XXVII PALESTINE AND THE JEWS
"What's his reason? I am a Jew."
The Merchant of Venice.
Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. It has no basis in reason; it is not rooted in faith; it aspires to no ideal; it is just one of those dank and unwholesome weeds that grow in the morass of racial hatred. How utterly devoid of reason it is may be gathered from the fact that it is almost entirely confined to nations who worship Jewish prophets and apostles, revere the national literature of the Hebrews as the only inspired message delivered by the deity to mankind, and whose only hope of salvation rests on the precepts and promises of the great teachers of Judah. Yet in the sight of these fanatics the Jews of to-day can do nothing right. If they are rich they are birds of prey. If they are poor they are vermin. If they are in favour of a war it is because they want to exploit the bloody feuds of the Gentiles to their own profit. If they are anxious for peace they are either instinctive cowards or traitors. If they give generously—and there are no more liberal givers than the Jews—they are doing it for some selfish purpose of their own. If they do not give—then what could one expect of a Jew but avarice? If labour is oppressed by great capital, the greed of the Jew is held responsible. If labour revolts against capital—as it did in Russia—the Jew is blamed for that also. If he lives in a strange land he must be persecuted and pogrommed out of it. If he wants to go back to his own he must be prevented. Through the centuries in every land, whatever he does, or intends, or fails to do, he has been pursued by the echo of the brutal cry of the rabble of Jerusalem against the greatest of all Jews—"Crucify Him!" No good has ever come of nations that crucified Jews. It is poor and pusillanimous sport, lacking all the true qualities of manliness, and those who indulge in it would be the first to run away were there any element of danger in it. Jew-baiters are generally of the type that found good reasons for evading military service when their own country was in danger.
The latest exhibition of this wretched indulgence is the agitation against settling poor Jews in the land their fathers made famous. Palestine under Jewish rule once maintained a population of 5,000,000. Under the blighting rule of the Turk it barely supported a population of 700,000. The land flowing with milk and honey is now largely a stony and unsightly desert. To quote one of the ablest and most far-sighted business men of to-day, "It is a land of immense possibilities, in spite of the terrible neglect of its resources resulting from Turkish misrule. It is a glorious estate let down by centuries of neglect. The Turks cut down the forests and never troubled to replant them. They slaughtered the cattle and never troubled to replace them." It is one of the peculiarities of the Jew-hunter that he adores the Turk.
If Palestine is to be restored to a condition even approximate to its ancient prosperity, it must be by settling Jews on its soil. The condition to which the land has been reduced by centuries of the most devastating oppression in the world is such that restoration is only possible by a race that is prepared for sentimental reasons to make and endure sacrifices for the purpose. What is the history of the Jewish settlement in Palestine? It did not begin with the Balfour Declaration. A century ago there were barely 10,000 Jews in the whole of Palestine. Before the war there were 100,000. The war considerably reduced these numbers, and immigration since 1918 has barely filled up the gaps. At the present timorous rate of progress it will be many years before it reaches 200,000. Jewish settlement started practically seventy years ago, with Sir Moses Montefiore's experiment in 1854—another war year. The Sultan had good reasons for propitiating the Jews in that year, as the Allies had in 1917. So the Jewish resettlement of Palestine began. From that day onward it has proceeded slowly but steadily. The land available was not of the best. Prejudices and fears had to be negotiated. Anything in the nature of wholesale expropriation of Arab cultivators, even for cash, had to be carefully avoided. The Jews were, therefore, often driven to settle on barren sand dunes and malarial swamps. The result can best be given by quoting from an article written by Mrs. Fawcett, the famous woman leader. She visited Palestine in 1921 and again in 1922, and this is her account of the Jewish settlements:
"So far from the colonies and the colonists draining the country of its resources they have created resources which were previously non-existent; they have planted and skilfully cultivated desert sands and converted them into fruitful vineyards and orange and lemon orchards; in other parts they have created valuable agricultural land out of what were previously dismal swamps producing nothing but malaria and other diseases. The colonists have not shrunk from the tremendous work and the heavy sacrifices required. Many of the early arrivals laid down their lives over their work; the survivors went on bravely, draining the swamps, planting eucalyptus trees by the hundred thousand so that at length the swamp became a fruitful garden, and the desert once more blossomed like the rose."
Everywhere the Jew cultivator produces heavier and richer crops than his Arab neighbour. He has introduced into Palestine more scientific methods of cultivation, and his example is producing a beneficent effect on the crude tillage of the Arab peasant. It will be long ere Canaan becomes once more a land flowing with milk and honey. The effects of the neglect and misrule of centuries cannot be effaced by the issue of a declaration. The cutting down of the trees has left the soil unprotected against the heavy rains and the rocks which were once green with vineyards and olive groves have been swept bare. The terraces which ages of patient industry built up have been destroyed by a few generations of Turkish stupidity. They cannot be restored in a single generation. Great irrigation works must be constructed if settlement is to proceed on a satisfactory scale. Palestine possesses in some respects advantages for the modern settler which to its ancient inhabitants were a detriment. Its one great river and its tributaries are rapid and have a great fall. For power this is admirable. Whether for irrigation, or for the setting up of new industries, this gift of nature to Palestine is capable of exploitation only made possible by the scientific discoveries of the last century. The tableland of Judea has a rainfall which if caught in reservoirs at appropriate centres would make of the "desert of Judea" a garden. If this be done Arab and Jew alike share in the prosperity.
There are few countries on earth which have made less of their possibilities. Take its special attractions for the tourist. I was amazed to find that the visitors to Palestine in the whole course of a year only aggregate 15,000. It contains the most famous shrines in the world. Its history is of more absorbing interest to the richest peoples on earth, and is better taught to their children, than even that of their own country. Some of its smallest villages are better known to countless millions than many a prosperous modern city. Hundreds of thousands ought to be treading this sacred ground every year. Why are they not doing so? The answer is: Turkish misrule scared away the pilgrim. Those who went there came back disillusioned and disappointed. The modern "spies" on their return did not carry with them the luscious grapes of Escol to thrill the multitude with a desire to follow their example. They brought home depressing tales of squalor, discomfort, and exaction which dispelled the glamour and discouraged further pilgrimages. Settled government gives the Holy Land its first chance for 1900 years. But there is so much undeveloped country demanding the attention of civilisation that Palestine will lose that chance unless it is made the special charge of some powerful influence. The Jews alone can redeem it from the wilderness and restore its ancient glory.
In that trust there is no injustice to any other race. The Arabs have neither the means, the energy, nor the ambition to discharge this duty. The British Empire has too many burdens on its shoulders to carry this experiment through successfully. The Jewish race with its genius, its resourcefulness, its tenacity, and not least its wealth, can alone perform this essential task. The Balfour Declaration is not an expropriating but an enabling clause. It is only a charter of equality for the Jews. Here are its terms:
"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
The declaration was subsequently endorsed and adopted by President Wilson and the French and Italian foreign ministers.
The Zionists ask for no more. It has been suggested by their enemies that they are seeking to establish a Jewish oligarchy in Palestine that will reduce the Arab inhabitant to a condition of servitude to a favoured Hebrew minority. The best answer to that charge is to be found in the memorandum submitted by the Zionist Association to the League of Nations.
"The Jews demand no privilege, unless it be the privilege of rebuilding by their own efforts and sacrifices a land which, once the seat of a thriving and productive civilisation, has long been suffered to remain derelict. They expect no favoured treatment in the matter of political or religious rights. They assume, as a matter of course, that all the inhabitants of Palestine, be they Jews or non-Jews, will be in every respect on a footing of perfect equality. They seek no share in the government beyond that to which they may be entitled under the Constitution as citizens of the country. They solicit no favours. They ask, in short, no more than an assured opportunity of peacefully building up their national home by their own exertions and of succeeding on their merits."
It is a modest request which these exiles from Zion propound to the nations. And surely it is just that it should be conceded, and if conceded then carried out in the way men of honour fulfil their bond. There are fourteen millions of Jews in the world. They belong to a race which for at least 1900 years has been subjected to proscription, pillage, massacre, and the torments of endless derision—a race that has endured persecution, which for the variety of torture, physical, material and mental, inflicted on its victims, for the virulence and malignity with which it has been sustained, for the length of time it has lasted, and more than all for the fortitude and patience with which it has been suffered, is without parallel in the history of any other people. Is it too much to ask that those amongst them whose sufferings are the worst shall be able to find refuge in the land their fathers made holy by the splendour of their genius, by the loftiness of their thoughts, by the consecration of their lives, and by the inspiration of their message to mankind?
XXVIII THE TREATY OF LAUSANNE[12]
The vanquished have returned to their spiritual home at Angora throwing their fezzes in the air. The victors have returned with their tails well between their legs. All tragedies have their scenes of comedy, and the Lausanne Conference is one of those amusing episodes interpolated by fate to relieve the poignancy of one of its greatest tragic pieces—the Turk and civilisation.
The Turk may be a bad ruler, but he is the prince of anglers. The cunning and the patience with which he lands the most refractory fish once he has hooked it is beyond compare. What inimitable play we have witnessed for six months on the shores of Lake Leman! Once the fish seemed to have broken the tackle—that was when the first conference came to an abrupt end. It simply meant, however, that the wily Oriental was giving out plenty of line. Time never worries him, he can sit and wait. He knew the moment would come when they would return with the hook well in their gullets, and the play begin once more—the reeling in and the reeling out, the line sometimes taut and strained but never snapping. Time and patience rewarded him. At last the huge tarpon are all lying beached on the banks—Britain, France, Italy, and the United States of America—high and dry, landed and helpless, without a swish left in their tails, glistening and gasping in the summer sun.
It is little wonder that Ismet had a smile on his face when all was over. Reports from Angora state that the peace is hailed there as a great Turkish triumph; and so it is. The Turk is truly a great fisherman. If he could govern as well as he angles, his would be the most formidable Empire in the world. Unfortunately he is the worst of rulers, hence the trouble—his own and that of those who unhappily have drawn him as governor in the lottery of life.
The able correspondent of the Daily Telegraph at the Lausanne Conference has supplied us from time to time with vivid pen pictures of the four greatest Powers of the world struggling in the toils of the squalid and broken remains of an Empire with an aggregate population equal to that of a couple of English counties that I could name. This is what he wrote about this conference, which constitutes one of the most humiliating incidents in the history of Western civilisation:—
"The records of the present Conference present an even more marvellous series of concessions and surrenders. What was frayed before is threadbare now. The Allies have whittled away their own rights with a lavish hand in the cause of peace. They have also—and this is a graver matter, for which it seems they will have to give an account in the not distant future—gone back on their promises to small races, which are none the less promises because the small races have not the power to enforce their performance. The figure that the European delegates are cutting in Lausanne, and the agents of the concessionnaires in Angora—all alike representatives of the West—has been rendered undignified as much by the manner as the matter of their worsting."
Since those distressing words were written the Powers have sunk yet deeper into the slough of humiliation.
The Times correspondent wiring after the agreement writes in a strain of deep indignation at the blow inflicted on the prestige of the West by this extraordinary Treaty. In order to gauge the extent of the disaster to civilisation which this Treaty implies it is only necessary to give a short summary of the war aims of the Allies in Turkey.
They were stated by Mr. Asquith with his usual succinctness and clarity in a speech which he delivered when Prime Minister at the Guildhall on November 9th, 1914:—
"It is not the Turkish people—it is the Ottoman Government that has drawn the sword, and which, I venture to predict, will perish by the sword. It is they and not we who have rung the death-knell of Ottoman dominion, not only in Europe but in Asia. With their disappearance will disappear as I, at least, hope and believe, the blight which for generations past has withered some of the fairest regions of the earth."
In pursuance of the policy thus declared by the British Premier on behalf of the Allies a series of Agreements was entered into in the early months of 1915 between France, Russia, and ourselves, by which the greater part of Turkey, with its conglomerate population, was to be partitioned at the end of the War. Cilicia and Syria were allocated to France; Mesopotamia to Britain; Armenia and Constantinople to Russia. Palestine was to be placed under the joint control of Britain and France. Arabia was to be declared independent and a territory carved largely out of the desert—but including some famous cities of the East, Damascus, Homs and Aleppo—was to be constituted into a new Arab State, partly under the protection of France and partly of Britain. Smyrna and its precincts were to be allotted to Greece if she joined her forces with those of the Allies in the war. The Straits were to be demilitarised and garrisoned. When Italy came into the war later on in 1915, it was stipulated that in the event of the partition of Turkey being carried out in pursuance of these agreements, territories in Southern Anatolia should be assigned to Italy for development.
What was the justification for breaking up the Turkish Empire? The portions to be cut out of Turkey have a population the majority of which is non-Turkish. Cilicia and Southern Anatolia might constitute a possible exception. In these territories massacres and misgovernment had perhaps succeeded at last in turning the balance in favour of the Turk. But in the main the distributed regions were being cultivated and developed before the war by a population which was Western and not Turanian in its origin and outlook. This population represented the original inhabitants of the soil.
The experiences, more especially of the past century, had demonstrated clearly that the Turk could no longer be entrusted with the property, the honour, or the lives of any Christian race within his dominions. Whole communities of Armenians had been massacred under circumstances of the most appalling cruelty in lands which their ancestors had occupied since the dawn of history. And even after the war began 700,000 of these wretched people had been done to death by these savages, to whom, it must be remembered, the Great Powers so ostentatiously proffered the hand of friendship at the first Lausanne conference. Even while the conference was in session, and the handshaking was going on, the Turks were torturing to death scores of thousands of young Greeks whom they deported into the interior. As "a precautionary measure" 150,000 Greeks of military age, of whom 30,000 were military prisoners, were last year driven inland to the mountains of Anatolia. On the way they were stripped of their clothes, and in this condition were herded across the icy mountains. It is not surprising that when an agreement was arrived at for the exchange of military prisoners, the Turks found the greatest difficulty in producing 11,000, and of the total 150,000 it is estimated that two-thirds perished. The Allied Powers had every good reason for determining, as they hoped for all time, that this barbarian should cease to shock the world by repeated exhibitions of savagery against helpless and unarmed people committed to his charge by a cruel fate.
Apart from these atrocities the fact that great tracts of country, once the most fertile and populous in the world, have been reduced by Turkish misrule and neglect to a condition which is indistinguishable from the wilderness, alone proves that the Turk is a blight and a curse wherever he pitches his tent, and that he ought in the interests of humanity to be treated as such. When a race, which has no title to its lands other than conquest, so mismanages the territories it holds by violence as to deprive the world of an essential contribution to its well-being, the nations have a right—nay, a duty—to intervene in order to restore these devastated areas to civilisation. This same duty constitutes the reason and justification for the white settlers of America overriding the prior claims of the Indian to the prairies and forests of the great West.
On the shores of the Mediterranean are two races with a surplus population of hard-working, intelligent cultivators, both of them belonging to countries which had themselves in the past been responsible for the government of the doomed lands covered by the Turkish Empire. Greece and Italy could claim that under their rule this vast territory throve and prospered mightily. They now pour their overflow of population into lands far away from the motherland. Yet they are essentially Mediterranean peoples. The history of the Mediterranean will for ever be associated with their achievements on its shores and its waters. The derelict wastes of Asia Minor need them. Valleys formerly crowded with tillers are now practically abandoned to the desert weeds. Irrigation has been destroyed or neglected. The Italian engineers are amongst the best in the world, and once they were introduced into Asia Minor would make cultivation again possible. There is plenty of scope in the deserts of Anatolia for both Italian and Greek. I was hoping for a peace that would set them both working. Had such a settlement been attained, a generation hence would have witnessed gardens thronging with happy men, women, and children, where now you have a wilderness across which men, women, and children are periodically hunted down into nameless horror.
Yet another reason for the Allied decision was the bitter resentment that existed at the ingratitude displayed by the Turk towards Britain and France. They were naturally indignant that he should have joined their foes and slammed the gate of the Dardanelles in their face, and by that means complicated and prolonged their campaign and added enormously to their burdens, their losses, and their dangers. But he had not the thankfulness even of the beast of prey in the legend towards the man who had cured his wounded limb. France and Britain had many a time extracted the thorn from the Turkish paw when he was limping along in impotent misery. They had done more. They had often saved the life of that Empire when the Russian bear was on the point of crushing it out of existence; and yet without provocation, without even a quarrel, he had betrayed them to their enemies.
I have set out shortly what the war policy of the Allies was in reference to Turkey. The Treaty of Sèvres considerably modified that policy in many vital aspects. By that Treaty, Constantinople, Cilicia, and Southern Anatolia were left to the Turk; Armenia was created into an independent State. There were many objections which could be raised to the original proposals of 1915, as it might be argued that they contemplated handing over in Cilicia and Southern Anatolia populations which in the main were Turkish and Moslem to Christian rulers. But in substance the modified plan of Sèvres was sound, and if carried out would have conduced to the well-being of the millions to be liberated by its terms for ever from Turkish rule. The world at large also would have benefited by the opportunity afforded to the industrious and intelligent Armenian and Greek populations of Turkey to renew the fertility of this land, once so bountiful in its gifts, thus enriching man's store of good things. The barbarian invasion which withered that fertility was pushed back into the interior by the Treaty of Sèvres. The Treaty of Lausanne has extended and perpetuated its sway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. I have explained the why and wherefore of Sèvres. But why Lausanne? It is a long and painful story—a compound of shortsightedness, disloyalty, selfishness, and pusillanimity amongst nations and their statesmen. And more than all, Fate happened to be in its grimmest mood when dealing with this problem. The Russian Revolution eliminated that great country from the solution of the problem on the lines of protection for the oppressed races of Turkey, and instead cast its might on the side of the oppressor. President Wilson was inclined to recommend that the United States of America should undertake the mandate for the Armenians. Had he succeeded, what a different story would now have been told! What a different story the generations to come would also tell! But his health broke down at the vital moment and America would have none of his humanitarian schemes. Then came the departure of Sonnino from the Quirinal. With him went for a momentous while the old dreams of Italian colonisation, which in the past had done so much to spread civilisation in three continents. His successors were homelier men. I have still my doubts as to whether they served Italy best by the less adventurous and more domesticated policy they pursued. The future may decide that issue. But whatever the decision, the time for action passed away, and unless and until there is another break up in Turkey, the chance Italy has lost since 1919 will not be recovered. Will it ever come back?
There followed the French check in Cilicia, and the negotiations at Angora with Mustapha Kemal, which were both single-handed and under-handed; for the Allies were not even informed of what was going on. This was a fatal step, for it broke up the unity which alone would enable the Western Powers to deal effectively with the Turk. This unity was never fully re-created. There can be no reunion without confidence. There can be no trust in the West that is broken in the East. Much of the recent mischief in the Entente came from the clandestine negotiations at Angora.
The last fatal change was the Greek revolt against Venizelos. It is often said that he is the greatest statesman thrown up by that race since Pericles. In all he has undertaken he has never failed his people. Disaster has always come to them when they refused to follow his guidance. When King Alexander was killed by a monkey, the Greeks were called upon to decide between Constantine and Venizelos. Their choice was ruinous to their country. No greater evil can befall a nation than to choose for its ruler a stubborn man with no common sense. Before the advent of Constantine, Greece, with no aid and little countenance from the Powers, was able to hold the forces of Mustapha Kemal easily at bay and even to drive him back into the fastnesses of Anatolia. In encounter after encounter the Greek army, led by men chosen for their military gifts and sufficiently well equipped, inflicted defeat after defeat on the armies of Angora. But with Constantine came a change. In the Greek army, courtiers were substituted for soldiers in the high command. French, British and Italian public opinion, with the memory of Constantine's treachery during the war still fresh in their minds, altered their attitude towards the Greeks who had elevated him to the throne in defiance of Allied sentiment. Indifferent Powers became hostile; hostile Powers became active. The final catastrophe began with the heroic but foolish march of the Greek army into the defiles of Asia Minor, followed by the inevitable retreat. It was consummated when Constantine for dynastic reasons appointed to the command of the troops in Asia Minor a crazy general whose mental condition had been under medical review. The Greeks fight valiantly when well led, but like the French, once they know they are not well led, confidence goes, and with confidence courage. Before the Kemalist attack reached their lines the Greek army was beaten and in full retreat. With attack came panic, with panic the complete destruction of what was once a fine army. With the disappearance of that army vanished the last hope for the salvation of Anatolia. That the history of the East, and probably the West, should have been changed by the bite of a monkey is just another grimace of the comic spirit which bursts now and again into the pages of every great tragedy.
All that could be done afterwards was to save the remnants of a great policy. Western civilisation put up its last fight against the return of savagery into Europe, when in September and October of last year British soldiers and sailors, deserted by allies and associates alike, saved Constantinople from hideous carnage. The Pact of Mudania was not Sèvres, but it certainly was better than Lausanne. From Sèvres to Mudania was a retreat. From Mudania to Lausanne is a rout.
What next? Lausanne is not a terminus, it is only a milestone. Where is the next? No one claims that this Treaty is peace with honour. It is not even peace. If one were dealing with a regenerated Turk, there might be hope. But the burning of Smyrna, and the cold-blooded murders of tens of thousands of young Greeks in the interior, prove that the Turk is still unchanged. To quote again from the correspondent of The Times at Lausanne:—
"All such evidence as can be obtained here confirms the belief that the new Turk is but the old, and that the coming era of enlightenment and brotherly love in Turkey, for which it is the correct thing officially to hope, will be from the foreigners' point of view at best a humiliating, and at worst a bloody, chaos."
The amazing legend that the Turk is a gentleman is dying hard. That legend has saved him many a time when he was on the brink of destruction. It came to his aid in October last when the policy of this country was changed by the revolt of the Turcophile against the Coalition. The Turk has massacred hundreds of thousands of Armenians, and dishonoured myriads of Christian women who trusted to his protection. Nevertheless the Turk is a gentleman! By his indolence, his shiftiness, his stupidity, and his wantonness, he has reduced a garden to a desert. What better proof can there be that he is a real gentleman? For a German bribe he sold the friends who had repeatedly saved his wretched life. All the same, what a gentleman he is! He treated British prisoners with a barbarous neglect that killed them off in hundreds. Still, he is such a gentleman! He plunders, he slays, and outrages those who are unable to defend themselves. He misgoverns, cheats, lies, and betrays. For all that, the Turk is a gentleman! So an agitation was engineered with perverse tenacity to save this fine old Oriental gentleman from the plebeian hands that sought his destruction. Hence the black Treaty of Lausanne.
London, July 25th, 1923