ity and a factor of permanent importance. Here, too,
the principle of nationality must be applied, though in a very different
sense, for national feeling is of course at a much earlier stage of
development among the Arabs than in Central Europe. Hitherto they have
accepted the Khalifate of the House of Othman, though without enthusiasm;
but recent events are likely to bring to a head the resentment with which
they view the spectacle of the Khalif as the helpless tool of a clique
which in no way represents Islam. Will they repudiate him and restore the
Khalifate to some more authentic descendant of the Prophet? Is there to
be an independent Arab power? Will it be practicable to create a central
authority amid the virtual anarchy of so vast and primitive a country? Or
will Britain, as the chief Mahommedan power, be obliged to assume a loose
protectorate over Arabia and Mesopotamia? If so, will she share this with
the French in Syria, and will Lebanon be able to preserve its autonomy?
Only the course of events can provide an answer to such questions; only one
fixed point emerges from the surrounding uncertainty--the firm pledge of
the British Government that the Holy Places of Islam shall be respected.

Even this does not exhaust the possibilities of the immediate future. Is
Palestine to become a Jewish land? In recent years there has been a
steady emigration of Moslem and Christian and an equally marked Jewish
immigration, and among other factors in the movement the potentialities of
Jewish nationalism in the United States deserve especial notice. America
is full of nationalities which, while accepting with enthusiasm their new
American citizenship, none the less look to some centre in the Old World as
the source and inspiration of their national culture and traditions. The
most typical instance is the feeling of the American Jew for Palestine,
which may well become a focus for his _declasse_ kinsmen in other parts of
the world. The Jews quite realise that they can have no exclusive claim to
the possession of such a religious centre as Jerusalem, and it is clear
that whatever happens to the Holy Land as a whole, the city itself must
be subject to an impartial administration, which would be neither Jewish,
Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant nor Moslem in any exclusive sense, but would
secure free play to the religious and educational aspirations of them all.
Herzl himself, the founder of modern Zionism, dreamt of Jerusalem as the