To Reform the Jews

Rifle butts hammered a midnight tattoo on hundreds of doors. Into the cold, dark streets poured nearly a thousand Jews, many of them in thin nightdress. For more than an hour they shivered in the crisp air while soldiers ransacked their homes, threatened with clubbed rifles any who protested. Ten foreign correspondents were whisked from the scene to the headquarters of a ruddy-faced, blond-mustached lieutenant colonel, who told them their presence was "embarrassing" to his men. The colonel called the Jews "'a despicable race," said (according to one report): "You know our boys sometimes use the butts of their rifles. . . "

The scene was not prewar Germany, but Jerusalem last week; the colonel no 55 trooper, but one Richard H. L. Webb, commander of the ist Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The detained correspondents included the New York Post's George L. Cassidy, who said Lieut. Colonel Webb explained that Britain's military policy in Palestine is to have her troops "make such a nuisance of themselves [that] the bloody Jews will cease protecting the Stern gang and other terrorists." Colonel Webb added: "I don't care if I'm out of the Army tomorrow."

This drumhead interpretation of policy came only a few hours after another British officer, Lieut. General Sir Evelyn Barker, left Jerusalem on a "transfer" home. Barker, after the King David Hotel bombing, had disqualified himself with a vicious letter to division commanders, in which he urged a boycott of Jewish merchants because that would "be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes...." His recall encouraged moderate Zionist leaders, but extremists were unappeased. They provided the occasion for Webb's outburst, exploding three bombs in rapid succession near troop roadblocks and injuring eleven Tommies, one civilian.

In London, Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones called the terrorist attacks "abominations and cold-blooded outrages," warned that they would "postpone the day when a just and lasting settlement can be reached." Creech Jones said that Palestine authorities were "very alive" to the complexities of the problem. He did not say whether he meant Colonel Webb.

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