centuries in Yemen, and have acted as metal-workers, craftsmen, and carpenters for their Arab rulers. Three or four thousand Yemenites are now living in Palestine either as agricultural labourers or still as craftsmen in Jerusalem.
The Jewish agricultural colonies, which have grown up during the past twenty-five years, show level of agricultural and scientific development far ahead of anything else in Palestine. The Jews have in many cases flung themselves upon barren and uncultivated land and transformed it into rich intensively cultivated plantations. The colonies are inhabited by strong and healthy agriculturists living in clean, well-built houses, and possessing a high degree of commercial and political organization, as well as a distinctive social life. The schools are progressive and excellent in every way. The children think and talk in Hebrew, and all the colonists possess the newly acquired national consciousness. They have their own newspapers, their own cultural institutions, and their own national anthem. They are all pioneers, and look forward to the day when they can acquire more land and can be joined by emigrants from all parts of the world inspired by the same ideals. They have a representative system of organization on an adult suffrage basis. Each colony is self-contained and autonomous; and the common affairs of all the colonists are in the hands of a Federal Committee elected by the Vaads (Committees of the Colonists).
The most important event which has taken place, so far as the Jewish community in Palestine is concerned, since our occupation, has been the recruiting of Palestine Jews, whatever their national states, into the British army; and practically the whole available Jewish youth of the colonies and many of the townsmen of military age came forward for voluntary enlistment in the Jewish battalions, took the oath to King George V, and were clad in British uniforms. The initiative in favour of the recruiting movement
