Page:Syria and Palestine WDL11774.pdf/75

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Syria and
Palestine
]
CHRISTIANS
59

far as the Catholics are concerned. On the whole, they have the largest numerical following among the Palestinian Catholics. The various French orders do a great deal of educational work among Moslems as well as Christians.

The Armenians (non-Catholic), of all Christian denominations, are the most friendly disposed to the Anglican communion on the one hand, and, politically speaking, to the Zionists on the other. The Anglican Cathedral, with St. George's School attached to it, has for some time played a certain part in the Christian life of Jerusalem.

There has been during the past ten or fifteen years striking growth in German religious and political penetration. The city of Jerusalem is to-day literally dominated by new German religious buildings. Within the city, near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is the great Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. Immediately outside the walls, near the Damascus Gate, is the big German Catholic Hospice, while on the other side of the city the Catholic Church of the Dormition has recently been rebuilt in the German Romanesque style by German effort. Above all, on the Mount of Olives, is the great German Convent. Large establishments at Bethlehem and the agricultural colonies of Savona and Wilhelma, founded by the German Templars near Jaffa, are evidence of the rapid growth of German penetration.

American Protestant and other missions have also done much work in Syria; the well-known American college at Beirut is the most prominent of these.

(iii) Jews

The Jews in Palestine may be divided into two main classes, by no means identical in their social conditions and their aspirations. On the one hand there are the older inhabitants, some of them craftsmen or agriculturists, refugees from other lands; but the great majority of them, particularly in Jerusalem, are fanatical in religion and opposed to modern Zionism.

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