LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.] PROBLEMS OF ZIONISM.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Grateful as I am for the consideration given to my views in various pages of your issue of January 15th, I trust you will allow me to correct your exposition of the problems of Zionism. It is unhistorical to say that " the British Government, con- fronted with the physical possession of Palestine," bad the happy—or unhappy—idea of offering it to the Jews. That offer was. made at a dubious moment of the world-war and long before England came into possession; it gained her a great accession of sympathy, especially from American Jewry, and General Allenby was the first to admit how much his conquest owed to the cervices and sacrifices of Palestinian Jews. You now avow that the promise of a "Jewish National Home" in Palestine is not to be, cannot be, carried out, and that " the British Government, without meaning it, are taking in the Jews throughout the world." Yet my demand for the fulfilment of the contract you call " Shylockian."!
Permit we to say that had you studied my article on " Shylock " in the volume under review you would not have misunderstood me so utterly. If I ask for the pound of flesh, it is because nothing under—not even by the weight of a hair— can avail to solve the Jewish problem. And if your quibbling Portias deny me justice, I throw you back your bond and stalk from the Court. Let the Arabs keep their ruined and mis- managed soil. Let their absentee landlords in Cairo find other fools to fatten it for them! There is scant point in going from the fire into the frying-pan. " The more homogeneous a nation is the safer and sounder it is," you say. An excellent stick to keep Jews out with ! But to apply the principle to Palestine—ah, that would create a Ghetto! As if some racial predominance does not characterize every country! But it is untrue that I say to the Arabs: " This is our land. Get out." What I say is: " You have other and vaster lands—a new Arab State even—where you can live self-governed, free from our competition. Why not trek to them, we compensating you? There are only 10,000 square miles; we have to accommodate millions. With 600,000 of you in possession, what Jewish national atmosphere could be evolved? 10,000 of you would be a sufficient alloy to check Jewish narrowness. Besides, we shall only be accused—and perhaps justly—of exploiting your labour- force. Give us the chance of earning Palestine by the sweat of our own brows! " Even did I desire to free this meagre territory of Arabs by eviction, to characterize that—after a war and a blockade that have killed off twenty million people, and incidentally added millions of square miles to the British Empire—as " an act of unspeakable wickedness," is simply grotesque. But the day for such rational compulsion has prob- ably passed : for want of seriousness equally in the Government, the Zionists, and the League of Nations, the psychological moment has been let slip. For my idea belongs not—as my critics pretend—to Prussianism but to Wilsonism. The trans- plantation to the Hedjaz of the primitive and loosely-rooted folk of Palestine is only one of the many gradual measures of race- redistribution, which a genuine League of Nations, genuinely repartitioning the world on " the principle of nationalities," would have found itself compelled to undertake, wherever a country was in an " Irlsterated " condition.
But, you urge, even with the Arabs remaining in Palestine, I demand " minority rule." Only because the transformation of the minority into the majority is the very idea of the settle- ment, under the minimum interpretation of the promise. Why should not the Arabs accept it by intelligent anticipation? Such a grasping of the nettle would both allay the useless Arab unrest and evoke immeasurably greater sacrifices from Jewry, and why it would be more "Prussian " for Sir Herbert Samuel to -represent the Jewish Colonial Trust than Downing Street I fail to understand, more particularly as they are both British institutions. (The establishment, by the way, of the Zionist institutions in England serves to refute your notion that England was unpopular in Continental Jewry. So long as England was a land of freedom, it was universally beloved.) But even without " minority rule " and with the Arabs- in predominant occupation, has England done her utmost to redeem her " scrap of paper "? The terms of the " Mandate " are suspiciously undisclosed, but her occupation of Palestine does not obviously differ from the French occupation of Syria,. which General Gouraud has explained so candidly. The Zionists have not even been granted the Crown Lands, such as immi- grants to Brazil or Canada receive. I am told Palestine will actually be saddled with part of the Turkish war indemnity! You say that the Jews who are opposed to the Palestine " Ghetto " desire to be absorbed. Alas! such logic is beyond human nature. The hero of ,The Melting Pot desired to melt into America, but his views aroused an outcry. All the same the Jews do melt into every country, and that the process is not proceeding more rapidly is due to the Chestertons and the Bellocs, assisted by the pogroms whose ragings at this very moment make your contention that Christendom is not called upon to atone for past guilt a hideous mockery. Finally you suggest in me a " double allegiance." I have only one allegiance —to my own conscience.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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