SIR,—Readers of The Spectator will be grateful for Edward Hodgkin's
objective exposé of intransigence on either side in Palestine. But the prospect of the role of an onlooker for Great Britain after next May should have been shown more clearly to be nothing more than a mirage. Although the Government clearly has no alternative now but to evacuate
Palestine, such a move should be tantamount to the tactical relinquish- ment of an untenable position, and not to the strategic abandonment of a front in which, thanks to geography and Commonwealth interests, this country must maintain an interest. This state of affairs is recognised by the Government's acceptance of the Scarborough Report on Oriental Studies, the recommendations of which it has begun to implement. On political grounds alone—using that term in its narrowest and most selfish sense—it is essential that Great Britain should refoster general interest in the Near and Far East and recreate an informed body of opinion about past and present history there. But there is also a deeper and more humane reason for so doing. If this country is to continue to play its part in the maintenance and development of Western civilisa- tion, it must surely devote more resources to the study of its origins and to the valuation of its legacy from the past, in which the Oriental factor is an integral element ; and here, thanks to changes in our educational programme in the last century, the leeway to be made up is enormous. About the Arab contribution I am not competent to speak. On the Jewish side, a peculiar responsibility rests in this respect on the Anglo- Jewish community ; and although that body has inevitably proved unable,' though indeed it has scarcely been sufficiently vocal, to curb Jewish expression and political activity in Palestine and America (I write as a Jew), there are signs that it is not unaware of its responsibilities in this direction, and that at long last it is attempting to educate itself and its environment in the Jewish contribution to civilisation.
But the task of combating general ignorance and apathy is not one that it can fulfil unaided, and if it is to succeed, it must have far greater assistance from the secular Press, the B.B.C. and the Ministry of Educa- tion. The sort of things required are articles and popular pamphlets of the Oxford Press type, not on the eternal " Jewish Question " about which the public has been informed—and misinformed—ad naustam, but on such themes as the contribution of the Old Testament prophets to civilisation, the part played by Jews in the revival of learning, and the effect of the Bible in spreading and developing folklore and literacy. And an informed public opinion in Great Britain might evoke a response from Arab, Jew and indeed Indian, by means of which the efforts of reason to stimulate an emancipation from the political immaturity of intransigence and vituperation would no longer be completely nugatory,
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