BRITAIN FACING ARAB RISING (8/14/38)

The grisly story of bombings, assassinations and terror in the Holy Land shows no sign of coming to an end. In its length and its violence it begins to resemble the equally tragic story of Ireland between the Phoenix Park murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish in 1882 and the signature of the treaty with the Free State in 1921. And there are historically minded realists in London and Jerusalem who fear that it may take something like thirty-nine years to bring real peace to Palestine.

But the British Government is in no mood to wait so long, although it has done plenty of procrastinating in the last ten years. It knows that continued unrest in Palestine will have continuous repercussions upon British strategy and diplomacy throughout the Near East and even in Europe, where the Fascist powers watch for any weakness in Britain’s imperial armor.

It was characteristic of Mr. MacDonald, who is sensible in everything he does, to see Palestine for himself, even for two days. But it was a sad commentary on the condition of Palestine that the British Colonial Secretary should have to steal in as secretly as if he were a spy and steal out again with equal secrecy for fear of being assassinated. Of course there are conservatives of the older school who shrug their shoulders and say that a good dose of martial law could put an end to the troubles in Palestine. But others who have served in the East know that the Palestine problem is more intricate and more dangerous than, for example , the outbreak of religious rioting in Burma that caused more violent deaths in the city of Rangoon last week than has happened in the whole of Palestine.

For Palestine has become the storm center of the Arab nationalist movement that is stirring the Islamic world from the Western Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea. The Moslem States to the east are watching events in Palestine with displeasure that may at any moment be fanned into something worse with the help of Italian, German – and curiously, Russian Communist – championing of the Arab cause.

Only this week ecclesiastical authorities in Baghdad declared that a “holy war” of money, if not of men, would be justified to help the Arabs in Palestine. King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia was reported this week to have asked the British for the port of Akaba, at the southern-most tip of Trans-Jordan, presumably as his price for not making new trouble for the British in Palestine.

The British are beginning to realize that the struggle in Palestine is not just a conflict between Arab and Jew but an uprising of Arab nationalism directed against themselves.

In these circumstances the British are deriving more comfort from the presence of a powerful “good neighbor” to the north that dislikes even more than Britain the prospect of an Arab confederation. This is Turkey, with which Britain has just concluded a virtual military alliance at the cost of an $8,000,000 loan for armaments.

The Turkey of Kemal Ataturk long ago abandoned the pre-war Ottoman policy of promoting pan-Islamism and meddling in Arab or Indian politics to the detriment of British interests.

By one of the strangest twists of modern history Turkey now forms not only a powerful rampart against German expansion toward the Dardanelles but also against the possible creation of a formidable Arab confederation along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.

It is to Turkey’s interest nowadays to live in peace and friendship with all her neighbors, but it is also to Turkish interest not to allow Arab nationalism to take a menacing form in Palestine and near-by lands.

For the moment there appears to be little that Mr. MacDonald or the British Government can do except to strengthen the forces of law and order in Palestine on the one hand and appeal for good sense and moderation from both Jews and Arabs.

Sir John Woodhead’s commission, which has been investigating the practicability of a partition plan, is due to return to England next week and will hold a number of hearings before beginning to prepare its report.

Until then the British Government can make no change in its general policy toward Palestine, for it is committed in principle to partition and must await the Woodhead commission’s advice before deciding whether to go ahead with partition or try something else.

Mr. MacDonald’s broadcast on the night following his return seemed to indicate that he had discovered no new and more satisfactory policy than this. He merely backed it by a belief in Providence.

“The British Government,” said Mr. MacDonald, “will administer its trust on the basis of justice between the Jews, who are building at long last their national home, and the Arabs, whose title in the land of their birth is indisputable.

“Sometimes man’s powers of conciliation and creation appear puny. They seem easily overthrown by that violence and hate which he can also let loose. But there is a spirit that broods over Palestine and with God’s help peace will be restored in the Holy Land.”

One of the excessively rare 1933 pennies is in the mint’s museum, one is in the British Museum, one is in the cornerstone of the new London University and the fourth, unless some lucky collector has spotted it, is presumably somewhere in circulation.

Thus far holiday spirits have been in the ascendant over the mesmerizing influence of that August of twenty-four years ago which set all Europe aflame; at English seaside resorts, in quiet villages in Brittanny and on grouse moors in Scotland, Britons in thousands and hundreds of thousands are enjoying the holidays to which they have looked forward ever since Winter.

For the Englishman ceases to be a typical Englishman if he does not take his holidays now. The King and Queen, following the example of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, have gone into seclusion at Balmoral. It would take a revolution to compel Parliament to go on sitting in “the stifling heat of August” – which in Washington would seem like a balmy Spring.

The wheels of government have virtually ceased turning, with most members of the Cabinet and the government employes – almost everybody, in fact, who matters in government or business – getting away from it all. More than 2,000,000 less prominent Britons this year are enjoying vacations with pay for the first time, and despite a widespread campaign for “staggered holidays” they too waited until now.

England’s longer school year leaves mothers and fathers less option on when to take a vacation than those of the United States. But it is probable that a majority of the people on this side of the Atlantic would prefer to take their holiday in August anyway. The harvest season and the fact that it is the last chance to get out in the open before cool weather sets in affect them.

But these two phenomena have a less peaceful aspect, for the war chiefs of the nations look upon them in terms of the manoeuvreability of armies and the adding of the last blade of wheat to food reserves before trouble starts – or before starting any trouble.

As a result, although there has been glorious weather and the number of Britons enjoying it has been greater than ever, the tension has affected even holiday plans. Despite overcrowded conditions not only in England but in France, where hundreds of thousands of workers also are now getting their first holidays with pay, few have ventured farther into the interior of Europe.

And not only has Mr. Chamberlain curtailed his fishing trip to return to London to attend to his own ailments and those of Europe, but members of the Cabinet and important civil servants are keeping in touch with Downing Street in the event of an emergency.

This August is the most critical since that of 1931, when the British seemed to be stumbling into bankruptcy under the load of unemployment relief.

If Britain could bring itself to believe that the present crisis would end as satisfactorily as that of 1931 there would be little ground for complaint. But in recent years August has had a more sinister record. It was in August, 1936, that foreign intervention in Spain first threatened to precipitate an international crisis. It was last August when the Japanese got fully embarked on the Chinese “incident.” And word got around to every capital of Europe a few weeks ago that this August would repeat the tragedy of 1914.

Aug. 4, the anniversary of Britain’s entry into the World War, passed off without a conflagration, and then it was whispered: “It is coming on the fifteenth.” The fifteenth is almost here and the ominous date is being moved back; maybe it is September that must be feared, after all.

None the less, it is not very comforting thoughts that accompany the plain man in his quiet stay in the country or at the seaside.

So confident are these statements that the outsider is inclined to wonder whether there has not been considerable exaggeration of losses among Spaniards themselves during this struggle. Such exaggeration would not be surprising in the circumstances.

The government now claims it has 600,000 men under arms, while General Francisco Franco is said to command 540,000, excluding that unspecified number of Italians and Germans who have “volunteered” for service in Spain.

These figures may be relatively exact. To his forces General Franco has sought to add strength by new importations of Moors and by calling up this week young men of the 1920 class – 18-year-old youths.

About Spanish casualties on both sides in actual fighting no statistics have ever been published, but all accounts seem to show that they have been proportionately much higher among Moors, foreign volunteers and foreign mercenaries who have been used as shock troops on both sides than among Spaniards themselves.

Another feature of this war is that all returned travelers from both sides report that towns are still filled with young men of military age who have one way or another managed to avoid military service. These and some other features of this war detract undoubtedly in some measure from the grim picture that has taken hold of the public imagination in most other countries of the two sides in Spain locked in a kind of death grapple and absorbed in a consuming passion for victory for the causes they espouse.

Recent observers have, indeed, recorded that in their estimate more than 60 per cent of the Spanish people are utterly indifferent to the great issues that are supposed to be involved and take sides only when the war happens to force its way into their own backyard.

Within both armies too, there are smoldering rivalries and hatreds almost as passionate as those which divide the armies. It is claimed on the government side that the differences between Communists, anarchists and bourgeois republicans have been sunk in the danger from a common enemy. Certainly recently there has been more homogeneity in the republican army than at the beginning. Perhaps the reason is to be found more in the Spanish temperament than in any real agreement.

The whole history of the war has shown that when they had to fight, the Spaniards were willing enough to fight and to fight well. But their war is not like the World War with the constant clash of arms across an extended battlefront. It belongs to a former period of history with its sudden explosions in different places and long intervals of quiet.

On the Rebel side recent accounts show that military success and the conquest of a few more miles of territory have tended toward disunion rather than union in the ranks.

Rene Johannet, correspondent of the conservative French newspaper Epoque, recently described how, as a company of Phalangists marched past, some Requetes declared that it looked more like a parade of prisoners after the capture of Santander than of real Nationalist soldiers. Half of them, they said, were only camouflaged “Reds.”

This lack of cohesion in the Insurgent army probably has had more to do with its failure to exploit completely its recent military successes than has resistance by government troops. In it may lie, too, the reason for General Franco’s delay in accepting the withdrawal of foreign “volunteers.” Without them and the Moors it might happen that his army would have less initiative in attack and the war would simmer down to what might be described as the normal Spanish tempo, with even more infrequent outbursts of energy.

This is extended news from the Sunday magazine, News of the Week In Review

Other stories included on this thread are:

“Some British Pennies Rate High in Value” (I’m thinking about taking my jack hammer to the University of London some dark night.)

“British are Uneasy Even on Vacations” (Because of war scare.)

“Two Sides in Spain Same in Manpower”

2 posted on 08/14/2008 6:00:36 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson (For events that occurred in 1938, real time is 1938, not 2008.)

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