THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE 27 complaint. In other words, the Arabs have to be “ nursed" lest they should stab the Army in the back. The Arab, quick as he is to gauge a situation, tries to make the most of it. He screams as often as he can and blackmails as often as he can. The first scream was heard when your Declaration was announced. Al! sorts of misinterpretations and misconceptions were put on the declaration. The English, they said, are going to hand over the poor Arabs to the wealthy Jews, who are all waiting in the wake of General Alienby’s army, ready to swoop down like vultures on an easy prey and to oust everybody from the land. . . . A t the head of the Administration we see enlightened and honest English officials, but the rest of the administrative machinery is left intact, and all the offices are filled with Arab and Syrian employees. . . . We see these officials, corrupt, inefficient, regretting the good old times when baksheesh was the only means by which matters administrative could be settled. . . . The fairer the English regime tries to be, the more arrogant the Arab becomes. It must also be taken into consideration that the Arab official knows the language, habits and ways of the country [which isn’t perhaps so unusual, since he is o f the country, which is Arab after all: note how Weizmann makes it seem that the Arabs possess an unfair advantage by simply being there], is a rou£ and therefore has a great advantage over the fair and clean-minded English official, who is not conversant with the subtleties of the Oriental mind. So the English are "run" by the Arabs. The administration in this form is distinctly hostile to Jews . . . the Englishman at the head of affairs is fair and just, and in trying to regulate the relations between the two chief sections of the community [Arabs and Jews: to call them “ ch ief’ more or less equally is something of an exaggeration, yet Weizmann does it anyway] he is meticulously careful to hold the balance. But his only guide in this difficult situation is the democratic principle, which reckons with the relative numerical strength, and the brutal numbers operate against us, for there arc five Arabs to one Jew-, . . . The present state of affairs would necessarily lend towards the creation of an Arab Palestine, if there were an Arab people in Palestine [here Weizmann uses criteria for “ pcoplehood" especially designed in the nineteenth ccntury to