A PALESTINE PLAN
Snt,—Mr. G. R. Driver's article is intriguing, and with much of his premises we shall agree. The Jews have acquired the land with the best potential value and have undoubtedly improved it owing to their command of ample capital. I agree that a sufficiency of Jews have been admitted to constitute a " national home," at any rate for the present, and that the time has come to stabilise their conditions and those of the Arab Palestinians. There should be no question of one race turning out the other, for in origin they are really one. Given the education and the financial privileges of the Jew the Arab is quite capable of holding his own and they should then be partners, not opponents. This is what we, the mandatory Government, are in Palestine for.
But anyone who has read the Report of the Palestine Peel Commission and the subsequent Report of the Palestine Partition Commission, especially if he has since been over the country as I have, cannot regard partition as satisfactory even for temporary purposes. The proposals might possibly serve for local government areas under one unified central authority, but no more.
The suggestion to transfer troops and naval forces from Egypt to Palestine is revealing, and the further proposition to construct a new canal across Palestine in place (I suppose so far as Britain is concerned) of the Suez Canal is revolutionary in a physical if not in a political sense. Both of them would indeed introduce new complications. Is it realised that the Sinaitic range extends into Palestine? If Mr. Driver will look at the official Survey Map he will see that, unless provided with locks, which are obviously out of the question in comparison with the Suez, such a canal would have to pass through country at least z,000 to 1,50o feet high for fifty miles or more of its course. Speaking as an engineer I should regard such a proposal as impracticable unless there were some compelling reason that disregards cost. Would it not be wiser to internationalise the Suez Canal area?—Yours faithfully,
A. P. I. C,orroust.t, Minst.C.E. The National Liberal Club. 12 Queen Anne's Gate, S.W. r.
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