King's Business - 1930-06

292

June 1930

T h e

K i n g ’ s

B u s i n e s s

ments and answering Jewish criminations than he does in building up a positive policy. The Arabs have not thought their problems through to the end. When they shout out in a crowd or when they write on a wall in some public place, “Down with the Balfour Declaration!” it is the wail of those who feel themselves being crushed. They have seen their absentee landlords sell to newcomers the lands that they have been cultivating for centuries. They hear their leaders tell them that riot is necessary to get back their lands and their rights—and riot follows. The Arab leaders are united on only one thing—the idea that Jews must not be allowed to rule Palestine. Some say that Jew­ ish immigration and Jewish colonization should be per­ mitted, but all agree that they will not sit quietly aside as their land becomes the land of another. The Arab has no quarrel with the spiritual Zionist; his hatred has been aroused by the political Zionist; he admits that the pre­ war Jewish colonists were a benefit to the country. But political Zionism has so aroused his ire that periodically the lid blows off and his wrath is manifested toward what­ ever Jews he can meet. When the Government succeeds in getting the lid on again the pot continues to boil until the next explosion. S hall th e M inority R u l e ? If we are willing to put aside all the ideals about which men talked during and immediately after the war, to the effect that the world was being made safe for small and weak peoples, and to revert to the doctrine that when a natio'n conquers an area it may rule it as it desires, we may agree that England has a right to give Palestine to the Jews, the Esquimos or the Hottentots. But if we say that people should have the right to be ruled as they desire, an easy solution becomes impossible. Unless, in other words, we are willing to agree that the conqueror has full power to do as he wishes with the conquered, the Palestine mat­ ter bristles with difficulties and dangers. It is easy to for­ NE may discuss general principles of biology h X i I and that sort of thing, all he wishes, in decid- ing about the evidence for creation or evolu- tion, but after all, the nature and history of early man offers one of the best possible lines Jn -J~ of evidence to indicate what actually' happened. This can only be examined properly by a careful com­ parison of the beliefs of evolutionists and of creationists about early man and the beginning of human history. On taking Ussher’s chronology as approximately cor­ rect, and the Bible narrative as good history, the follow­ ing position will be held: The first man, Adam, was a direct creation, not a prod­ uct of animal ancestry. Considering his origin, his long life, and other incidental facts, he and his immediate suc­ cessors, down at least to Noah and his sons, would be termed supermen if they were alive today. There is no cave man origin here. Second, modern races of men will be believed to be descended from the three sons of Noah, and human his­ tory cannot run back for more than about 4,500 years, except as traditions of an antediluvian earth are added.

get that Palestine has, after these years of freedom for Jewish immigration, some 163,000 Jews as over against about 635,000 so-called Arabs. Shall the minority rule? The argument has been seriously made that since Arab lands are numerous, the Palestinians may occupy some other part of that wide area and leave Palestine for the Jews. What would happen if some power were to conquer our own country and say that since there are forty-seven other states all the inhabitants of California, for instance,,should be expatriated to another state and that the American Indian who formerly inhabited the country would be reinstated? To ask the question is to answer it. It is altogether likely that the inhabitants of California would do much as the Arabs do today. “But,” you say, “whether it appears to us just or otherwise, God has said that the Jews are to return to Palestine, and we are not to put our puny ideas of justice over against His omnipotence.” Granted! But has God stated that the Jews will have a human government again in Palestine? God has not put His seal of inspiration on the Balfour Declaration. The point is this: Jewish immigration to Palestine and Jewish rule in Palestine are not identical. The one may be without the other. Jewish citizens may enjoy all the rights and privileges that the Arab citizen has; Jewish business may grow and if the Jew be the better business man than the Arab, the very laws of economics will care for his future. I want to see the Jew given every right that the Arab has, but I do not like to see three-quarters of the population threatened with being ruled by the other one-fourth. Just as some of the Jews were oppressed by Eastern Europe, so all of the Arabs were oppressed by the Turk. The war was supposed to liberate both of these peoples. Let them be given an equal start with equal privileges, and may the better man win! ¿Mfe. |S£gjl 'ês> äfe m On the side of evolution the following contrasting con­ dition would have to be believed: Human history would run back for eight or ten thou­ sand years, losing itself in the midst of antiquity rather than having any fairly sudden beginning. The civiliza­ tion would be one growing out of a cave man origin and mentality rather than a superman origin and mentality. Since men had been men for hundreds of thousands of years, and certain men had been as finely developed from twelve to forty thousand years ago as the so-called Cro- Magnon men of southern Europe, the history of antiquity, and the races of antiquity, should have developed in an earth well peopled in all habitable portions rather than from people starting in one special district four thousand odd years ago. That ought to be plain. Such theories of origins, the first of sudden, rather rer cent divine creation, and the other of evolution from the beasts through hundreds of thousands of years are so different and so distinct that their comparative merits should be shown, very clearly by the known facts of early history.

The Problem of Early Man B y D udley J oseph W h itn ey (Exeter, Califorma)

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