"Beyond an Incident"

Looking over his dispatches, thumbing through pages of confidential reports from all over Europe and the Near East, Benito Mussolini decided last week that the moment had come for a diplomatic retreat. For the first time since Italy's entry into Addis Ababa, he ordered his Ambassador to Britain, Dino Grandi, to pay a formal visit to Anthony Eden. The proper button was pressed, the Italian Press burgeoned with articles referring to Italy's long friendship for Britain, and II Duce himself received Correspondent Gordon Lennox of the London Daily Telegraph. Said he:

"Not only is an Anglo-Italian rapprochement desirable but it is necessary, and I will do everything in my power to bring it about. ... I do not see why there should be an armaments race in Africa. The garrison in Libya [adjoining Egypt] will not be withdrawn until an entente in the Mediterranean can be brought about, but the whole force will be brought home as soon as the British ships are withdrawn. . . . We are not a people given to rancor."

Stiffly in Britain's Foreign Office, Ambassador Grandi assured Minister Eden that Italy had no intention of raising a black army in Ethiopia, that she considered her colonial aspirations entirely satisfied, that economic interests of Britain and France will be scrupulously protected, BUT Italy's conquest of Ethiopia must be recognized and Sanctions against Italy must be lifted immediately.

Britain was not feeling conciliatory. Publicly in the House of Commons last week Commander Oliver Stillingfleet Locker-Lampson charged Italy not only with fomenting the anti-Jewish, anti-British rioting in Palestine, but with spreading anti-British propaganda in India.

"The position is being carefully watched," Foreign Secretary Eden assured him. Meantime the London Dally Herald had confidently announced that Italian funds for Arab rioters were coming into Palestine through French Syria. Bedouins were promised $15 a day, plus food and loot, for attacks on Palestine Jews. The last payment of which the paper professed knowledge was a lump sum of $25,000. To whom it went the paper did not say, but many British fingers pointed privately to fuzzy-chinned Haj Amin el Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Arab Supreme Council. A sincere Arab patriot, fuzzy Haj Amin has no particular love for Italy but would probably accept help from anyone who would help him keep the Jews from his native land. The Grand Mufti was admittedly responsible for the bloody riots of 1929.

Through Palestine last week rioting, sniping, bombing continued day after day. Airplanes, tanks and kilted Highlanders had been sent from Egypt weeks ago to help British High Commissioner Sir Arthur Grenville Wauchope. More of them went last week, still without ending the rioting. For whatever assistance it might be worth, the Barham, one of Britain's most massive battleships, anchored off Haifa.

Privately Sir Arthur admitted: "This business has passed beyond an incident. It is no longer a disturbance, it is a rebellion."

Actual loss of life was not great, Arab strategy being to take pot shots from housetops, destroy Jewish property whenever possible, then hustle off to bury their rifles in the ground behind their houses before British patrols could find them. British company commanders issued an order: Every shot from a hidden Arab sniper must be answered with a burst of 50 shots from an automatic rifle.

Near Jaffa the orange grove of Manhattan Banker Felix Warburg was fired by inflamed Arabs. At Geniger others did likewise to a Jewish reforestation scheme known as Balfour Forest.

Mayors of Arab villages were summoned to the High Commissioner's office, asked to call off the general strike which had paralyzed trade in Palestine for 40 days. The mayors bluntly refused unless further Jewish immigration were stopped immediately. A compromise was suggested by soft-spoken Assem Bey Sayed, Mayor of Jaffa; Sir Arthur had promised that a British commission would be appointed to review the whole Jewish-Arab problem. If the commission should be appointed at once and if it should decree the end of Jewish immigration until its deliberations were over, then the Arabs could have at least a symbol of victory, the strike would be called off.

Sir Arthur had no power to promise anything of the kind, but he hustled the suggestion to Britain's new Colonial Minister, the Rt. Hon. William George Arthur Ormsby-Gore (see p. 17).

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