PALESTINE: Vengeance Into Murder

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Warburg on Cooperation. First of world-renowned Jews to propose a constructive program for dealing with the Palestine situation was Manhattan's wealthy Felix Warburg, international banker (Kuhn, Loeb & Co.) who was in London when the killings started but returned home last week on the Homeric.

The thing to be done in Palestine, ac cording to Banker Warburg, is to start "small joint committees" of Arabs and Jews locally "working for better roads, better schools, for better technical education, for better civil service training." Only by such local work, he believes, can a basis of co-operation be built up between the Zionist and Arab executives and with the British mandate government. "Eventually," said Banker Warburg, "through recommendations by such joint committees better understanding, more ample co-operation and greater watchfulness against vicious agitation will be brought about."

Eye Witnesses. Lurid were the tales told last week by U.S. citizens who escaped the massacre at Hebron where eight U. S. Jews were killed by Arabs (TIME, Sept. 2). Typical was the account given by David E. Winchester of Chicago, who reached Palestine only eleven weeks ago for post-graduate work at the Talmudic school in Hebron. "When the trouble started a friendly Arab hid me in the building where he was living," said Student Winchester. "When a marauding party entered, the friendly Arab said there were no Jews there. But they searched the building and found me. An Arab with a knife advanced toward me as the door was flung open. I prayed for mercy. Almighty God came to my rescue and gave me strength.

"We struggled and I grabbed the knife and wrested it from the Arab. Only the Almighty could have given me the strength. Another Arab, however, felled me with a long piece of iron. All around was a tremendous sound. I did not lose consciousness and could feel the cold blades of knives cut into my flesh as I lay there stunned and defenseless. They left me for dead. . . ."

"Lead On!" Jewish campaigners for the Palestine emergency relief fund staged rallies throughout the U. S., last week, whooped up Arab atrocity stories, collected cash which reached a total of $607,718. Among non-Jewish orators who warmed up such gatherings, Manhattan's jaunty, obliging Roman Catholic Mayor James ("Jimmy") Walker was well nigh without a peer. Clapping on a Hebrew skullcap he cried to 2,000 Jews in Brooklyn: "Lead on! Whether to Palestine or elsewhere, we will follow and see that never again shall the hand of the persecutor be laid on you in any other land!"