A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
HAD the Government not announced their decision to adopt the Palestine Commission's recommendations we may be sure that they would have been everywhere rejected as unjust and impracticable. I have met no one who welcomes them—and no one who can now suggest a hopeful alternative. The proposals are reminiscent of earlier panacea which have failed—the Irish Free State Settlement—diarchy in India—the Constitutions of Ceylon and Malta—to mention only four—based upon somewhat similar premises, evolved by men whose ideal of Govern- ment was a Round Table Conference and who did not believe that " strong government " was possible in the changed circumstances that followed the War. But events have taken a different course : " strong government " is now the rule in most Asiatic countries—Japan, Persia, Turkey and Iraq for example—and it has s7read to the greater part of Europe, which includes today at least six States which have abandoned the forms of Western democracy. I doubt whether anything but " strong government " can long survive in the Mediterranean, or in Asia. The new Syrian States will have a population of a million or less each : they cannot " stand alone " even at Geneva, without a big brother, and they will not long be at peace unless their choice of a, big brother is identical, his arm strong and his pocket deep. Long views are sometimes more perilous than short sight. The wisest course may be an interim-politik, designed to meet the immediate needs of a situation which will not remain static. The proposals of the Commission seem to me to fulfil this requirement.
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