PALESTINE: Go Drink Whiskey!

Tense with anxiety, the 209,000,000 people of the Mohammedan world, only 30,000,000 of whom are citizens of states ruled by Mohammedans, followed day by day last week the violent efforts of Palestine's Christian rulers to break Arab resistance to their scheme of carving up the Holy Land into three parts: a Jewish state and an Arab state divided by a British corridor (TIME, July 12 et seq.).

Unable were the Christian authorities recently to prevent the escape from British-mandated Palestine to French-mandated Syria of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, spiritual leader of 800,000 Arabs. Last week they got back at him by seizing the Moslem Religious Funds (the chief Moslem charitable and religious organization in Palestine), hitherto under the Grand Mufti's control. This organization has been carrying on charitable work to the value of $1,000,000 per year. When the Christians placed these funds under the direction of a board consisting of two Christians and one Mohammedan, all Islam felt a sense of outrage and all over Palestine irate Arab groups leaped into action.

Typically, several Arabs, choosing a moment when guards of the Christian Lydda Airport had relaxed their patrol and were resting in a watchman's hut, set fires which caused airport buildings and equipment to burn last week for a loss of $100,000. Next, the police station at Daharieh, between Hebron and Beersheba, was overwhelmed by Arabs who made off with the Christian policemen's arms, shouting: "Tell your English bosses to go drink whiskey and play football! They should not think they can fight us. We will drive them out of Palestine!"

Before dawn next morning strange Christian soldiers wearing skirts, newly arrived from the United Kingdom, speaking with a thick burr and known as the Black Watch, surrounded Daharieh, ostentatiously showing their weapons. Emboldened by the Black Watch's presence, the disarmed Christian police demanded that the Moslem villagers restore their arms, roughly ordered Moslem women to aid them in searching cellars. Having found no weapons, the Christians set charges of dynamite under the houses of three prominent Arab residents who remained helpless while their homes and goods were blown to smithereens. Finally the Christians, after sending their patrol to mark other Arab homes, announced: "We are prepared to spare one house for each rifle returned."

No rifles had been returned at latest dispatches, and Christians were blowing up still more Moslem homes in reprisal for the burning of the airport. The Mohammedan world, familiar with the methods of a Christian whom they called "The Strongman of Bengal" when he was police commissioner of Calcutta, was incensed to learn that Strongman Sir Charles Augustus Tegart is being sent to Palestine. Next they learned that in Daharieh the Christians, not satisfied with dynamiting houses in reprisal for the capture of a few rifles, had levied a collective fine of $10,000 on the whole village. Since the Moslem villagers were too poor to pay, their sheep, cattle and movable household goods to a value of $10,000 by Christian estimates were to be seized by the skirt-wearing Black Watch and carried off to the braying of bagpipes.