SIR, —May I add something to the letter you published last
week from the late Senior Chaplain to the R.A.F. in the Levant about Ben Shemen School in Palestine? I recently spent some hours in that same " children's village," and, like Mr. Smith-Masters, came away encouraged by the spirit pervading the place. But perhaps he does not know how he himself reinforced by example the efforts of Dr. Lehmann and his teaching staff to inculcate love of one's neighbour into Palestinian Jewish children today. I had never heard the name of Mr. Smith-Masters till I visited Ben Shemen. There I heard it from young and old, and, though it is at least a year since he left that neighbourhood, his memory is kept green. Moreover, he and the friends he brought to the school from the R.A.F. camp represent to many of the children their first contacts with British people, and the impression will not easily fade from young minds.
I cannot form an opinion about Hebrew textbooks or teaching in Palestine. But I know that in every Jewish secondary school Arabic is taught and I believe instruction in Hebrew is not given in any Arab secondary school. But what children are directly taught in school is a very small part of what they learn. That comes from life and not from books. Palestine is full just now of racial fears and suspicions. Not all the British there, whether lay or clerical, have shown a desire to " understand and respect the special characteristics of other people." The immense influence exercised by one " padre" who did that as a labour of love in one school makes me want to strengthen his testimony that the " fiery spirit of nationalism " is not so encouraged in Jewish school children as the Committee of Enquiry was led to believe.—Yours, &c.,
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