in the narrow sense; he is a particularly liberal
and enlightened type of the sort of English gentleman
who readily served his country in war, but who is
rather particularly fitted to serve her in politics
or literature. Of course many purely professional
soldiers have liberal and artistic tastes; as General
Shea, one of the organisers of Palestinian victory,
has a fine taste in poetry, or Colonel Popham, then
deputy Governor of Jerusalem, an admirable taste in
painting. But while it is sometimes forgotten
that many soldiers are men, it is now still more strange
to forget that most men are soldiers. I fancy
there are now few things more representative than the
British Army; certainly it is much more representative
than the British Parliament. The men I knew,
and whom I remember with so much gratitude, working
under General Bols at the seat of government on the
Mount of Olives, were certainly not narrowed by any
military professionalism, and had if anything the
mark of quite different professions. One was
a very shrewd and humorous lawyer employed on legal
problems about enemy property, another was a young
schoolmaster, with keen and clear ideas, or rather
ideals, about education for all the races in Palestine.
These men did not cease to be themselves because they
were all dressed in khaki; and if Colonel Storrs recurs
first to the memory, it is not because he had become
a colonel in the trade of soldiering, but because
he is the sort of man who could talk equally about
all these other trades and twenty more. Incidentally,
and by way of example, he can talk about them in about
ten languages. There is a story, which whether
or no it be true is very typical, that one of the
Zionist leaders made a patriotic speech in Hebrew,
and broke off short in his recollection of this partially
revived national tongue; whereupon the Governor of
Jerusalem finished his Hebrew speech for him—whether
to exactly the same effect or not it would be impertinent
to inquire. He is a man rather recalling the
eighteenth century aristocrat, with his love of wit
and classical learning; one of that small group of
the governing class that contains his uncle, Harry
Cust, and was warmed with the generous culture of
George Wyndham. It was a purely mechanical distinction
between the military and civil government that would
lend to such figures the stiffness of a drumhead court
martial. And even those who differed with him
accused him in practice, not of militarist lack of
sympathy with any of those he ruled, but rather with
too imaginative a sympathy with some of them.
To know these things, however slightly, and then read
the English newspapers afterwards is often amusing
enough; but I have only mentioned the matter because
there is a real danger in so crude a differentiation.
It would be a bad thing if a system military in form
but representative in fact gave place to a system
representative in form but financial in fact.
That is what the Arabs and many of the English fear;
and with the mention of that fear we come to the next
stratum after the official. It must be remembered
that I am not at this stage judging these groups,
but merely very rapidly sketching them, like figures
and costumes in the street.