mostly of a religious character. There were a few Moslem schools and Christian institutions under the guidance of the Roman Catholic Church and the native Uniate Church of the Maronites. It is "tothe American Protestant missionaries that credit must be given for the commencement of the real education of the people of Syria, who are mainly Arabs. These progressive-minded Americans had ideas as well as enthusiasm. Knowing the value of education for themselves, daey saw at once the necessity for planning a wide system of education which would be in harmony with the best native traditions. Whereas the later French educational policy was to inculcate French culture and teach the French language, from the first the Americans determined on an Arab education. First they learned Arabic themselves, and then, with the aid of the printing press they established in Beirut, they began the publication in Arabic of school primers and other educational books, not forgetting the Bible, a commendable enterprise which has grown into the fine American University Press in Beirut today. With the making of books, and the opening of schools, the intellectual renaissance of the Arab people in the Levant began. In a notably short space of time there was a revival of the Arabic language and the beginning of an Arab literature which has had lively effects on Arab politics In this way American missionary enterprise sponsored the birth of Arab nationalism.

Today the Americans, who undertake most of the Protestant missionary work in the Arab countries, have an intellectual influence over the Middle East which can be rightly appreciated only by those who have visited their educational institutions and talked with their old students. In Aleppo there is a famous boys' college and other first-class schools attract- ing boys and girls from all the near Arab countries, while in Beirut their greatest and proudest achievement is the American University known to hundreds of British soldiers during the War. Originally the Syrian Protestant College opened for courses in secondary education ,and medicine ; it now has full university status, with post-graduate courses in America, and its students come from far and near. In Beirut there is also the one Protestant theological college for the Middle-East, where Arab and Lebanese pastors are trained for the native churches ; and throughout the Arab world there are many fine schools for girls and boys. It was inevitable that the renaissance of learning inspired by these dedicated missionaries should bring about an Arab revival, and it is no exaggeration to write that the Arab nationalist movement owes more than possibly the Arab Moslem will care to admit to this Christian missionary education.

The Americans then are mainly responsible for the new national aspirations among the Arab people. Through their educatitmal institutions they have taught the Arabs to think for themselves, and indirectly, if not directly) have given encouragement to the movements for Arab nationhood and independence, while many Syrians who have lived in America have brought back to the Levant the American love of freedom and healthy spirit of independence.

The greater part of this educational revolution has taken place in Syria, but it has not been without its influence on the whole Arab world, particularly Palestine. The American University of Beirut is the Arab's University, though not so distinctively Arab as the Hebrew Uni- versity in Jerusalem is Jewish. Palestine Arabs desirous of higher educa- tion have beet mostly educated in Beirut and come under American influences with the consequence that America,-with no territorial claims in the Middle East, has been regarded as the nation most friendly to the Arab. In Jerusalem, the American Y.M.C.A., almost entirely Arab in its social mirk, has become the spiritual home of Christian Arabs and a centre for Arab culture. Thus if in America the Zionist counts the American people his enthusiastic supporters, outside the United States in Arab lands, up to this present, the Arab regards the Americans as his intellectual and political liberators, And it should be made plain that

the Palestine problem is not Jew versus Moslem, for the Christian Arab who has come mostly under American influence is as fiercely nationalist as the Moslem Bethlehem and Nazareth are centres of the Arab resistance movement, while much propaganda is carried on among the Christian Arab nationalists in Beirut and Aleppo Our American friends deserve great praise for their educational work among the Arabs, in much freer in its outlook than that of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where education is by Jews for Jews ; the Jew,. in that distressed land of Palestine, showing himself often as anti-Gentile as ever. There is no doubt of the beneficent work sponsored by American missionaries with American dollars in the Arab world, but neither is there any doubt that the Arab nationalist movement owes indirectly its birth to American education and American ideas. Thi: unrecognised fact should be publicised, and ought to temper the indiscriminate enthusiasm of so many in the United States for a Jewish national State, which can only, if then, be imposed by force of arms upon the Arab people whom the Americans have helped to liberate intellectually and politically.—