THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEW SPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 172 No. 5137

LONDON OCTOBER 22nd, 1938

SIXPENCE

IN T H IS I S S U E

M R . CHAMBERLAIN’S CRITICS

Editoriai

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF POLAND

An Analysis by a Centra! European Correspondent

THE PARTITION ISSUE IN IRELAND

By Our Dublin Correspondent

M. DALADIER’S OPPORTUNITY

By Lucien Corpechot

THE ENGLISH FARMER SPEAKS

By Reginald Jebb Full List o f Contents on page 516.

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK Military Law in Palestine

One of the weaknesses of recent months in Palestine has been the division of authority between the civil and military. Now the military are being put, more and more completely, in charge. The Near East is a p a r t of the world in which it is not only necessary to be strong, but also to seem strong, and Great Britain has been feeling the backwash o f the events in Europe. I t can be plausibly represented to the Arabs th a t we have wanted to stop, and have not been able to stop, the Italians in Abyssinia, and the Germans in Bohemia. The moral is drawn th a t we can be successfully opposed in Palestine. I t is in the long run probably true that Arab hostility, especially i f it were supported from outside, would constitute an unending drain on our resources till, from the point o f view of the security of th e Canal, to hold down Palestine would be recognized as not helping, but endangering th a t task. We have to recognize that the A rab war rests on a feeling th a t for th e Arabs it is now or never, th a t if Partition is allowed to go through and Arabs lose all standing in the new Jewish State in Palestine, little by little the Jews will spread beyond their own boundaries.

expect Jewish presence. The immediate task o f the British is first to establish, as the military are doing, the authority o f the Government, and then to seek a settlement which will allay these A rab fears, which will salvage for the Jews what can be saved from the wreck o f over-sanguine hopes. In effect, the Jewish growth will have to be slow and Palestine cannot be thought of as solving the problem of the Jewish refugees. Fortunately for the Jews, the United States, France and Britain, the three countries which have been expressing themselves so emphatically against Nazi policy, all possess either enormous territory or numerous colonies, and unless they want to be convicted of an unpleasant hypocrisy they must find asylum for the refugees. The essence of the matter is th a t the Jews must not be too numerous in any one place. They must be spread out thinly or their presence will slowly but inevitably create anti-Semitic movements. Provided this is remembered, the three countries mentioned offer every choice. Changes at the Quai D’Orsay

A much more hopeful line than the Partition proposals is th a t advocated by a Jewish writer, who was for long an important official in Palestine, Mr. Norman Bentwich, who suggests th a t Palestine should become part o f a much vaster Arab federation, and that inside that larger unit the Jews could then be a great part o f Palestine itself. I t must be always borne in mind that there is not, fortunately, among the Arabs, any sort o f idea that the Jews must be driven out. What the Arabs are determined not to suffer is Jewish overlordship. They

This is a time for political spring-cleaning in Paris. I t is recognized that modern Parliamentary ministers, particularly under the French system o f short-lived ministries, and of reshuffling of posts inside those ministries, are not the masters o f their departments so much as the spokesmen. It is not merely politicians but the permanent officials who carry the responsibility for the admitted cumulative errors of the last few years in particular. I t is accordingly a matter of the first importance that the French Foreign Office is being reformed within, and th a t some key changes are being