It is useless to deny the fact that England is not nearly so popular in the Near East as she was thirty or forty years ago. The Egyptians have shown us pretty clearly that they have no love for us, while it is very evident that the Arab kingdoms have ambitions of their own in those regions, which might prove a very grave menace to our eastern communications. Naturally, Turkey—or what is left of that once great Empire—realises that it is to England that she owes her downfall, while the policy of Greece, at the moment at all events, also runs counter to our own.
It is very necessary, therefore, that Palestine should be colonised by a people whose interests will go hand in hand with those of England and who will readily grasp at union with the British Empire.
The Jews are the only people who fulfil these conditions. They have ever looked upon Palestine as their natural heritage, and although they were ruthlessly torn from it some two thousand years ago, yet through all the terrible years of their exile they have never lost the imperishable hope of a return to the Land of Promise. They have always had a friendly feeling for this country, and if England now deals justly with Israel, this friendly feeling will be increased tenfold. They would be quite unable to stand alone in Palestine for some time, and therefore their one aim and object would be to co-operate wholeheartedly with the Power that had not only reinstated them in their own land, but whose strong arm was adequate to protect them from the encroachments and aggressions of neighbouring states.
It will undoubtedly be their policy to walk hand in hand with England. British and Jewish interests are so similar and so interwoven that they fit into each other as the hand does the glove.
In short, when the long-expected Restoration of the Jewish people to the Promised Land becomes an accomplished fact, then the vital interests of the British Empire in those regions will be unassailable.
CHAPTER XX.
Hospital Scandal at Jerusalem.