1936-11-12 — Page 18

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THE HONGKONG Te legraph, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1996.

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METRICK. At the Kowloon Hase pital on Novetaber 11th, 1936, to Mr. and Mrs. H. W. Merrick,

nsor.

The

Hongkong Telegraph.

Timsday, November 12, 1936.

by

ARAB STRIKE that

FAILED

A. L. Easterman

M

ANY must wonder how It has been possible to carry on a strike on a nationwide scule as the Arabs have done for six months. There appeared a picture of one million people enduring a great martyrdom 10 right economic wrongs, suffering the privations of worklessness in the hope of remedying inequalities of living.

Thie picture was completely wrong in conception and design. The Palestine Arab strike has been no strike at all as the Western world understands such a move- ment.

In Palestine the strike has been purely political, having ita roots and Its purpose in the sanie super- charged untionalism which 15 rapidly setting Europe by the ears; its methods have been those of the kunmen of Mussolini und Hitler.

܀

The Palestine Arabs are a poor primitive race, scratching for a Hving on the surface of the soil with a hook at the end of a long pole drawn by a camel and n donkey.

For centuries they endured the ruthless overlordship of the Turks, who cared nothing for their sub-

OLD STATESMEN AND Jects welfare and allowed their

THE NEW

The query must have arisen in the minds of many observers of present-day events whether the political leaders of the past, had they been alive to-day, would be more successful in handling inter- national affairs than the statesmen now in charge of national destinies in Europe. So far na Britain is concerned, the veteran Liberal, Lord Craigmyle, has given expres- sion to the view that if the nation had at its head to-day a man of the type of Campbell-Bannerman, whose centenary has just been observed, perplexities would be fewer and solutions speedier and. more effective. It is, of course, the way of veterans to glorify the past at the expense of the present, but speculation of the type in- dulged in by Lord Craigmyle would appear to lead nowhere. If the statesmen of the past are to be compared with those of the present, it is only fair that due allowance should be made for the immensely changed conditions. The whole scale and tempo of life have altered, and those who seek the guide the wheel of destiny are as often as not broken upon it.

land to slide into the slough of desolation,

the Always

poverty-stricken "fellah," the peasant, has been at the mercy of the moneylending "Efendi," the well-dressed. half- Europeanlsed "upper class," regu- Inrly swooping down to foreclose on an unpaid mortgage over the bor- rowers' strip of land; or the urban Arab serving the same effendi for a few plastres # enough for a meagre existence.

If the six months' strike had been a planned uprising of the Arab against the iniquity of his servitude, it would have been understandable and praiseworthy.

week, barely

Far from being a movement from below, the strike was fomented from above with a purpose which did not contemplate an improve- ment in the lot of the men who work in town or village.

It is signincant that from the commencement there has been no strike organisation of the working Arebs, no Labour leader appeared to voice their grievances against their masters.

The Jews of Palestine have per- fected a complete labour organisa- tion, one of the best in the world. and have attempted repeatedly to

inst the principles of labour reform among the Arabs.

They have Tailed because the Arab politi- cal leaders are unin- terested in 11 economic welfare of their fellows and have 1hwarted every effort to Improve it, Jewish labour is in control in Palestine. Arab Inbour 19 in serfdom.

This sa-cutled strike" has bren merely 14 political demonstration without offering any innovation of a modern kind for the brunfit of the Arad people.

Allied, racially

alın6 hns

with It's nationalist been the

power of religious au- thority and its treasury. Haj Amin el Husseint

Is the leader of the poll- Heal Arabs. He is also Grand Mufu of Jeru- salem, hend of the Moslem Church of Palestine, and in that capacity

wields enormous power and Influence over his sub- Jects.

More than that, he is the sole controller of the religious property, the Waqf, allotted to him by the Palestine 'Government, which he opposes in an economic and violent hostility.

This property comprises great lands estimated at 25,000 acres, buildings, and cash contributions.

No one knows the value of this property or its income, whose dis- tribution is in the Mufti's sole dia- cretion.

Moreover, the Waqt includes a large number of officials under the Murti's complete authority. They are, besides the administrative · staffs and financial beneficiaries, the Muezzins of the Mosques, the teachers in the schools, and the preachers,

in whose influence carrying the behests of the Multi to a highly religious people is enor-

mous.

It is a curiosity of Palestine hig- tory that Maj Amin was appointed to his office by a Jewish High Com- missioner. Sir Herbert Samuel, who, in his zeal for conciliation to- wards the Arabs, reinstated the Mufti after he had been exiled for agitating against the Mandate and for his implication in violence.

Another bizarre feature in that the Moslem Turkish Government

took over the control of the re ligious Waqt and secularised it.

Moslem Iran (Persia) has done the same, and placed its Waqt under the administration of the Ministry of Fublic Instruction.

Because the "strike" has had no roots in labour discontents it. has been largely a fallure and at best has been less than half- hearted. It has affected only the commercial class, the shops and warehouses, and the owners of motor car transport.

Much comment has been made on the curious fact that the rali- ways have continued to run des- pite terrorist activities to dislocate them. This is because the rail- way workers, 95 per cent. of whom are Arabs, refused to down tools.

The only Arab workmen to come out on the strike enll were the Jaffa port workers, whose "strike pay" has been a leaf of bread or so a day.

At Halfa, the great new Paics- tine harbour on the Mediterranean, Arab labour has continued at work, and it is important that at

TYRANNY OF TROUSERS

PHILO

By AN OLD STAGER

clear and simple situations. They Morley's "Life" about the great Mr. up could pointed out that the turn-thoroughly odlous snob and toady,

were

clown pantaloons were satirised oni ▶HILOSOPHERS must often have

the French stage very much as our mused upon the fact that it is

comedians have satirised the hygienic the trifles and not the vastly serious

onion, the piquant kipper, and the affairs of life that excite the most

But inevitable mother-in-law.

in human interest. For more people, it editor of that solemn journal, the the reign of Louis the Sixteenth a As a Home commentator has may be taken for granted, are ine. Tailor and Cutter, who annually cen-polite form of pantaloon came into trigued by Mr. Baldwin's pipe than sors our Royal Academy portraits fashion in France even with the chic pointed out, the giants of the past by his policy.

solely from the sartorial standpoint nobilty. Trousers did not come to Almost the only outstanding thing and periodically rebukes our front this country, however, until the early were faced with comparatively remembered by the majority of bench statesmen for their careless years of lust century. It was that

people who have not read Lord tnd)

Iniloring,

always be stitched across Benu Brummel, who Introduced Gladstone is his collar. Even that to obviate its unhygienic habit of them. conspicuous personality of clasale collecting dust. Moreover, he em-·

These

early monstrosities times, the Emperor Nero, whom phasised the economy of the turn leg-Light

tiffairs, such as we may modem biographers are trying their up, which enabled fayed trouser legs still sec in. the original illustrations best to beautify, is immortal merely to be cheaply and easily repaired. of Churles Dickens's works. Mr. because he played the fiddle..

This elicited a firm protest from a Pickwick, Mr. Mieuwber, and Mr. So much by way of apology for frugal Scot who once found a lost Pecksalt, in fact all the gallery of devoting some earnest attention 10: shiifing in the turn-up of his pants, Boz's men characters, sported fight the subject of trousers, Some little and was still living on in hope of trousers. Gradually fashion made time ago a medical correspondent some day discovering another, or them more voluminous, and it was started a highly diverting contro- even maybe a half crown. But the the great Duke of Wellington who versy about tumed-up trousers. The strongest protest against the anti- first had the notion to keep them doctor alleged that the turn-up style | turn-up came from an Oxford Don down by strapping them under the Is both sartorially unattractive and with healthy foolpath and fieldway boot. hygienically wrong. He at once re strolling habits. He remarked how It is worth noting that, on their colved the enthusiastic support of great would be the scientific depri- first introduction into this country, zealous citizens who probably never vation If turn-ups were abolished trousers aroused the strongest hos- turned a hole over the iniquities of and it was no fonter possible, after tilty amongst the Anglican clergy, Mussolini nor gove more than a country ramble, to revive the plea- and at our older universities. passing thought to the menace of sures of the outing by examining Whether that hostility was founded rampant

Hitlerism.

critically the speclinens of rural It was pointed out to him that the flora and fauna collected during lite sound aesthetic grounds, or was merely sartorial conservation, or excuse for turn-up trousers com- walk.

perhaps moral indignation, is not pletely vanished with the introduc This, of course, knocked right out quite certain. But trousers triumphed, | on of the tarmac road. The turn- of count the economy argument plus as nearly always happens when a up was a Victorian innovation to the stitching-up iden. It was, in my thing is convenient, however repul- ave the farments from being soiled own personal view, a coup de grace sively ugly, and to-day to speak of that no longer to the antis in this brisk campaign, a lady wearing the trousers is to by muddy roads

displayed great deliberation and THERE IS ONLY ONE, solemnity, and were worshipped as demi-gods, at least by 'n section of the community. Hero-worship to-day is reserved for those who do things in the worlds of mechanics and sport; the poor politician gets nothing but abuse. The stales- men of old had their crises to face, their vital decisions to make, but to-day it is crisis-all the time: even in

His their holidays Majesty's Ministers are pursued by duties on which may depend the destiny of the world. The supermen of the past might cut a sorry figure confronted with urgencies and complexities such as these. At any te, they would lose much of the reputation for exist. perspicacity, Inspiration, and The Sent's: Shilling finesse. We must recognise that the colossal kaleidoscope that is the world-politics of to-day makes de- mands on the nations leaders for which there is no semblance ‘of precedent In all history. By com- parison the statesmen of the pro- War era had only kindergarten problems to solve.

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connote a state of domestic sex in- equality in favour of feminism as against the masculine.

Twin Cylinders

| Beau Brummel Began It

But I should like to lift the con- This seemed tolerably conclusive troveray on to a slightly higher and reasoning. Most men had to admit wider pinne. Most people regard that, in so far as they wear turned- trousers as the hail-mark of the male un trousers, they are anachronistic, of the human species. Actually But there is, fortunately for us all, they are as modern as they are invariably another side to every hideous, grave question. On top of these at- A wide form of pantaloon was dignity and comfort. It is quite on the turned-up trousers worn by the baser order of mala arguable that it was the trouser habit came. shoals of vehement protests humanity in Austria so far back as that caused the capitulation of the ngalart doing away with them. The the eighteenth century, and these

(Continued on Page 4.)

tacks

That munkind -has submitted to trousers when I might have achieved the kit says very little for its artis- tie perception or its sense of human

A young Arab leader haranguing his compatriots during the strike.

this port Arab and Jewish labourers worked side by side and good relations continued un- broken despite desperate efforts to destroy them. Arab agricultural workers responded not at all.

Ôn the surface the commercint strike has succeeded-but only on the surface. `Tho Arab food mar- kot

from disappeared

Jorunn- lem, but it was only removed to Bittir, the station for the capital, where it flourished openly. The vendors were those who plied their trade in Jerusalem before the strike. There was even a food market outside Jerusalem station itself, though on a small scale. In the back strecta of the city trade was carried on surreptitiously, food and merchandise being sold from the merchants' houses.

In Haifn the shop strike has been in progress, but I have seen Arabs doing business at half opened side- doors

and

partly opened windows.

As the strike response weak- ened, so there was a resort to terrorism in an effort to secure by violence what the failure of a work stoppage had denied to the politi cal leaders.

But terrorism in Palestine is no new development. It is the result of a long period of agitation and Arms have beer. propaganda. smuggled in systematically on three borders, from the sea, from Byria and from Transjordan and the south.

On the Transjordan frontier. only one hour's Journey from Jerusalem, there has never been an effective control.

There are no police patrols on the Syrian border, while through the Sinal desert and, the south there is free and frequent arms smuggling.

The rank and file of the terrorist

bands are drawn from the peasan- try, the "fellahcen," and this may 悲 contradiction of the appear

statement that the agriculturni

worker has not joined the strike.

Actually, however, the peasant. terrorist continued at his work in the fields during the day and took to his gun by night. Moreover, the fellah has been agilated for years by the assiduous repetition of the ery, "The Jews are coming to kill you."

The fellah is a simple-minded man, and he has been worked up to a real fear of what he belloves is real enemy coming to destroy him. Strange as it may seem, the primitive, easy-going peasant is the backbone of the Palestine terror.

He has been deluded into 'main-- taining anarchy while his more enlightened town brother has re- fused to follow the politicians in bringing economic chaos to this sore tried" Land of Promiso.”

-To-day's Thought- YES, we will do almost any- thing for the poor man, anything but get of his back. TOLSTOY.