The difficulties of the telephone service in a polyglot town may be suggested by this caricature from the “Weekly.”
“Our office boy has just repeated to us the kind of conversation he hears when our telephone bell happens to ring. ‘Hello; that The Palestine Weekly?—Bukra subeh? Tayeb!—Ken, gevereth, ani rotzeh—Hello! Exchange! Exchange! I say, miss—aywa, aywa—buzz—aywa—Have you got them yet?—Have I the—Je vous prie, mademoiselle, tachez—shalom, mayesh == Righto, kiddie, but I don’t leave till five—La, la, moush awez. Enta—alors, monsieur, demain matin, mais vous savez bien que—Oh, ring off, Please! I’m not asking for—m’a salaami—Finished yet?—I say miss, do give them another—Sapristi, mais cet instrument—Y’allah—What the—click!’
“At present we find it quicker and more private to send a postcard.”
Palestine is like a sealed museum of historical lore. In the hills are stored many antiquities. It is hoped that systematic excavation will bring many of them to the surface. The Palestine Exploration Fund of London, England, is the veteran society for digging and publishing the many treasures still lying beneath the soil of the Holy Land. British and American supporters have in spite of their small number made a brave and continuous effort to gather the archæological materials which will illuminate the Bible.
The Quarterly periodical of the Fund and its annual volume keep subscribers informed of the discoveries and discussions. Since 1900, The American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem has endeavored to make the most of opportunities to explore, study and teach the interesting data for biblical and Semitic research. It has experts in residence at Jerusalem and offers a fellowship to graduate students. It needs a budget of from twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars to make the best use of its rare opportunity to advance religious and scientific research. The new government has taken the matter of antiquities in hand in a way which will probably insure a better treatment of those who conduct research and a better disposition of the treasures as they are unearthed.
The test offered the new order by neighboring Arabia and the Arabs will be a critical one. Let us take a quick survey of this field of interest and consider some of those conditions past and present which make the Arab.
Arabia, the great south-central part of which is unknown to civilized man, is an immense peninsula hanging between the mass of the Asian continent and Africa, two spheres which have been greatly influenced by the forces issuing from the land of the Arab. The huge rectangular mass of sand and rock and tropical coasts, larger than India, slants easterly and south from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and is bounded on the sides by the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The country has never been easily accessible to any but Arabs and it is even now a question how much of the inland territory is easily traversible by them. The desert region of North Arabia receives some rain, after which a succulent growth appears which lasts but a short time, say from a few weeks to a few months. This is probably true of some other less well known parts of Arabia. We know that oases exist, where palm-trees, wells and a settled population contrast with life on the freer steppe-land.
Broadly speaking, the people fall into two great groups, the Northern and Southern Arabs whose struggles through the centuries are based upon the two incompatibles, rapid increase and scanty sustenance. The pastures and springs do not suffice for them all. Certain tribes pay chief attention to camel breeding, others to sheep and goats, others who live near the agricultural lands even go so far as to strike bargains with the peasants to protect the crops which the latter have prepared. Certain tribes are in the transport business, using camels as carriers. Still others, not so highly regarded, are skilled in the cruder work in metal and leather, as smiths and tanners. Of all these, the camel-breeding Arab is considered the type of the true sons of the desert.
Petty war (raiding) is the ideal occupation of the best young manhood of the desert. This follows upon the mode of nomadic life. The property of a bedawy tribe is all movable and with subsistence too scanty for growing populations the nomads crowd upon each other insistently for the use of the springs and pastures. In the springtime of a good year there may be enough for all, but for most of the year the supplies of food would not go around if the population grew unchecked. No such multiplication of resources is possible as in agricultural and manufacturing countries. The produce of the herds and flocks, milk, butter, cheese, hair, and wool and a few simple fabrics made from them are used by the tribes or exchanged for the products of the oases and the towns, dates, grain, implements, ammunition, cloth and garments.
The basis of family prosperity is found in those qualities of a vigorous stock which insure success in war and the accumulation of wealth. To have many sons is, therefore, an ideal and to have them leagued together in the interest of family strength is in some degree a necessity. The simple government required is exercised by the patriarch of the family. Such a strong, growing family will be joined by other families in self-defence and will rapidly develop into a strong tribe if no untoward accident befalls it. These different families are only theoretically of one blood, though by marriage the original differences may be minimized. They are known by some common tribal name and brand their camels with a common tribal mark, or “wasm.” Their greatest need, practically their religion, is the existence for which they strive. A kind of morale ensues which is the tribal convention. According to it the women have their work, often very hard, the men their duties of brotherhood, raid and revenge. Even the children have their sphere into which they fit according to sex and into which the stranger may not come at all except by the fiction of relationship. It will be readily seen that, in a land of wastes where groups only can exist and no mere individual, to be excluded by the judgment of the tribe from its membership would mean death. Such outlawing is the ultimate treatment of the serious offender. Patriotism is that higher form of self-interest which makes an Arab the devotee of his tribe’s welfare. The successes, failures, quarrels and fate of the tribe are his own. The results of the raid, whether gain or loss, are shared.