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cence teeta peramenenmene, ee APRIL 14, 1947 31 « Books in Review € OVA | ii HMA ELIE HENUIOR Sins of the Fathers !; Palestine: Black, White and Gray N A WORLD of violent and impas- I sioned controversies there is no issue more packed with emotional dynamite ot more capable of evoking an instinc- sively sympathetic response from gen- 2rous spirits than the matter of a home- land in Palestine for the small number of European Jews who escaped the Nazi “holocaust. In terms of decent human feeling the case seems plain. ‘The tragic survivors of the Hitler terror are doomed exiles in Europe, and Palestine looms as the country of their dreams. Further- more, it was promised to them by the famous Balfour Declaration. -But divorced of emotion, the Pales- tine issue is perhaps not so open and shut. The Arabs, one recalls, are a large ~ majority in the country and have been there for centuries. Is it proper demo- cratic procedure to force them into a minority and turn their country over to foreigners. without their consent? It is true that the Jews would bring un- heard-of material progress to Palestine, but wasn’t this what Mussolini said about the Italian occupation of Ethiopia? The struggle cf the Jewish underground against the British is often compared to the Sinn Fein revolution in Ireland, but wasn’t the Irish battle for control of their own country and against the domi- nation of ‘the half-alien Anglo-Irish as- cendancy more like the rise of Arab nationalism in Palestine? Why should tiny Palestine and not the vast United States provide a new home for the refu- gees from Europe? Would not the estab- lishment of a Jewish nation merely make for additional anti-Semitism ? To one who, like this reviewer, has long been deeply disturbed by the con- flict between the emotional appeal of the case for a Jewish national state and the less moving but persuasive claim of the Arabs to the country, the almost simulta- neous publication of the English Rich- ard Crossman’s Palestine Mission (Hat- pet’s, $2.75) and the American: Bartley C. Crum’s Behind the Silken Curtain (Simon and Schuster, $3) is most wel- come. As prominent and influential lib- erals and members of the Anglo-Ameri- can Committee of Inquiry Regarding the Problems of European Jewry and Pales- tine, appointed by Truman and Attlee Jate in 1945, the two men—+the former a Labor MP favorably known for his skepticism about his party’s foreign pol- icy, and the latter an independent ‘Re- publican Catholi¢ who has” supported ° both Roosevelt and the Spanish Loyal- ists—were in an excellent position to observe, to understand and to interpret their findings for us. H AVING served on the same commit-” tee, the authors naturally cover much of the same ground and supple- ment each other. In many ways they have a lot in common. They are of the same generation; they are equally independ- ent and progressive in their thinking; they are apparently of a similar kind of sanguine temperament; and they at times stood alone against the rest of the com- mittee. It is apparent that they have considerable respect for each other and, after reading their books, one feels that the respect is entirely justified and that Crossman and Crum were excellent choices for a difficult, important and thankless job. Yet, while they have so much in common and reached many of the same conclusions, their reports are strikingly different in method and man- ner, and I must confess that I found the Englishman’s book the more interesting and valuable. ’ Te however, is an entirely per- onal matter. Having, as ‘Ihave said, somewhat conflicting emotions about Palestine, I.found Crossman’s question- “ig more persuasive than’ Crum’s certain- ties. From the beginning the American seems to have had few doubts. He tends to see things in terms of British duplic- ity and Arab guile. The issue is com- fortingly black and white, and any op- position to the Jewish case is dismissed with considerable scorn. Behind the Silken Curtain is a vigorous and out- spoken presentation of the Jewish case and it has a short way with dissentets. The Englishman, on the other hand, gives the impression of being less cock- sure and superficial. He sees fewer vil- . lains than the American and more hon- est differences of opinion. You feel that his investigations in Palestine and among the tragic refugee camps of Europe were made, not to justify a position already held, but in an honest effort to reach a thoughtful and intelligent solution of a complex problem. The only time The New Palestine