Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine - The World War I ...

98 ZIONISM AND PALESTINE
ours were not due to Zionism, and would have befallen
us under any dispensation. 1
The earliest recognition I received in Europe of the
realities of the British officer's position in Palestine was
from the lips of Mr. Lloyd George. I had first met him
during the Peace Conference, and he was good enough
to invite me to breakfast with him alone at 10 Downing
Street. Greeting me sternly, he remarked that complaints
of me were reaching him from Jews and Arabs
alike. I answered that this was all too probable, imagining
for a moment from his tone that he was leading
up to my resignation. "Well," he said as we sat down,
"If either one side stops complaining—you'll be dismissed."
A principle which should hearten All Ranks
in the Palestine Service for some decades to come.
IV
Car l'impossible, voilà noire tache. NIETZSCHE.
Such then were the phases of the situation and the sentiments
of those therewith concerned during the eight
years from 1918 to 1925.
After the crowded quinquennium of Sir Herbert
Samuel, something of a halt was called in construction.
For three years Lord Plumer sat on Mount Scopus.
Under the shadow of that great name Palestine knew so
1 Zionism had at least united (for the first time in history) Arab
Moslems and Christians, who now opposed a single front to the
Mandatory. During a crisis between the Moslems and Christians
of Syria this dialogue appeared in the Damascus newspaper
al-Maarad :
Christ. "What is the way, Ο Muhammad, to set our two nations,
Syria and Lebanon, in unison?"
Muhammad. "Ask Moses to send them a party of his men."
It is true that since France assumed the Syrian Mandate in
1920 six High Commissioners had until 1939 failed to bring peace
to Syria, or to prevent the thirteen national revolutions that have
taken place.