The New York Times · New York, New York · 21 May 1944
CP-1944-010
Practical View of Palestine
By R. L. DUFFUS
Transcribed from the clipping
MANY writers have brought political passion to one phase or another of the Palestine situation. Dr. Lowdermilk, assistant chief of the Soil Conservation Service, brings to. it the wisdom of a man who has studied problems of water and soil in his own country and in many other parts of the world.
He appeals to science and to reason where Mr. van Paassen, for instance, lets his emotions run away with him. He is, one might say. an economic Zionist, eager to pay tribute to “the consecrated genius and vision of the Jews” in Palestinian development, yet seeing no real clash between their interests and those of the Arabs.
How could there be such a clash when Arab prosperity and population have increased in the neighborhood of all Jewish settlements and when in a space of fourteen years (1927-40) the Arab death rate has dropped by one-third? Whatever it has done politically, the Jewish movement has revitalized Palestine in other ways. This has been a beginning under enormous difficulties. Dr.
Lowdermilk is looking forward to such a restoration of productiveness as might make possible the settlement of 4,000,000 Jewish refugees in addition to the existing population of about 1,800,000 Jews and Arabs in Palestine and Transjordania.
Similar methods applied throughout the Near East might make it possible for “twenty or thirty million people to live decent and prosperous lives where a few million now struggle for a bare existence.” If the Arabs took full advantage of their new opportunities they would not need to worry about remaining in the majority in the area where friction now exists.
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Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person.
Context added by this archive
Date check: This clipping DOES carry a page date line and it reads “THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, May 21, 1944.” — verified at 6x. That matches `date` 1944-05-21 and `pub` The New York Times (the Book Review section).
Cite this clipping
"Practical View of Palestine," The New York Times, 21 May 1944. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1944-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1944-010
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
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