With the Judaeans in the Palestine Campaign. By Lieut.- Colonel
J. H. Patterson. (Hutchinson. 16s. net.)—In the summer of 1917 Colonel Patterson, who had commanded a body of Zionists at Gallipoli, was ordered to raise a Jewish regiment. The scheme was devised by Lieutenant Jabotinsky and, despite the hostility of many English Jews, it proved successful. In all, about 5,000 English, Russian and Polish Jews, with some Palestinians, enlisted in the 38th, 39th and 40th Royal Fusiliers Colonel Patterson took the 38th out to Egypt in March, 1918, and thence went up to the front north of Jerusalem, where the 39th joined them. For nearly two months before the great advance the Jewish battalions were in the Jordan valley. Their part in the battle was the seizure of a ford across the Jordan, followed by a march up into Gilead. The Jewish troops fought well but suffered severely from disease in the pestilential Jordan valley. Colonel-Patterson, who is not a Jew but who sympathizes heartily with Jewish aspirations, says that Lord Allenby's Staff showed a bitter hostility towards the Jewish battalions and tried to get rid of them. He charges the military admin- istration of Palestine with having done its utmost to annul the effect of the Government's Zionist policy, and almost with conniving at the Arab racial riots in Jerusalem in April, 1920. after Colonel Patterson's return home. ' The author's corn. plaints are very precise and point to a fundamental difference of opinion between the Home Government and the military authorities in Palestine, which was bound to have unfortunate results. The book deserves reading and is well illustrated.
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