the Japanese railway delegation, the special honors shown the Japanese Ambassador, the numerous banquets that celebrated the signing of the Sakhalin agreement, are signs of the sedulous effort that the Soviet Government is making to cultivate the friendship of its Far Eastern neighbor. In Japan itself there are two opinions on this subject. The Foreign Office is exceedingly is exceedingly anxious to maintain close and friendly relations with Russia and to keep out of complications in China; but the Japanese military party wants intervention in China and will back up Chang Tsolin. Officially, the Foreign Office has the upper hand, and Moscow is supporting its programme with the utmost energy and discretion.

Does Russia look forward to using Asia as an ally against Europe? It is an exaggeration to talk about Russia's organizing an anti-European movement covering all Asia. People forget, for example, that the national movement in China has made a long march forward since the Boxer outbreak. There is nothing negative in the Asiatic movement from Angora to Peking; it is not anti-European, but is pro-European in its eagerness to adopt European science and civilization. It is a forward-looking agitation. Personally I think that Moscow is utterly wrong in imagining that the emancipation of Asia will spell the collapse of capitalism in Europe and America. It is quite as likely that the economic uplift that may follow that event will raise the standard of living of the native population and multiply its demand for European wares. If the four hundred million people of China, for example, manage eventually to organize a stable government and to develop the resources of the country along modern lines, China will afford an enormously larger market for Western products than she does at present.

Moreover, Soviet Russia and Asia are not attracted to each other by the similarity of their social and economic theories, but by the identity of their political interests. Communist doctrines can never gain much of a foothold in the latter continent. Moscow has efficient propaganda-universities for students from the Far East, but the number who attend them from outside Russia's boundaries is steadily diminishing. These institutions are rapidly becoming universities for the Asiatic peoples in the Soviet Union. When a foreign graduate goes back to his own country he generally proves a disappointment to his teachers. He quickly picks up the ideas of his fellow countrymen. When the Hindu propagandist returns to India after receiving his degree he soon acquires the religious patina of the native mind and discards many of the doctrines he has been so carefully taught at Moscow. When a Chinese graduate goes back to his country he quickly drops Communism and joins the bourgeois national move

ment.

Last of all, Russia is not destined, as so many imagine, to become a Eurasia. The great potent forces here in Moscow are drawing the country irresistibly to Western Europe. It is from that direction that the nation's real cultural demands and technical necessities must be supplied. One of the chief tasks of European policy should be to break down the sentiment of isolation that still survives in the Soviet Union. The present Government cannot possibly join the League of Nations. It is too distrustful of its Western neighbors. But this does not preclude closer diplomatic intercourse.

An irrepressible conflict between Asia and Europe is a myth. The identification of Russia with Asia is likewise a myth. But the Soviet Government is filled to overflowing with suspicion. It

imagines that dangers threaten it from every side. It distrusts Locarno, it distrusts Geneva. Therefore it turns to Asia for support. Wise statesmanship in Western Europe may change this attitude. But if anything should hap

pen to throw the Soviet Union into the arms of Asia, if an Asiatic Locarno should emerge from the present confusion to balance the European Locarno, then we may have cause for serious

concern.

A VISITOR Who rambles through the picturesque streets and bazaars and beneath the shining city walls of Jerusalem with an intelligent resident may have his pleasure in the romantic beauty of her churches, synagogues, and mosques dampened by too many historical associations. Beginning with stones from the Solomon's Temple built in the wall, the guide will point out survivals of the successive strata that three great religions have deposited here. Jerusalem's handsomest building is the Mosque of Omar, whose massive dome rises over the ancient site of the Temple and rests upon ruins left there in turn by the Romans, the Greeks, the Turks, and the Crusaders. This mosque was begun in the ninth century, but was not completed until the sixteenth century, when Suleiman the Magnificent gave it its present form and bright-tile decorations. And all over Palestine the superimposed ruins of successive civilizations bid the visitor's mind dwell constantly upon the past. Moreover, the life and customs of the people carry him back to ancient times. The Palestine Bedouins, living in goat's-hair tents supported by

1 From Frankfurter Zeitung (Liberal daily), January 14, 16, 30

papyrus-stalks, and migrating from place to place with their herds and families, cross the scene like characters from early Hebrew history. They live as Abraham and Jacob lived, except for their coffee and cigarettes.

To-day one more stratum is being deposited over the superincumbent layers of this ancient formation, and we must confess that it is a stratum that cannot compare in romantic charm with those of older times. No modern settlement, even Beth Hakeren, the new model suburb of Jerusalem, pleases the European eye as do old Jerusalem and the Arab towns that look like stage settings out of Thousand and One Nights. The modern factories around Haifa and Jaffa do not harmonize with the landscape as do the domes of the Mohammedan-prophet tombs we pass by the wayside. The ruins of Crusader castles glowering over the blue Mediterranean are more picturesque than the salt works just below them. The tidy, thrifty Jewish agricultural settlements of the plains are less attractive to the novelty-seeking eye than the old Arab villages clinging to the foothills. And camel caravans interest the stranger more than do the automobiles that dash

through the country in a cloud of dust.

Nevertheless the real interest of a journey to Palestine to-day lies neither in the beauty of her scenery nor in her exotic romance and historical charm, but in the new experiment that is being conducted there. Its aspects may not be as pleasing to the eye, but they are more arresting to the mind. A scientist seeking a field for sociological research can scarcely find elsewhere such a wealth of dynamic phenomena as here.

Palestine is mostly a sterile country, but it is fertile in problems. Since the World War nearly one hundred thousand Jews have settled here, about tripling the original number of that faith, and adding from twelve to fifteen per cent to the total population. This inflow continues steadily at the rate of three or four thousand a month. Such a flood of new arrivals naturally means an economic revolution. But the peculiar feature of this immigration is that people refuse to see its economic aspects because its primary motive is of quite a different order.

Physically Palestine is a sparsely settled land predominantly occupied by Arabs. Since the right of the Arabs to remain there on an equal status with the rest of the population has never been questioned, the possibility of settling a large number of Jews in the country depends upon increasing production so as to furnish occupation and support for the newcomers. No rational Zionist sees Palestine's future in any other light than that of peaceful cooperation between Jews and Arabs. Although this is universally assumed, relations between the two peoples remain as unsettled as ever. It is quite natural that the Arabs of Palestine should dislike to see a great influx of foreigners. They are divided into factions, evincing a greater or less degree of dislike for the Jews, but they are unanimous in opposing the Balfour

Declaration. No matter how much money Arab landowners may make by selling real estate and produce to the Jewish settlers, no matter how much benefit the country may derive from the enterprise and the higher standard of living brought in by the Jews, the sentimental objection to them remains. Added to this is religious hostility, which is possibly stronger among the Christian Arabs than among the Mohammedans.

All sensible Jews know that the Arabs, and particularly those of the educated and upper classes, are unfriendly. They know that it will take a long time to remove this hostility. They know, however, that as the Jew ish population grows larger and its numbers approach those of the Arabs this friction will grow less. For then the Arabs will give up the idea of driving the Jews out entirely, and will reconcile themselves perforce to some modus vivendi.

Undoubtedly many Zionists resent England's policy of holding the scales evenly between Jews and Arabs, instead of favoring the former. Jewish complaints over the allotment of public land and of educational appropriations, where they have received less per capita than the Arabs, may have some justification. But upon the whole the English Government has given the Zionists in Palestine the chance they wanted. It is maintaining peace, building roads, and administering justice fairly and impartially. But England will certainly not underwrite Zionism. Whether Jewish aspirations are realized or not depends entirely on the Jews themselves.

The most hopeful aspect of the racial situation is that for more than four years there have been no armed conflicts between Jews and Arabs. Where the two meet personally in business, as landlord and tenant, as officials and the

public, as patients and physician, as traveling companions, friction rarely occurs. That is primarily because the Arabs are a wise and courteous people who do not display their likes and dislikes in public. But up to the present the two races are living side by side without intermingling. Irritating incidents continue to occur. Last Atonement Day the Arab police took advantage of an old Turkish ordinance to prevent the Jews who were wailing before the Wall of Weeping from placing chairs and benches there. The attitude of the British police chief in the matter was characteristic. When the Jews apaled to him, he either could not or would not modify the old regulation, but he suggested, as a practical way out of the difficulty, that the Jews use as stools the square petroleum cans that abound everywhere and are used for all conceivable purposes; for the law did not forbid that.

New ties are constantly growing up between the two nationalities, however -partly because their propinquity makes this inevitable, and partly because Jews encourage it. The fact that the older Jewish population speaks Arabic, and is Arab in its way of living, is a great help here. Children of Jewish immigrants also pick up Arabic rapidly, and the number of Arabs who speak Hebrew is increasing. Particularly active in this movement for a better understanding are the Jewish labor leaders. To be sure, organized labor in Palestine is extremely nationalist. It opposes the employment of non-Jews in skilled trades, and it insists that Jews who have been in the country more than two years shall speak Hebrew exclusively at trade-union meetings. The only exceptions to this are the small unions belonging to the Moscow International, which stick to Yiddish in order not to loosen their connection with the mother unions in Russia.

The demand that only Jews shall be employed in Jewish enterprises looks anti-Arab, but is by no means entirely so. In the first place, it is designed to prevent the Jews from becoming exclusively an employing class exploiting Arab labor. In the second place, it is based on the theory that the Jews will never again become a great nation until they are distributed in normal proportions in all classes of productive employment, instead of concentrating in one or two vocations. In case of a colony financed by Baron Rothschild of Paris, the Jewish labor leaders insisted that Jews alone should be employed to ditch the malarial swamps, although the philanthropic Baron could not understand why they should want to do work that would ruin the health and cost the lives of so many unacclimated newcomers when there were plenty of Arabs ready to perform it. A third reason why the labor unions will not let seasoned Arabs be employed in Jewish undertakings is that the latter, with their low standard of living, depress wages.

So this policy is not inspired by racial or national hostility. Jewish organized labor in Palestine is classconscious and socialist; and is essentially internationalist in sympathies and convictions. At least its leaders are opposed on principle to racial discrimination. They regard their present demand that only Jewish workers shall be employed as a temporary requirement to meet a particular emergency, and claim that as soon as the Arabs' standard of living has risen and the wages of the two races are equalized such discriminations will automatically disappear. In order to accelerate this process, they are doing all in their power to organize Arab labor; but the only occupation where both races are found in the same unions as yet is the railway service. During my stay in

Palestine last October the first strike of Arab labor occurred. It was called by the bakers and tailors with the object of shortening the working-day, and was successful. The Jewish unions supported the strike.

Palestine's power to absorb a large Jewish immigration depends first and foremost upon agricultural development. But farming does not as yet employ the larger number of newcomers. A majority of these have flocked to the cities and are trying to make their living in the mechanical trades or in business. That is inevitable. Agriculture requires capital and experience, which only a minority of the immigrants possess. Besides, if the country is to support the Jews who are going there in such large numbers, urban industries as well as agriculture must be encouraged. In fact, the success of farming itself depends upon the growth of the town population. It is an error, consequently, for idealists to imagine that the regeneration of the Jewish race in Palestine depends upon every immigrant's becoming a man with a hoe.

Nevertheless, the introduction of scientific farming and the extension of the arable area by drainage and irrigation are not only the most important tasks before the country, but they are the very foundation of the sound national development that Zionism seeks. Nothing but agriculture can change the Jews from a nation of traders into a nation with a normal distribution of its people into all branches of productive labor. The movement to the farm is the corner stone of racial regeneration.

Consequently the young Jews especially insist upon this back-to-theland movement. In spite of every obstacle lack of implements, the strain of acclimatization, and the handicap of unhealthy living-conditions these pioneers, the chaluzim,

are making headway as farmers. The growth of this movement is not limited by lack of willing volunteers, but by lack of capital to buy land and provide the means to work it. Comparatively few ambitious young immigrants have money enough to go into farming. They are obliged to depend at first upon outside loans, and these so far have been far from sufficient for their needs.

As a result, most of the new farmingsettlements are struggling along with inadequate capital. The settlers are working under a great disadvantage from lack of adequate equipment. Consequently excessive physical demands are made upon them, and crops do not always come up to expectations. This has begotten some skepticism as to whether farming in Palestine pays. That question, however, strikes to the very root of the whole Palestine experiment. If it does not pay, then Jewish immigration to that country will be a failure. As yet the colonists are not as a rule self-supporting. But most of them have been on their farms only two or three years, and nearly every one of them is handicapped by poverty.

Palestine has two distinct types of agriculture-one-crop farming, and mixed farming. One-crop farmers raise staple crops, largely for export, such as oranges, wine, almonds, olives, and more recently bananas. Some of them, especially since the remarkably successful orange crops of the last few years, have accumulated property. For the most part they employ Arab labor. The seasonal character of the work and the low wages with which the Arabs are contented keep them from hiring Jews. Probably the cultivation of these staple crops by small Jewish farmers tilling their own land will ultimately increase, but at the present time the latter are engaged